The Basque Government has just announced the creation of a new fund, the Innovation Fund, to promote innovative initiatives by companies and technology centers. It will have a fund of more than 80 million euros included in the 2026 budget project and will be aligned with the Industry Plan presented a few months ago by counselor Mikel Jauregi and which includes 23 transformative projects.
Innovation policies for the coming years will be guided by the innovation lighthouses, a new strategic tool designed by the regional Executive “to preferably direct economic resources and human capital in innovation”, provide them with “coherence” and consolidate Euskadi “as a European pole of high innovation.”
“Today we turn on the high beams again, focusing our efforts on the ‘Basque Lighthouses of Innovation‘, which will put the focus on where we want to go,” highlighted the Lehendakari, Imanol Pradales. In this way, the focus will be on strategic areas for the Basque Country, confirmed at the event held this Friday at the Olatua center in Getxo, in which the Minister of Science, Universities and Innovation, Juan Ignacio Pérez Iglesias, also participated; the Minister of Treasury and Finance, Noël d’Anjou; and the Minister of Industry, Energy Transition and Sustainability, Mikel Jauregi.
In turn, the Lehendakari has highlighted that under the leadership of the Department of Science, Universities and Innovation, a shared interdepartmental and inter-institutional effort will be carried out, “to guide all the public policies of Euskadi in matters of science and innovation, grouping objectives and activating the necessary resources for this, with the Innovation Fund being the fundamental instrument for this.”
Economic and social impact
The Minister of Science, Universities and Innovation, Juan Ignacio Pérez Iglesias, highlighted that “the innovation lighthouses are designed to respond to the challenges posed by the three transitions and find appropriate solutions to these challenges. The lighthouses and the lines of research and innovation that each of them brings together have been chosen taking into account our potential in science and innovation. They also seek to serve as a guide to the efforts made by other institutions in this area and have an economic and social impact.”
The general objective of the lighthouses is to generate high-level knowledge with the explicit purpose of producing an impact on society. These lighthouses will serve as a guide to develop research and actions that promote the discovery and development of disruptive innovations, understanding innovation as the creation of cutting-edge knowledge with the goal of generating economic or social impact in the short and medium term.
The Innovation Lighthouses are part of the PCTI 2030 science and innovation strategy and are articulated around the need to respond to the challenges posed by the three major transitions in which Euskadi is immersed: the technological-digital, the energy-environmental, and the socio-demographic and health transitions. The purpose is to face these transitions through advanced knowledge and innovation to transform challenges into opportunities and achieve a more digital, greener and more inclusive Euskadi.
Nine Lighthouses of Innovation
The strategy framed in these three transitions proposes nine Innovation Lighthouses that will guide the innovation policy in the coming years. In the first transition, the Digital and Technological Transition, three main beacons are identified: Artificial Intelligence (AI), considered a strategic priority to generate advanced and fundamental knowledge for healthcare diagnoses, the optimization of energy processes and the promotion of Basque; Quantum Technologies, recognized as a technological disruption with important impacts on computing, communications, cybersecurity and sensors; and Cybersecurity, a transversal requirement that seeks to guarantee pervasive and resilient digitalization through a transversal framework that covers prevention, detection and recovery against attacks and throughout the entire life cycle of the data.
In the second transition, the Energy and Environmental Transition, the three lighthouses focus on decarbonization, which is a central axis to reduce dependence on fossil fuels through energy efficiency, the development of renewable fuels such as green hydrogen, CO2 capture, utilization and storage solutions and the improvement of batteries; the One Health approach, which integrates the health of people, animals and ecosystems to address health and environmental challenges; and healthy and sustainable eating, which guarantees safe and healthy food, free of contaminants, promoting sustainability, biodiversity and circularity in production.
Finally, the third transition, the Sociodemographic and Health Transition, also contemplates three lighthouses: personalized and precision health, which responds to challenges derived from the areas with the highest morbidity and mortality such as oncology, cardiovascular diseases, mental health, neurodegenerative and rare diseases, as well as the improvement of primary care, preventive medicine and public health; the social determinants of health, which analyze social factors such as educational level, income, social support or housing, which influence health and generate avoidable differences in health status; and demography and socio-health challenge, which studies demographic and migratory dynamics, healthy aging and innovation in the management of long-term care and intergenerational solidarity.
Budget forecast
The Innovation Lighthouses strategy will be financed with resources from the Innovation Fund, but encourages the contribution of funds from other sources. The budget forecast for the coming years is based on the amounts included in the budgets of the Basque Government, with an amount greater than 102 million euros for the year 2030.
The implementation of this strategy will be gradual. The reallocation of a part of the Innovation Fund items to the Department of Science, Universities and Innovation is expected, reaching 100% reallocation in 2028.
For the governance, monitoring and coordination of actions, a working group will be established within the Basque Council of Science, Technology and Innovation, which will be led by Councilor Pérez Iglesias. This group will ensure coordination with other departments and agents involved (scientific, technological, industrial, etc.). The strategy seeks to promote multidisciplinary projects of a certain size that have a tractor and multiplier effect.
