To write a strong Excellence section in a Horizon Europe proposal, define clear and relevant objectives, demonstrate how the project advances beyond existing knowledge or solutions, and explain a credible methodology for achieving those objectives. Address the applicable evaluation criteria and the exact requirements of your call and proposal template. Claims of novelty and ambition need evidence, not adjectives.
Excellence is one of the principal evaluation criteria for many Horizon Europe actions, alongside Impact and Quality and Efficiency of Implementation. However, the criteria, subcriteria, thresholds and template vary by action and call. This guide focuses primarily on collaborative Research and Innovation Actions (RIAs) and Innovation Actions (IAs), where the familiar Excellence structure typically covers objectives and ambition, followed by methodology. For the broader application structure, see our Horizon Europe grant writing complete guide.
What do Horizon Europe evaluators assess under Excellence?
For standard collaborative RIAs and IAs, the Excellence criterion generally examines two connected questions:
- Are the objectives clear, pertinent and ambitious? The proposal should demonstrate how the work goes beyond the state of the art.
- Is the proposed methodology sound? The approach should be credible and appropriately address relevant concepts, models, assumptions, interdisciplinary methods, the gender dimension in research and innovation content, and open science practices, in line with the applicable template and evaluation criteria.
The precise wording is determined by the call documents. For some other actions, such as Coordination and Support Actions, different subcriteria apply. Never copy an Excellence section from another funding scheme without checking the current template. Our guide to the three Horizon Europe evaluation criteria explains how Excellence fits with Impact and Implementation.
| Evaluation question | What to demonstrate | Evidence to include |
|---|---|---|
| What will the project achieve? | Specific, pertinent objectives | Defined outputs, targets and success measures |
| Why is it needed? | A documented gap or limitation | Scientific literature, existing projects, technical benchmarks or stakeholder evidence |
| What is ambitious about it? | A meaningful advance beyond existing approaches | A clear baseline-to-target comparison |
| How will it work? | A coherent research and innovation methodology | Methods, assumptions, validation approach and decision criteria |
| Can the findings be trusted and reused? | Appropriate scientific rigour and open science | Quality controls, reproducibility and research data practices |
| Are relevant perspectives integrated? | Justified interdisciplinarity and sex/gender analysis where applicable | Roles of disciplines and methodological choices |
How should you define the project's objectives?
Write objectives that describe the concrete changes or achievements the project will deliver, not merely the activities it will perform. Each objective should be understandable, linked to the topic and verifiable by the end of the project.
A useful starting point is the SMART principle: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. SMART is a drafting aid, not a separate formal Horizon Europe evaluation criterion.
Too vague: “Improve the resilience of European supply chains.”
Stronger, illustrative objective: “Develop and validate a supply-chain disruption forecasting model across three industrial pilot settings, demonstrating at least a 20% improvement in forecast accuracy against an agreed baseline by month 30.”
The second version identifies a result, a validation context, a target and a deadline. The 20% figure is hypothetical: in a real proposal, justify targets through preliminary data, literature, partner experience or a reasoned technical assessment.
How many objectives should a proposal include?
There is no universal ideal number. Use as many as necessary to express the project's main achievements without fragmenting them into routine tasks. A manageable set of clearly differentiated objectives is usually easier to evaluate than a long list of overlapping ambitions.
For each objective, check:
- Relevance: Which part of the topic's scope or expected outcomes does it address?
- Result: What will exist, improve or become demonstrable?
- Measure: How will success be assessed, and against what baseline?
- Feasibility: Is the target realistic within the project duration and resources?
- Traceability: Which methodological activities and work packages contribute to it?
How do objectives relate to expected outcomes and impacts?
These terms should not be treated as interchangeable. Objectives express what the project intends to achieve; results are what it produces; expected outcomes concern the effects anticipated by the topic, often through uptake or use of results; and impacts concern broader, longer-term changes to which the project may contribute.
A project objective should help deliver relevant expected outcomes, but the Excellence section should not duplicate the entire Impact section. Establish the scientific and technical logic here; develop the pathways to uptake and wider effects in Impact.
How can you demonstrate progress beyond the state of the art?
Identify what already exists, explain its limitations, and show precisely what your project will improve or make possible. A state-of-the-art discussion is an evidence-based comparison, not a catalogue of publications.
A convincing analysis can draw on peer-reviewed literature, patents, standards, publicly documented products, relevant EU-funded projects and validated pilot results. Select sources because they represent the actual frontier of the field, including competing approaches and evidence that challenges your assumptions.
A practical structure is:
- Current capability: What can the best available approaches achieve today?
- Remaining limitation: What prevents them from meeting the identified need?
- Proposed advance: What new capability, understanding or method will the project deliver?
- Evidence and uncertainty: Why is the advance plausible, and what remains to be tested?
| Dimension | Current approach (illustrative) | Proposed advance (illustrative) | Validation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accuracy | Baseline model performance | Improved accuracy under predefined conditions | Independent test dataset |
| Applicability | Validated in one environment | Validated in three contrasting environments | Comparative pilot results |
| Usability | Expert-operated prototype | Workflow tested with intended users | User testing and defined acceptance criteria |
Avoid presenting unsupported percentages or hypothetical comparisons as established facts. The table above is an example of how to organise evidence, not a claim about any existing technology.
Does every Horizon Europe project need disruptive innovation?
No. The required level and nature of ambition depend on the topic and action. A project can be excellent because it answers a major scientific question, validates a promising approach in a new setting, combines disciplines in a genuinely useful way or advances a technology beyond an established limitation. “Beyond the state of the art” does not automatically mean commercially disruptive.
Explain why the advance matters to the topic, and avoid labels such as revolutionary or game-changing unless substantiated.
What makes a Horizon Europe methodology credible?
A credible methodology explains how the project will generate reliable evidence and achieve its objectives, including the choices, assumptions, dependencies and uncertainties that shape the work. It must be specific enough for an evaluator to assess its scientific and technical soundness.
Depending on the project, address:
- Overall approach: The underlying concepts, theories, models or intervention logic.
- Research and development methods: Experimental design, modelling, data collection, prototyping or testing procedures.
- Assumptions and limitations: Conditions under which the methods are expected to work and what could invalidate them.
- Validation: Baselines, controls, comparison groups, performance indicators and acceptance criteria, where relevant.
- Integration: How results from different disciplines or technical components inform each other.
- Quality and reproducibility: Documentation, data quality, statistical reasoning and appropriate replication or independent verification.
- Relevant cross-cutting considerations: Open science and the gender dimension in research and innovation content, as required by the call.
How much technical detail should you provide?
Enough to justify the approach, but not so much that the evaluator loses the overall logic. Describe the why and how of the method in Excellence. Place the detailed sequencing of work packages, tasks, resources, deliverables and milestones in Implementation, following the template. Cross-reference consistently rather than repeating entire passages.
For example, “we will test the prototype” is insufficient. A stronger explanation identifies the test conditions, comparison baseline, sample or pilot selection, success criteria, analysis method and what happens if the results fall short.
How should you address scientific and technical risks?
Do not hide uncertainty. Explain major methodological challenges and how the design will address them—for example, alternative methods, validation stages or decision gates. The formal risk table may sit in Implementation, but the methodological rationale belongs in Excellence. Consistency between the two is essential.
How do you integrate interdisciplinary expertise?
Show how disciplines contribute to the same research problem and interact in the methodology. A list of partners from different fields does not, by itself, demonstrate interdisciplinarity.
For a digital-health project, for example, clinical teams might define relevant endpoints, data scientists develop models, human-factors specialists test usability and social scientists examine adoption barriers. The proposal should explain how findings from each field change design decisions and validation.
If a topic requires social sciences and humanities (SSH), describe their substantive contribution rather than adding a generic paragraph about stakeholder engagement. If interdisciplinarity is not necessary for the proposed work, do not manufacture it merely to sound ambitious.
What must you say about open science?
Explain the open science practices that are appropriate to the research and required by the applicable Horizon Europe rules. This is not simply a promise to publish papers at the end.
Depending on the project and the grant conditions, relevant practices may include:
- Open access to peer-reviewed scientific publications in accordance with the grant obligations.
- Responsible management of research data, including a data management plan when required.
- Applying the FAIR principles—findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable—to research data where appropriate.
- Sharing methods, software, protocols or other research outputs when feasible and consistent with applicable rights and restrictions.
- Reproducibility, transparent documentation and early sharing practices suited to the field.
Open science does not require unrestricted release of every dataset or commercially sensitive result. The principle “as open as possible, as closed as necessary” recognises legitimate constraints, including privacy, confidentiality, intellectual property and security. Describe the practical decisions and safeguards, not only the principle.
How should you address the gender dimension in research content?
Assess whether sex and/or gender are relevant to the research questions, methods, data, users or outcomes, and explain how that assessment affects the methodology. Where the dimension is not relevant, provide a reasoned justification consistent with the call requirements.
Examples include investigating sex-related biological variation in health research, analysing gender-related patterns in technology adoption, or testing whether a design performs differently for relevant user groups. The appropriate approach depends on the discipline and research question.
Do not confuse this methodological requirement with the Gender Equality Plan eligibility criterion for certain types of organisations. A consortium can satisfy an institutional GEP requirement while still failing to explain relevant sex/gender considerations in its research design—or vice versa.
How can you make the Excellence section easier to evaluate?
Good presentation makes technical reasoning easier to follow. Use the exact headings and instructions from the current proposal template, then make each paragraph answer a clear question.
Practical editing choices include:
- Open each subsection with the central claim or answer.
- Define technical terms and acronyms at first use.
- Use compact tables to compare baselines, targets and evidence.
- Refer consistently to the same objective IDs, methods and work-package numbers.
- Distinguish demonstrated facts from hypotheses and projected performance.
- Give sources for key scientific claims and benchmarks.
- Check that figures, milestones and methods agree with Impact and Implementation.
Visuals are useful when they explain the approach—such as a methodological workflow or integration diagram—not simply to decorate the document. Respect the page limits and formatting instructions for your particular call. To understand how reviewers locate and judge this evidence, read how Horizon Europe proposals are evaluated and selected.
What are the most common Excellence-section mistakes?
| Mistake | Why it weakens the proposal | Better approach |
|---|---|---|
| Vague objectives | Success cannot be assessed | Specify achievements, measures and timing |
| Generic state of the art | Novelty remains unproven | Compare the proposal with relevant existing approaches |
| Unjustified performance claims | Ambition looks speculative | Provide baselines, preliminary evidence and validation plans |
| Activity lists presented as methodology | Evaluators cannot judge scientific soundness | Explain methods, assumptions and decision logic |
| Token treatment of open science or gender | Cross-cutting requirements appear disconnected | Integrate relevant practices into the research design |
| Inconsistent objectives and work plan | The project logic becomes difficult to follow | Cross-check objective IDs, tasks, resources and milestones |
| Excessive jargon | Important reasoning becomes hard to assess | Define terms and use clear, precise language |
What checklist should you use before submitting Excellence?
Use this as an internal quality-control checklist, not as a substitute for the official evaluation form.
- We use the correct call-specific template and evaluation criteria.
- Each objective is clear, relevant and verifiable.
- Our objectives visibly respond to the topic's scope and expected outcomes.
- The state of the art covers the most relevant competing approaches.
- Our advance is explicit, evidence-based and proportionate to the action.
- The methodology explains methods, assumptions and validation.
- Key technical uncertainties and fallback approaches are addressed.
- Interdisciplinary contributions are integrated where relevant.
- Open science practices are concrete and compatible with applicable restrictions.
- Sex/gender relevance has been assessed and addressed or justified.
- Excellence is consistent with the Impact and Implementation sections.
- All claims, figures, terminology and references have been checked.
Frequently asked questions about the Horizon Europe Excellence section
Is Excellence more important than Impact or Implementation?
Not universally. In many collaborative actions, all three are evaluated against defined criteria, with thresholds and ranking rules set by the applicable programme documents. A weak Excellence section can jeopardise a proposal, but strength in Excellence does not compensate automatically for weaknesses elsewhere.
Should I write Excellence before the other proposal sections?
It is often useful to develop the objectives, state of the art and methodological concept early. However, proposal writing should be iterative: refine Excellence alongside Impact and Implementation so that objectives, expected results, activities, resources and exploitation pathways remain aligned.
Do objectives need numerical targets?
Not every scientific objective can be reduced to a percentage. Targets should be measurable or otherwise verifiable in a way appropriate to the discipline. Qualitative criteria, validated methods or well-defined research questions may be more meaningful than invented numbers.
Is a literature review enough to demonstrate novelty?
No. Sources establish what is known; the proposal must then explain the specific limitation it will overcome and provide a convincing comparison with the proposed advance.
Must every proposal integrate the gender dimension?
The requirement and any exceptions depend on the programme and topic. Where applicable, applicants must integrate sex/gender analysis into research and innovation content or justify its non-relevance. This is separate from institutional GEP eligibility.
Can we reuse an Excellence section from a previous Horizon Europe proposal?
You can reuse relevant evidence and methodological material, but the narrative must be adapted to the new topic, expected outcomes, action type, template and current state of the art. Reusing text without checking these elements risks a poor fit.
Conclusion: What makes an Excellence section convincing?
A strong Excellence section connects three arguments: a worthwhile and clearly defined objective, a documented advance beyond existing approaches, and a methodology capable of delivering reliable results. It demonstrates ambition through evidence, not hype.
Before submitting, ask an independent reader to identify the project's objectives, its specific advance and how that advance will be validated. If they cannot answer quickly and accurately, the section needs another revision. Our guide to writing a winning Horizon Europe proposal provides a final whole-proposal check.
For Horizon Europe applicants, the most useful final step is a criterion-by-criterion review against the actual call documentation. Excellence is not a generic writing exercise: it is a structured case for why this particular research and innovation approach deserves support.
Official sources and further reading
- European Commission — Horizon Europe
- EU Funding & Tenders Portal — calls, topic conditions and submission documents
- European Commission — Horizon Europe programme guide
- European Commission — Horizon Europe General Annexes (example edition; always consult the annexes applicable to your call)
Editorial note: This guide describes typical collaborative Horizon Europe proposals. The call text, current proposal template, evaluation form and grant conditions take precedence wherever they differ.