NetZeroCities opportunity: Scaling climate-neutral solutions by enabling city transformation call

NetZeroCities opportunity: Scaling climate-neutral solutions by Enabling City Transformation call

The second edition of the Enabling City Transformation Call invites Mission Cities to propose innovative actions to overcome systemic challenges in implementing climate action. The 22-month Enabling City Transformation programme supports Mission Cities to move beyond experimentation by deploying, scaling and institutionalising enabling innovations that address critical bottlenecks to climate action. 

To accomplish this, the Enabling City Transformation programme takes a challenge-based approach, covering the following areas: 

  • Place-based heating and cooling 
  • Urban energy systems 
  • Large-scale building retrofits and renovations 
  • Nature Based Solutions (NBS) at city scale 
  • City finance innovations for climate neutrality 
  • Decarbonising urban mobility and logistics 

 Defined challenge areas diagnose critical city-wide implementation barriers that currently prevent cities from translating Climate City Contract ambitions into replicable and scalable outcomes. 

With a budget of €8 million, the programme focuses on generating practical, transferable and evidence-based approaches that can be adopted across Europe. Applicants will be required to align their proposals with one of the Enabling City Transformation programme challenge areas and demonstrate how their intervention addresses a clearly identified implementation barrier while contributing to the wider EU Cities Mission learning and replication. 

More information is available here.


The upcoming info sessions are:

  • 15 September 2026 – Ambition and Approach for ECT2 (90’) REGISTER
  • 29 September 2026 – Eligibility, Assessment Criteria and how to submit (90’) REGISTER
  • 09 October 2026 – Impact Framework and Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) (90’) REGISTER