From Innovation to Impact: Clean Hydrogen for Europe’s Competitiveness
Europe’s competitiveness increasingly depends on its ability to turn research and innovation into industrial deployment, market leadership and strategic autonomy. Clean hydrogen is a key area where Europe has built strong scientific, technological and industrial capabilities, but the next challenge is to scale these innovations faster, connect them to real demand, and ensure they create value for Europe’s economy, regions and citizens.
The Innovation Forum 2026 will therefore focus on how clean hydrogen innovation can move from lab to fab: from laboratories and demonstration projects to pilots for industrial applications, market activation of competitive value chains, investable ecosystems and upskilled jobs.
This process needs long term support, coordination and monitoring, to develop the required projects pipelines and the right ecosystem to reach impact.
The discussions will also look ahead, to the future of the partnership and the JU as the place where research excellence meets industry needs and EU policy priorities, asking how the next JU can continue to best support breakthrough technologies, accelerate scale-up, and turn innovation into measurable impact.