The European Fact-Checking Standards Network (EFCSN) is pleased to announce a call for Database Grants to support the European fact-checking community in its mission to provide the public with access to trustworthy, fact-checked data.
To that end, the EFCSN, together with its partner organisations Newtral, Science Feedback and Fact Review, is currently building a comprehensive fact-check database: a centralised database of fact-check articles, fact-check data, verified disinformation appearances, and associated metadata. The database will serve various stakeholders as a vital resource going forward and will provide the fact-checking community necessary infrastructure for information exchange, collaboration, and collective licensing.
Successful applicants will be required to set up the necessary workflows and technical infrastructure to contribute to the database. In addition to the grant agreement, they will also be asked to sign a data licensing agreement, enabling the EFCSN to make the data accessible to third parties. In addition to the grant amount, successful applicants will also gain access to the database’s backoffice, enabling them to collaborate with other fact-checkers via the platform.
This call is part of the project “Fact-Checkers for European Resilience Against Disinformation (FACTEUR)”, implemented by The European Fact-Checking Standards Network (EFCSN) with seven partner organisations – Pagella Politica/Facta, Faktograf, Newtral, Fact Review, Greece Fact Check, Fact Check Cyprus and Science Feedback.
Objectives
These grants are designed to support European fact-checking organisations to:
- Contribute full text fact-checks from September 7, 2026, onwards until the end of project to a European fact-check database operated by the EFCSN and its partners; successful applicants are encouraged to continue ingesting data after the end of the project; continued data ingestion will be governed by the aforementioned data licensing agreement;
- Set up technical infrastructures that may be necessary for contributing to the fact-check database; the Consortium will provide specific options and support for this;
- Review AI-generated metadata associated with ingested fact-checks and if necessary correct or annotate data manually;
- Grant licensing rights for the data to the EFCSN on the grounds of fair and reasonable conditions;
- Promote the database.
Eligibility Criteria
To be eligible for funding, applicants must meet the following requirements:
- Legal entity: Applicants must be a legal entity, whether for-profit or non-profit.
- Fact-checking: Applicants must be fact-checking organisations or fact-checking teams or units within larger organisations. Fact-checking is defined as the use of an evidence-based method to verify the accuracy of claims made in the public sphere. Applicants must publish at least four human-authored fact-checking articles a month on average. In their editorial work, applicants must have a substantial and demonstrable focus on a country that is a member of the Council of Europe, Kosovo, Belarus or Russia, to apply.
- Certification: Applicants must be EFCSN certified fact-checking organisations in order to ensure the highest data quality of the database.
- Location: Organisations must be based in the European Union or DEP-associated countries (please consult this document for the most updated version).
- Single applicants: This call is intended for single applicants, i.e. consortia of organisations cannot apply for this call.
Budget, Funding, Payment Terms, Grant Duration
- Total Call Budget: €860,000.
- Maximum Grant Amount: €70,000 per project.
- Funding Rate: 50%
- Form of Grant: lump sums
- Number of Grants: 40-60 grants will be awarded. Exact amount must be calculated using this template table. Grant amounts are calculated based on size of applicant’s organisation and projected number of fact-checks ingested into the database in relation to the total of the entire grantee cohort. At the final reporting stage the actual number of ingested fact-checks will be used to calculate the final payment.
- Payment Structure: 40% of the call budget upon grant signatures, 30% following the approval of the interim project reports, 30% following the approval of the final project reports.
- List of eligible costs:
- direct personnel costs – employees or equivalent: editorial personnel, research personnel, technical personnel, administrative personnel, others; natural persons under direct contract; seconded persons; SME owners and natural person beneficiaries; volunteer costs
- subcontracting costs – subcontracting may cover only a limited part of the action (max. 15%).
- direct purchase costs – travel and subsistence: accommodation, travels, subsistence; other goods, works and services: consumables, services for meetings and seminars, services for dissemination activities including website, publication fees, other (shipment, insurance, translation, etc.)
- Indirect costs – 10%
- Grant Duration: 24 months
Selection Procedure
The selection of applications to be funded will be conducted in three distinct phases:
- Phase 1: Eligibility & Compliance: The EFCSN team will perform an initial check to ensure all applications are complete, meet the basic requirements and applicants are eligible.
- Phase 2: Review: The EFCSN team will review and rate applications based on the following award criteria which will result in a ranking of the applications. All applications that can be covered by the budget can be funded, provided the ranking is approved in Phase 3.
| Category | Description | Max Points |
|---|---|---|
| Readiness | To what extent the applicant demonstrates a clear commitment to connect their existing editorial systems with the database infrastructure. | 10 |
| Capacity | To what extent the applicant demonstrates a proven track record of database work in information integrity and a substantial track record of publishing fact-checks. | 10 |
- Phase 3: Final evaluation: The consortium of the FACTEUR project will review the resulting ranking and if appropriate approve it.
How to apply and timeline
To apply, please fill out this application form on the EFCSN Grants Platform. Note that you will need to register an account if you have not already.
The call opens on 29 July 2026 and closes on 6 September 2026 at 23:59. Evaluations will take place in early September 2026, results will be communicated shortly afterwards.
Transparency notice
This call has also been published on the EU Funding & Tenders Portal.
Funding granted through this call will be disclosed on: https://efcsn.com/funding-opportunities/. Disclosure will cover the name of the receiving organisation, amount, and grant duration.
Questions?
Please send questions about this call to [email protected].
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HADEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
