No Culture on the Horizon? The future of Cultural Research in the EU.

Written By Isabel Gondel

The European Commission's proposal for Horizon Europe 2028–2034 no longer includes culture as a dedicated area comparable to today's Cluster 2. What could this mean for cultural and artistic research?

Culture is not usually the first thing that comes to mind when we think about European research policy. We tend to associate research funding with science, technology, medicine or industrial innovation. Yet one of the EU's largest research programmes currently includes a substantial field dedicated to Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society. That could change in the next budget period. The European Commission's proposal for Horizon Europe 2028–2034 would significantly reorganise the programme. While culture and creativity remain possible areas of research, culture is no longer given a dedicated structural position comparable to today's Cluster 2. For cultural and artistic research, that is an important change.

What is Horizon Europe?

Horizon Europe is the European Union's main framework programme for research and innovation. The Commission has proposed a budget of €175 billion for 2028–2034, almost doubling the size of the current programme. The new programme is intended to place research and innovation more closely at the centre of European competitiveness and economic strategy. Its proposed structure includes four pillars, with collaborative research and innovation addressing areas of high societal impact under the second pillar, Competitiveness and Society. The current programme is organised differently. Among its major components is Cluster 2: Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society, which supports research concerning democracy, cultural heritage and cultural and creative sectors.

What has changed?

The key issue is not that the new proposal explicitly bans cultural research. It does not. The Commission's proposal still allows culture and creativity to be addressed through collaborative research, while social sciences and humanities remain relevant across the programme. The change is structural. Culture is no longer presented as a clearly identifiable component comparable to today's Cluster 2. That distinction matters because being eligible in principle is not the same as having a dedicated place within a funding architecture. A dedicated cluster creates visibility. It creates an identifiable community of researchers and organisations. It allows calls to be designed around particular questions. And, crucially, it creates a recognisable budgetary and political space for a field of research.

There is clearly demand

The existing programme provides evidence that this space is being used. The 2025 Horizon Europe call on Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society attracted 1,331 proposals. That represents a substantial increase compared with previous years. The figures suggest that cultural and societal research is not a marginal field waiting to find a purpose within Horizon Europe. There is an established research community working in these areas, and significant demand for funding. The question is therefore what happens to this demand when the programme's architecture changes.

And why cultural research matters?

There is an understandable temptation to justify cultural research through economic arguments. Culture contributes to employment, innovation and economic activity. The European Commission itself increasingly frames Horizon Europe around competitiveness, while its own evaluation estimates that each euro invested through Horizon Europe could generate up to €11 in GDP gains by 2045. But cultural research has a value that cannot easily be reduced to economic output. European societies are dealing with polarisation, democratic erosion, technological transformation, migration, social fragmentation and contested histories. These are not exclusively technical problems. They involve meaning, identity, memory, values and collective experience. Research involving culture can help explore precisely these dimensions.

The particular case of artistic research

Artistic research is especially interesting here. It can combine research with artistic practice and create forms of knowledge that do not necessarily follow conventional academic methods. Artists and researchers can work through experimentation, performance, participatory practices, composition, visual methods or collaborative processes with communities. This does not mean that artistic research should be treated as a substitute for scientific research. Rather, it can provide different ways of asking questions and producing knowledge. This becomes particularly relevant when the subject itself concerns social experience. How does a community remember violence? How does polarisation affect people's ability to encounter one another? How can democratic values be experienced rather than simply discussed? How do people respond to rapid technological change? These questions cannot always be answered through technical innovation alone.

The Council has made some changes, is it being enough?

The legislative process is not taking place only within the Commission. The Council has been developing its own position on the future Horizon Europe legislation. Some Council texts have introduced explicit references to sustaining European cultures and creative industries within the more operational elements of the programme. However, this does not resolve the central issue. The overarching Framework Programme Regulation is the document that establishes the strategic architecture of Horizon Europe. If culture is absent from that higher-level structure, references in operational texts provide only a partial solution. The distinction between mentioning culture somewhere in the programme and giving culture a structural place in the programme is therefore important.

Parliament now has a key role

The European Parliament is also developing its position. This creates an opportunity to reconsider how cultural and artistic research should be positioned within the next Horizon Europe. The debate is broader than securing a single budget line. It concerns whether cultural research should be treated as a legitimate part of Europe's research and innovation capacity. That question becomes particularly significant as the EU places increasing emphasis on competitiveness. If research and innovation are understood broadly enough to include the social, cultural and ethical dimensions of European challenges, culture has a clear place within that agenda. If innovation is defined primarily through technological and industrial outcomes, cultural research risks becoming peripheral.

A wider pattern…

The Horizon Europe debate becomes even more significant when considered alongside the other programmes being designed for 2028–2034. AgoraEU provides a dedicated home for culture. But culture is less clearly visible in the proposed architecture of the European Competitiveness Fund. At the same time, cultural research risks losing its dedicated structural position within Horizon Europe. Taken individually, these changes may appear technical. Together, they raise a much larger question… Will culture remain a clearly recognised component of the EU's wider policy architecture, or will it increasingly be expected to fit into priorities defined elsewhere?

What happens next?

The final Horizon Europe programme has not yet been adopted. The European Parliament, the Council and the Commission still have to reach agreement on the legislative framework and its implementation. That means the current proposal should be understood as a starting point rather than a final outcome. For cultural and artistic researchers, however, the structural question is already worth watching. Because once a sector disappears from the architecture of a programme, restoring it later can be considerably harder than ensuring that it has a place from the beginning.

Updated September 2026. Horizon Europe 2028–2034 is still under negotiation.

Sources & further reading


Isabel Gondel

Artist and Strategic Consultant

https://www.isabelgondel.com
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