The national entrepreneurship programmes in 2026: one open call, the rest without a calendar

The four figures that decide everything, in the order they are checked. Minimum project size: RON 668,100 in eligible costs. Mandatory loan from a partner bank: at least RON 400,860. Grant: at most 40% of eligible costs, capped at CHF 50,000, that is RON 267,240. Submission deadline: 24 September 2026, 20:00. The call budget is CHF 54,041,886, that is RON 288,843,072, for at least 800 SMEs financed in order of submission.

The eligibility scope has widened: through the order published in Monitorul Oficial nr. 558 of 7 July 2026 the programme is no longer restricted to manufacturing, and firms in trade and services, as well as micro-enterprises, became eligible. Any description presenting the programme as reserved for manufacturing, or still announcing the July deadline, describes the superseded session.

The programme's digital side carries an explicit limit: the software needed to carry out the activity is eligible up to RON 15,000 excluding VAT, per the implementation procedure. That means SME Eco-Tech does not fund a custom platform; it funds equipment, and the software component accompanies it — typically a consumption-monitoring application or a small production-management module, sized within that limit. A supplier proposing a RON 100,000 software project on this line has either not read the procedure or is counting on you not having read it.

The fourth edition has, at the end of July 2026, one closed session and one announced. Session 1 closed on 29 May 2026. Session 2 has been officially announced, with support of up to RON 250,000 per company, but with no submission calendar published. The only firm date to plan against is 8 December 2027, the general deadline for completing spending in this edition.

The order of steps is announced and not negotiable: the entrepreneurship course first, the funding application second. An entrepreneur who discovers that on launch day has already lost the session, because applications cannot be filed without the completed course.

What this means for the technical part of the plan: a digital chapter written in advance, on real offers rather than rounded estimates, is the only part that does not depend on an unknown calendar. Our dedicated page on session 2 tracks precisely what has been announced and what has not.

For the ministry's other lines — among them Femeia Antreprenor, Microindustrializare and Comerț — the 30 July 2026 check found no published implementation procedure opening a submission session in 2026. The consequence for an entrepreneur is straightforward: there is no ceiling, deadline or budget on which to build a plan, however often figures appear in the press.

We do not publish allocations circulating without a procedure behind them, we do not present a line as about to open, and we do not call closed a line for which we hold no act. When a procedure appears it sets the ceiling, the eligible costs and the calendar at the same time — until then, any of the three would be a guess.

The categories that recur from one edition to the next in national entrepreneurship programmes are the same: a presentation website and an online shop, management applications of the ERP or CRM type, IT equipment, software licences and the services of building the solution. Their admissible weight in the budget varies sharply between lines — SME Eco-Tech is the clear example, with its RON 15,000 excluding VAT limit — and confirmation always comes from that session's procedure, not from a general list.

Justifying the price is the part most dossiers underestimate. Guides normally require at least two dated offers or a market analysis for each cost, and evaluators independently check reasonableness against market prices. A technical offer that describes the solution, not just a sum, survives that check; a rounded one does not.

This is where we operate, and it stops exactly where the consultant's work begins: we write the solution specification, the technical offer, the budget by eligible cost category and the draft development contract, and after admission we build the solution and hand over the acceptance documents. We do not write the business plan, do not file the application, do not assess your company's eligibility, and do not issue accommodation offers to inflate a budget — a formal offer discovered at evaluation compromises the dossier, not merely that line.