Creative Europe in 2023: supporting resilient cultural and creative sectors

The 2023 work programme comes with a budget of €312 million following 2022significant increase. Around €90 million will be allocated to help the cultural and creative sectors recover and become more resilient following the COVID-19 crisis.

What you can expect from Creative Europe in 2023

Support to Ukraine

Creative Europe continues supporting Ukrainian cultural and creative sectors and encourage their participation in several actions.

On top of the existing support actions, to which Ukrainian professionals are eligible, the Culture strand will publish a dedicated call during 2023 aiming at financing grass root “small-scale projects”. These can be carried out by just one Ukrainian or European organisation.

This will allow easier access to financing projects implemented on the ground to help the Ukrainian cultural and creative sectors that suffer from the consequences of the war. It will also help the integration/welcoming of Ukrainian displaced people but also opening opportunities for recovery.

The MEDIA strand will continue its support to the Ukrainian audiovisual sector and professionals through several actions, namely European Festivals, Audience development & Film Education and training.

Ukrainian news media organisations will also be eligible to the funding opportunities Journalism Partnerships and Media Freedom and Pluralism under the Cross-sectoral strand, through collaborative projects with EU Member States. Ukrainian entities will be eligible to Innovation Labs as well.

Culture strand

One of the main novelties of the programme is Culture Moves Europe, the new mobility scheme, that is expanding in 2023, offering a residency action targeting host organisations. In addition, Creative Europe continues supporting platforms that make European works and emerging artists in Europe and beyond more visible and widely accessible.

The Culture strand pursues its support for specific sectors by allocating 20% of the cooperation budget to finance projects in sectors such as music, architecture or books. In 2023, new initiatives flourish to encourage reading all over Europe.

MEDIA strand

In 2023 MEDIA continues increasing cross-border cooperation through its grants, in order to scale up audiovisual enterprises and to enhance the competitiveness of European audiovisual production at European and global levels.

MEDIA continues the implementation of the flagship actions of the Media and Audiovisual Action Plan such as developing the MediaInvest equity investment platform, strengthening Virtual and Augmented Reality and fostering European media talents.

Cross-sectoral strand

In 2023, the Cross-Sectoral strand pursues the changes incorporated in 2022 to reflect new objectives, including support for transnational policy cooperation and outreach; a Creative Innovation Lab to test innovative digital solutions for the cultural and creative sectors; and support to the transformation of the news media.

Creative Europe launched in 2016 a dedicated Guarantee Facility (CCS GF) to make a cooperation between financial institutions and SMEs from creative sectors easier. Since 2021, it has been integrated within the new InvestEU Programme.