The European Open Science Cloud is quickly moving toward an operational EOSC Federation.
The EOSC Federation and the EOSC EU Node are online, with 13 candidate EOSC Nodes in various stages of development and a second wave of 14 candidate Nodes preparing to enrol. The federating of these thematic, national and e-Infrastructure nodes with the EOSC EU Node is the work of the EOSC-A-led Build-up Group and has been carried out on an in-kind basis since March 2025 by the dozens of European organisations standing behind the nodes.
As champions of the European research community, these organisations—including Research Infrastructures, e-Infrastructures, and research-performing organisations—have established the technical and organisational foundations for the future of Open Science in Europe and the recognised Common European Data Space for Research and Innovation.
The build-up of the EOSC Federation is steered by the EOSC Tripartite Governance and implemented by the EOSC Federation Build-up Group in accordance with the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the 13 candidate Nodes and the EOSC Association.
The EOSC Federation Build-up Group includes representatives from the EOSC Tripartite Group (EOSC-A, European Commission and EOSC Steering Board), the EOSC EU Node, and each of the 13 candidate EOSC Nodes invited to contribute to the first wave deployment of the EOSC Federation.
The EOSC Node Coordinators Committee (NCC) and EOSC Node Operations Committee (NOC), together with the EOSC Federation working groups, represent an interim governance structure designed to bridge the Federation from prototype to production by the end of the year.
EOSC NCC strengthens governance and leadership across Working Groups
The EOSC Node Coordinators Committee adopted its updated Rules of Procedure during its third meeting on 26 March 2026, marking an important step toward a more structured and transparent governance framework. As part of this process, Bob Jones, EOSC-A’s special envoy for the EOSC Federation, was formally appointed as Chair and Matteo Zanaroli of ICSC as Co-Chair of the Committee. Additional co-chairs and secretariats for key Working Groups were confirmed across technical and operational areas.
- Andy Götz (EOSC-A/ESRF/PaNOSC) presented a plan for the development of the EOSC User Forum, which the Committee proposed should be launched in coordination with the Federation’s transition into production. The forum will be a platform to give users of the EOSC Federation a stronger voice in shaping Federation services.
- The Node Operations Committee reported progress toward a more practical and results-oriented mode of work through improved coordination between Nodes, analysis of existing tools and services, and support for the prioritised and phased implementation of Federation capabilities to ensure that new functionalities are introduced in line with available resources and readiness across Nodes.
Implementation of interim governance under Federation MoU
The second meeting of the EOSC Node Coordinators Committee was held online on 26 February and focused on strengthening the Federation’s governance structure, advancing technical coordination across the Nodes, and launching the new working groups to support the operational maturity of the EOSC Federation.
The mandates of two working groups were approved: 1) The Architecture & Federating Policies Working Group will review technical policies and federating architecture, ensuring interoperability while preserving node autonomy; and 2) the Training & Competencies Working Group will strengthen operational capacity by improving discoverability, interoperability, and reuse of training resources across Nodes.
At the Build-up Group’s face-to-face meeting on 26-27 January 2026 in Nice, the EOSC Federation formally consolidated its new operational structure under the Federation’s MoU.
The new EOSC Node Coordinator and Operations Committees, together with the newly mandated working groups, represent an interim structure designed to bridge the Federation from prototype to production by the end of the year. The new structure is defined by the Memorandum of Understanding that served to launch the Federation in November 2025, and which has been signed by the 13 candidate EOSC Nodes and the EOSC Association.
All candidate Nodes signed onto MoU
The EOSC Federation MoU has now been signed by the 13 candidate EOSC Nodes, including BBMRI-ERIC, CERN, Digital Twin of the Ocean, EUDAT, Finland, Germany, Italy, Life Sciences Connect, PaNOSC, Poland, Slovakia, and SURF. The signing of the MoU with EOSC-A formalises the commitment of each candidate EOSC Node to collaborate on service integration and interoperability within the EOSC Federation.
MoU establishes shared path to operations
On 03 November 2025 at the EOSC Symposium, EOSC took a major step toward its consolidation as Europe’s research and innovation data space. The 14 coordinators of the EOSC Federation’s first wave of EOSC Nodes joined EOSC-A President Klaus Tochtermann and Co-Chair of the EOSC Federation’s Build-up Group Bob Jones on the stage to introduce the Federation’s Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).
The MoU marks the culmination of eight months of hard work and coordination carried out on an in-kind basis by the dozens of European organisations standing behind the EOSC Nodes. It establishes a shared operational and interim coordination framework for the piloting phase of the Federation.
The day after EOSC-A’s signing of the Federation’s MoU, mini signing ceremonies were held for the Dutch (SURF), German (NFDI) and Finnish (CSC) national EOSC Nodes. Following this, the CERN EOSC Node joined the ranks with its official signing on 10 November. More Nodes are expected to follow in the coming weeks.
EOSC Nodes now online
Web pages for each of the 14 first-wave EOSC Nodes are now live. Here you can learn more about each Node’s key objectives, scientific domains, use cases and impact, their status and capabilities, and their cross-node interactions. Where applicable, direct links to the Nodes are provided and you can connect directly with the Node coordinators to explore potential collaboration opportunities. The pages also feature interviews with the Node coordinators. With the exception of the EOSC EU Node, all candidate EOSC Nodes are being developed in-kind by their coordinating and contributing organisations, a testament to the collaborative spirit driving the EOSC Federation.
EOSC Federation builds momentum in Helsinki
The EOSC Federation is moving decisively from blueprint to reality. The Federation Build-up Group gathered in Helsinki on 01–02 October for its 7th meeting in order to prepare for the Federation’s debut at the upcoming EOSC Symposium in Brussels. The meeting, hosted by CSC – IT Center for Science, showcased significant progress across the candidate EOSC Nodes, while flagging technical and organisational hurdles.
Much of the Federation’s progress stems from the work of specialised sub-groups assembling critical building blocks for enrolling and federating the Nodes and onboarding external resources. Several of these sub-groups reported on their activities around, for example, interoperability, metadata guidelines, governance and cybersecurity.
At the heart of the Federation’s promise are its cross-node scientific use cases. Updates on those already in progress–including AI-enabled screening for prostate cancer and the development of common workflows for researchers in the life sciences and high-energy physics domains, among others–were presented to the Build-up Group in order to assess their progress and readiness level. A full report and photos can be found here.
Publication of Corporate Design Guidelines, 25 September 2025
The EOSC Tripartite Governance has published the Corporate Design Guidelines of the EOSC Federation Build-up Phase.
These guidelines have been established for the purposes of branding the EOSC Federation Build-up Group and its sequenced or enrolled EOSC Nodes and resource providers for the duration of the EOSC Federation’s build-up phase. The document’s purpose is to familiarize the Build-up Group members with the ways the EOSC Federation presents itself through its design, and how the sequenced and enrolled EOSC Nodes in particular can optimise their use of the EOSC brand throughout the Federation’s build-up phase.
The guidelines have been co-developed within the EOSC Tripartite Governance, which includes representatives of the European Commission, the EOSC Association, and the EU Member States and Countries Associated to Horizon Europe.
Meeting #6, 28 August 2025
The Build-up Group held its 6th meeting online on Thursday, 28 August 2025. The Group reviewed progress on scientific use cases, node deployment, EOSC Federation branding, and preparations for upcoming events. Regarding deployment of the 13 candidate EOSC Nodes, Node coordinators reported steady progress on their August 2025 milestones, with several noted as complete, while others are pending review.
The Build-up Group also endorsed a common approach to EOSC Federation branding, which will be submitted for approval to the EOSC Steering Board this month. Interviews with candidate Node coordinators are in progress to support the production of informative videos and dedicated Node webpages, which will offer greater visibility into the candidate Nodes’ plans and scientific impact. In addition, FAIR Data aspects have been embedded in the candidate Nodes’ use case framework in order to highlight the contributions of data-providing Nodes.
Kraków in-person meeting, 17-18 June 2025
The 4th meeting of the Build-up Group on 17-18 June at NCN in Krakow brought together 60 participants for their first face-to-face meeting, which was leveraged to advance both technical and structural aspects of the Federation’s implementation.
The Build-Up Group is steadily working toward the anticipated launch of the EOSC Federation at the EOSC Symposium in November. Their next in-person meeting will be 01-02 October in Helsinki.
The group will continue to meet monthly, supported by EOSC-A.
Build-up Group inaugurated, 10 April 2025
The Build-up Group, established at the kick-off workshop of the EOSC Federation in March, held its inaugural meeting online on 10 April 2025. The group brings together 13 candidate EOSC Node coordinators, the EOSC EU Node, two Group co-chairs, and observers from the European Commission, the EOSC Steering Board, and the EOSC Association Board. The kick-off meeting focused on laying the groundwork for collaboration by defining ways of working, identifying priority use cases, and discussing access policies. A key outcome of the meeting was the election of the group’s co-chairs: Bob Jones (EOSC-A) and Matteo Zanaroli (ICSC), who will jointly coordinate the implementation of the build-up phase.
March 2025: Kick-off meeting and release of Handbook
Update 1: On 17-18 March 2025, the European Commission hosted the kick-off meeting of the build-up phase of the EOSC Federation. 80+ representatives from the 13 organisations invited to contribute to the first wave deployment of the EOSC Federation as well as representatives from the EOSC EU Node gathered in Brussels to start creating a joint action plan to deliver a prototype of the EOSC Federation by the end of 2025.
The workshop gave the organisations an opportunity to highlight both their scientific and infrastructure use cases and the added value their data and services would bring for end users of the EOSC Federation.
The next step for the candidate nodes is to refine their project charters and start the implementation. The first check-point to monitor the progress of the work is foreseen in June 2025.
Update 2: 28 March 2025 marks the public release of the first edition of the EOSC Federation Handbook. The Handbook provides an overview of the organisational and operational structure, and technical characteristics, of the EOSC Federation. It aims to serve as a practical guide for organisations that are interested in making their resources available within and across the EOSC Federation of nodes.
Sub-group deliverables
Federated AAI
Service Catalogues interoperability & integration
Related Task Force deliverables
A second wave of candidate EOSC Nodes is following in the footsteps of the first.
Following its second-wave enrollment call, which ran from 03 November 2025 through 18 February 2026, the EOSC Tripartite Governance in April 2026 invited 14 second-wave candidate EOSC Nodes to enrol in the Federation. This growth will expand the geographical reach and thematic diversity of the EOSC Federation, further advancing the development of a trusted, interoperable, and federated European ecosystem for research data and services.
The 14 second-wave candidate EOSC Nodes will establish:
- National EOSC Nodes in Czechia, Croatia, Latvia, North Macedonia, Sweden, Slovenia, Switzerland, and Türkiye;
- pan-European e-Infrastructure EOSC Nodes through GÉANT, EGI, and Scholarly Commons;
- and thematic EOSC Nodes by METROFOOD-RI, EBRAINS RU, and ENVRI.
Two additional open calls to support the growth of the EOSC Federation were also open during the call period: preparatory grants under EOSC Gravity, and inter-project grants under EOSC Gravity.
A fourth call, for independent expert evaluators to assess applications for the three calls, ran from 01 December to 30 January 2026. Evaluation work is underway through 07 April 2026.
The second-wave Candidate Nodes will benefit from the experiences of the first-wave Nodes that have preceded them, as well as from the continuous feedback loop that informs the development of the Federation and the EOSC Federation Handbook.
Following the second wave, it is anticipated that the processes in place will enable a continuous stream of enrolment for future EOSC Nodes.
Agreed by the EOSC Tripartite Governance at its 07 November 2024 meeting in Budapest was a two-stage dialogue process to enable the Tripartite to initiate the build-up phase of the EOSC Federation with a first wave of Candidate Nodes.
The build-up phase of the EOSC Federation will help the Tripartite to gain experience from cooperation between the EOSC EU Node and the individual future EOSC Nodes, and to test the different aspects of the EOSC Federation Handbook in practice.
Kick-off workshop
In February 2025, the EOSC Tripartite Governance invited 13 organisations to join the kick-off workshop of the EOSC Federation, signalling the opening act in EOSC’s build-up phase.
More than 80 people participated in the 17-18 March 2025 workshop, including representatives from the EOSC Tripartite Group (EOSC-A, European Commission and EOSC Steering Board), the EOSC EU Node, and each of the 13 Candidate EOSC Nodes invited to contribute to the first wave deployment of the EOSC Federation.
Draft project charters, submitted in advance by each of the Candidate Nodes, were used as the basis for workshop participants to plan key activities and define the working modalities of the build-up phase. Notably, the meeting established the EOSC Federation Build-up Group, to be co-chaired by EOSC-A, as an organisational structure to steer and support the build-up phase.
and the Life Science Research Node (on behalf of four Life Science Research Infrastructures: ELIXIR, EMBL, Euro-BioImaging ERIC, and Instruct-ERIC)
Criteria for sequencing
Grounded in the technical, organisational and scientific goals of the EOSC Federation’s build-up phase, the criteria agreed by the Tripartite include the following:
Interest to become an EOSC Node
- Respondent expresses intention to build an EOSC Node and can identify legal entity
Maturity and diversity of resources that can be offered through the EOSC Federation
- Respondent can offer a diverse set of proven resources/services
- Services/resources offered are in a mature state, with priority given to those with a track record of operating them in a production-grade environment
- Respondent is referred by other respondents as representative Candidate Node to onboard resources
Inclusivity and representation of research communities and different types of organisations
- Inclusion of organisations from the thematic domains of the five science clusters, as well as of national scope
- Inclusion of RPOs, service providers, research infrastructures, national organisations and institutions
- Broad geographic representation
- Potential for coordination amongst groups of respondents
- Take into account participation in EOSC EU Node consortium
The Potential Candidate Nodes (first wave) invited to participate in first-stage dialogue meetings in winter 2024-2025 included the following organisations:
| First-stage dialogue Meeting 1 | First-stage dialogue Meeting 2 | First-stage dialogue Meeting 3 | First-stage dialogue Meeting 4 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ACTRIS ERIC ARIADNE RI CERN CLARIN ERIC CNR (Blue-Cloud) CNRS-LAPP (ESCAPE) ESRF (PaNOSC) | BITP CNRS (Data Terra) CVTI SR Foundation ICSC HUN REN Lux NDS NCN NFDI | ACOnet / EOSC Support Office Austria ARNES CSC – IT Centre for Science DeiC EUDAT NRIS SND SRCE SURF | BBMRI ERIC Elixir Hub EMBL Euro-BioImaging ERIC Instruct ERIC |
Questionnaire – Summer 2024
The EOSC Tripartite Governance ran a questionnaire from June through August 2024 to gauge the scale and scope of interest in and readiness for the build-up phase of the EOSC Federation.
Replying to the questionnaire was a first step in establishing the interest of parties to contribute to a testbed of EOSC Nodes representing the different stakeholders involved in the research communities of Europe.
Questions included in the questionnaire
- Do you intend to offer your institutional resources through a future EOSC Node of the EOSC Federation?
- Do you wish to join the build-up phase with the intention to build a potential future EOSC Node?
- Are you able to identify the legal entity that would assume legal responsibility for the potential EOSC Node?
- Please list the resources your organisation intends to make available via the node. For each entry give the Technology Readiness Level (TRL 1-9), any restrictions that apply to use of the resource, and describe their added value to the EOSC Federation.
- Are all these resources owned/operated by your organisation?
- Please estimate when you would be able to start offering resources to the EOSC Federation?
- What support/competences/training will be offered to the users of the resources made available via the potential node?
- What is the added value that you see for you and for your users in contributing to the EOSC Federation?
- Please add any additional remarks you would like to make about the EOSC Federation
- Upload supporting documents (optional)
Summary of responses to:
What is the added value that you see for you and for your users in contributing to the EOSC Federation?
- Increased visibility and reach
- Collaboration and interoperability
- Support for Open Science and FAIR principles
- Access to broader resources and expertise
- Influence on policy and standardisation
- Sustainability and economic benefits
Briefing papers
No additional funding is associated with this activity. Submitting the questionnaire does not commit the respondent to onboard their resources (i.e. services/data repositories) nor to establish a future EOSC Node. At the same time, the invitation to form a node in the build-up phase does not automatically guarantee the status of a federated EOSC Node at a later stage. The decision of the future structure, organisation and funding of EOSC will follow the negotiations of the next European Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, FP10.
Webinars: video and slides
The EOSC Association held two webinars, on 19 June and 25 June 2024, to explain the purpose of the questionnaire and provide guidance on how to complete it.
