The financial aid is intended for businesses established in Luxembourg. It applies to the following activities:

• experimental development, i.e. acquiring, combining, structuring and using scientific, technological and commercial knowledge and skills with a view to developing new or improved products, processes or services;
• fundamental research, i.e. experimental or theoretical work undertaken to acquire new knowledge of the underlying foundations of phenomena and observable facts, without envisioning any direct practical application or commercial use;
• industrial research, i.e. planned research or critical investigations to gain new knowledge and skills in order to:
  • develop new products, processes or services; or
    
  • significantly improve existing products, processes or services.

Terms and conditions

Beneficiaries of the financial aid must satisfy the terms and conditions that apply to all types of aid for research, development and innovation.

Eligible costs

Eligible costs are those that are directly related to the R&D projects, namely:

• payroll expenses: researchers, technicians and other support staff, if they are employed for the project;
• expenses for instruments and equipment, if and for as long as they are being used for the project. If such instruments and equipment are not used for their full lifecycle as part of the project, only the depreciation costs corresponding to the duration of the project, calculated in accordance with the generally accepted accounting principles, shall be deemed eligible;
• expenses for contract research or research services, the purchase of knowledge and patents or licences from external sources under conditions of full competition, as well as expenses for consultancy and equivalent services used exclusively for the project;
• additional overheads and other operating expenses – in particular, the cost of materials, office supplies and similar products – incurred directly as a result of the project.

The application must be submitted before the commencement of the work.

Submitting the application

Application for aid for research and development projects

You (or your representative) must submit the application for financial aid using the online assistant available on MyGuichet.lu.

This is a procedure that requires authentication using a LuxTrust product or an electronic identity card (eID).

Call for projects

The Ministry of the Economy anticipates issuing different types of national competitive calls for projects with more favourable aid amounts that are focused on certain topics, economic sectors, value chains or technologies:

• calls for projects issued by the Ministry of the Economy;
• calls for projects issued by the Ministry of the Economy and the Luxembourg National Research Fund (Fonds national de la recherche – FNR), in collaboration with Luxinnovation, which aim to promote R&D projects based on effective collaboration with at least one national public research institute.

A call for expression of interest may precede calls for projects.

A call for projects in the fields of high performance computing (HPC) and/or artificial intelligence (AI) is currently under way:

• eligibility criteria and additional information are available on the online platform research-industry-collaboration.lu;
• the deadline for submitting expressions of interest is 18 June 2025.

Tentative multi-year schedule:

A multi-year schedule of national calls for projects will be published here (not currently available).

In addition, the Ministry of the Economy encourages national businesses to participate in collaborative R&D projects that include at least one international partner in the context of programmes such as EUREKA. For more information, please visit the Luxinnovation website.

Supporting documents

Applications for aid must include the following information and documents:

• the name and description of the business;
• the size of the business in accordance with Annex I of Regulation (EU) No. 651/2014;
• the business's organisational chart;
• the annual financial statements for the last 2 financial years of the applicant business and, where applicable, of the single economic entity it belongs to;
• a description of the project, including its start and end dates;
• a description of the project's economic potential;
• if necessary, a description of:
  • how the aid-funded asset is operated;
  • what makes the project innovative;
  • the technological challenges of the project;
  • the economic valuation of the outcome of the project;
• the location of the project;
• the list of the project's eligible costs;
• the form and the amount of aid required for the project;
• the project's business plan, which:
  • lists the costs and expected revenue; and
  • supports the scenarios presented;
• a financing plan, which demonstrates that the applicant business has the necessary equity capital that corresponds to the financial scale of the project;
• for applications for more than EUR 500,000, submitted by large businesses: a description of the likely counterfactual scenario if the aid is not granted. The counterfactual scenario may consist of an alternative project or the lack of an alternative project;
• for aid less than EUR 100,000: a sworn statement about other de minimis aid received in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2023/2831 or Regulation (EU) 1407/2013;
• any relevant information that will allow the appropriate ministers to assess the qualities or specific features of the project or the incentive effect of the aid.

Maximum amount of financial aid

For each R&D project, the gross amount of the aid may not be less than:

• EUR 1,000 for small and medium-sized enterprises; and
• EUR 100,000 for large businesses.

The amount of aid will be calculated on the basis of the eligible costs of the project up to the following caps:

Under certain conditions, mark-ups may apply – specifically, if the project is based on a genuine collaboration:

• between businesses where at least one is an SME, or the project is carried out in at least 2 Member States, or in one Member State and in another EEA (European Economic Area) member country, and no single business is bearing more than 70% of the eligible costs on its own; or
• between one business and one or more research institutes and knowledge dissemination organisations. These organisations must:
  • bear at least 10% of the eligible costs; and
  • have the right to publish the results of their research.

Payment of the aid

The capital grant is paid after completion of the project.

However, one or more aid instalments may be requested after a portion of the costs for which the aid was granted is incurred.

Procedures

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