The indicative calendar published by MIPE (the Romanian Ministry of European Investments and Projects) this month counts 226 funding calls, totalling over 4.8 billion EUR — of which roughly 3.6 billion EUR is European funding through the 2021–2027 Cohesion Policy. For an SME that wants to fund its digitalisation, 2026 is a year with real money on the table; the problem is not its existence, but the fact that most companies hear about a call three weeks before the deadline and try to invent a project overnight.
This article is for SME owners and administrators who want to understand three things without reading three hundred pages of guides: where the money can come from in 2026, which IT expenses are usually eligible and what must be prepared in advance for the project to pass. A warning from the start: deadlines and conditions change often, so the only valid source remains the applicant's guide in force at the date of submission — everything that follows is the map, not the contract.
The money map in 2026
PNRR — SME digitalisation. Grants between 20,000 and 100,000 EUR, non-repayable aid, aimed at exactly the type of project we are talking about here: equipment, software, digitalisation services. For orientation: the funding percentage, the caps per expense category and the conditions for maintaining the investment differ from one call to another — the exact figures sit in the applicant's guide, not in press articles.
The regional calls. Through the regional programmes, lines dedicated to SMEs appear; a current example is the Centru Region (Brașov, Sibiu, Alba, Covasna, Harghita, Mureș), with new grants between 15,000 and 200,000 EUR, covering artificial intelligence and virtual reality projects too. If your company is in another region, check your own regional programme — the logic is similar, the amounts and deadlines differ.
Other sources active in 2026: PoCIDIF, Start-Up Nation 2026 and the Digital Europe Programme, each with its own beneficiary and project profile.
How to track them without making it a daily job: the MIPE calendar for the overall picture, plus the pages of the managing authorities for the calls that concern you. Or, more simply, a funding consultant who does this monitoring for a living.
Which IT expenses are usually eligible
The exact list differs from call to call — again: the applicant's guide is the law — but the categories that appear constantly in digitalisation calls look like this:
- Hardware equipment: computers, servers, network equipment, peripherals — tied to the project, not a general company “refresh”;
- Standard software and licences: business management systems, ERP, CRM, accounting and invoicing applications;
- Custom software development: applications built for the company's processes — if you go down this road, first read how the cost of a custom application is calculated, because the budget in the application must hold up at implementation;
- Online presence and e-commerce: website, online shop, integrations with payments and couriers;
- Cloud services and SaaS subscriptions — usually for the limited period set by the guide;
- Cybersecurity: protection equipment, software and services;
- Employee training for the tools purchased through the project;
- Consultancy for writing and managing the project, within the limits set by each guide.
The practical observation: recent calls — see the Centru Region example — increasingly include an artificial intelligence component. A project that automates a concrete process with current technologies usually scores better than a list of new computers.
What disqualifies you or trips you up
- Expenses incurred before the funding contract is signed are, as a rule, ineligible. Do not buy anything “in advance” that you want reimbursed.
- Double funding — the same expense reimbursed from two public sources — is prohibited and checked.
- Purchases with no demonstrable link to the project. Every item in the budget must serve the declared objective; “an extra laptop would come in handy too” weakens the whole file.
- The project written backwards. The most frequent real cause of failure: the company starts from the available amount and invents a project for it. Evaluation committees see this immediately — and even if it passes, the company is left with tools it does not use.
How to prepare so you do not file at the last minute
- Define the need first, then look for the call. Which process hurts, what would solve it, what would change measurably in the company. A real project is written around a problem, not around a submission deadline.
- Request real quotes from vendors. The funding application's budget is built on quotes, not on hearsay estimates — and at implementation you will be held to the written figures.
- Check your co-financing and implementation capacity. Even with non-repayable aid, the company carries the cash flow until the reimbursements, and the project management work.
- Put the company's documents in order — financial statements, certificates, powers of attorney. They are the same for almost any call and are prepared in advance, not in the week of submission.
- Work with two people, not one: the funding consultant tells you what scores, but you also need someone who understands the project technically, so you do not sign up for solutions unsuited to the company. Neoxis covers the second part through its IT consulting services — from defining the need to the specifications put into the funding application.
The questions that separate a fundable project from a shopping list
Before you write a line of the application, answer four questions in writing: What operational problem does the project solve — and what does it cost you today? Who in the company will use what you buy and who is responsible for implementation? Which figure will change afterwards — time, errors, sales? What happens to the solution after the sustainability period required by the programme? If you have solid answers, the file almost writes itself; if you do not, no funding turns a shopping list into digitalisation.
It is worth saying the reverse too: if the project is genuinely necessary for the company, it remains good even without a grant — the funding only changes its speed and scale. The simple test “would we do it with our own money, at a smaller scale?” separates solid projects from those written for points.
The next step
Start with one page: the problem, the suspected solution, the approximate budget across the eligible categories above. With it you can talk concretely both with the funding consultant and with IT vendors — and the technical questions that come up along the way have answers at the frequently asked questions about development and automation. Call deadlines move; preparation done in advance stays valid for any of them.