Frontier AI Grand Challenge
Building sovereign, large-scale AI
Empowering Europe’s technological future through open-source innovation and high-performance computing
The Frontier AI Grand Challenge is a major EU-wide initiative launched by the European Commission and the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking. Its primary mission is to bridge the strategic gap in high-end AI development by fostering the creation of sovereign, large-scale European AI models. These “frontier” models are designed to be general-purpose systems capable of adapting across domains with minimal modification.
The expected outcome of the Frontier AI Grand Challenge is the selection of one proposal to train a frontier AI model that will outperform state-of-the-art models in a number of relevant tasks. The development of these models should require the use of high-performance computing resources.
Who is eligible to participate in the challenge?
Eligible participants shall consist of one or more industrial players that are both established in the EU and under EU control. They may be accompanied by one or more academic institutions and/or research entities from Member States.
- Eligible Entities: One or more industrial players that are established in the EU and under EU control.
- Consortia: Teams may include academic institutions or research entities from Member States as additional partners. The coordinating entity must be a private sector organisation responsible for the project’s overall steering.
- Proven Track Record: All participants must show a history of developing and deploying large-scale AI models (100Bn+ parameters) and modular architectures (e.g. mixture-of-expert approaches), in depth experience in AI solutions covering all EU languages, and relevant access to underlying data resources.
What are the commitments to transparency and compliance?
Selected participants must align with European values and legal frameworks:
- Open Science: Projects must commit to Horizon Europe open science principles, providing open access to publications and, where applicable, open weights and architecture details.
- EU AI Act: Development processes must demonstrate compliance with the EU AI Act, including risk classification and transparency requirements.
- Community Use: The resulting open models will be made widely available to public authorities, the scientific community, and businesses across Europe.
What are the technical requirements for the AI models?
The challenge sets a high bar for innovation and scale to ensure European competitiveness:
- Model Scale: Proposals must target large-scale Language Models with at least 400 billion parameters.
- Architecture: Models should use modular architectures, such as mixture-of-expert (MoE) approaches, to maximize performance and efficiency.
- Performance: The expected outcome is a model that outperforms current state-of-the-art systems in various relevant tasks.
- Scientific Rigor: Development must follow optimal scaling laws for computing and training data size.
What rewards and resources will the winners receive?
Only one winner will be awarded by the panel of the Frontier AI Grand Challenge
- Supercomputing Power: Access to Europe’s exascale and pre-exascale EuroHPC supercomputers.
- Resource Allocation: A grant of Strategic Access for up to 2.5% of overall EuroHPC computing resources for one year.
- AI Factory Services: Access to specialised AI services associated with these high-performance facilities.
What are the key dates and deadlines for the challenge?
The timeline for the competition is fast paced to meet the urgent needs of the AI sector:
- Challenge Launch: 13 February 2026.
- Submission Deadline: 13 April 2026 at 17:00 CET (Brussel’s Time).
- Results Published: May 2026.
How can you apply?
- To participate, applicants must register and submit their full proposal through the F6S platform. All submissions must be completed in full and uploaded before the established deadline to be considered for evaluation.
Before anything else, please read the guide for applicants (add link)
- Complete the application form in its entirety, making sure to fill in all mandatory fields.
- Apply here > www.f6s.com/the-frontier-ai-grand-challenge
- Attach the Declaration of Honour, ensuring it is properly filled out and signed by your legal representative (add link)
- Include technical supporting data by attaching “Attachment 2 – Tables and Images” to your proposal (add link)
- Submit the final application via the F6S platform before the official closing date and time.
English is the official language, submissions done in any other language will not be taken into account.