Currently 10 active cross-disciplinary and social impact grants, fellowships and residencies open to applicants in the Netherlands. Hand-curated and updated weekly. Almost every entry is funded; a few notable unpaid open calls and festival submissions are included as clearly flagged exceptions. Browse the list below, or use the interactive desk for filtering and shortlisting.
Subscribe: RSS feed · Calendar (.ics)
Immerse\Interact is a joint grant scheme of the Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie and the Netherlands Film Fund for immersive and interactive media projects (VR, MR, AR and other interactive storytelling). It supports artistic projects with a supporting cinematic component, in which fiction or non-fiction storytelling in relation to interactive (web-based/mobile) or immersive technologies (XR, room-scale projections) is central. It funds both development and realisation. Development support is EUR 15,000 for individual makers (plus up to EUR 5,000 coaching, capped at EUR 20,000 total) or EUR 25,000 for producers (plus up to EUR 5,000 coaching); the coaching contribution requires a motivation from both applicant and coach plus the coach's CV, and the development phase must result in a usable prototype. A maximum of six development contributions are awarded per round, to keep the development and realisation budgets in balance. Realisation support is up to EUR 35,000 for individual makers or up to EUR 125,000 for producers (the Fund covers a maximum of 85 percent of the production budget); note that at realisation stage the producer may not also be the director, screenwriter or designer. A separate Presentation Procedure offers presentation grants for projects previously supported by Immerse\Interact after 1 January 2022. EUR 600,000 is available per Fund in 2026. Open to professional makers, collectives and producers with a demonstrable track record in immersive or interactive media; applicants must be registered with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce (KvK). The second 2026 round runs 24 June to 25 August 2026 (opens 24 June 15:00, closes 25 August 16:00 CEST). No application fee. Questions: immerseinteract@stimuleringsfonds.nl.
Open call from the Creative Industries Fund NL (Stimuleringsfonds) for cross-sector collaboration projects that offer new perspectives on current challenges such as climate, housing, polarisation, migration or inequality of opportunity. The procedure runs in two phases. In Phase 1, the applicant and partner use the period to prepare and kick off the project, further explore the theme, intended end product and collaboration, and investigate possibilities (including working on a prototype or proof of concept), concluding with a project plan, budget and collaboration agreement. Phase 2, open only to projects selected and fully completed in Phase 1, focuses on implementation and requires both a written application and a presentation to the advisory committee; projects may deliver various end products (an activity, intervention, event, publication, service, product or process) accompanied by a suitable form of knowledge sharing such as a presentation, symposium or publication. ELIGIBILITY: applicants working with at least one partner in cross-sector collaboration; see the fund's open-call page for full eligibility details. The Phase 1 application window runs from 19 May 2026, 15:00 CEST to 25 August 2026, 16:00 CEST.
Open call from the Creative Industries Fund NL (Stimuleringsfonds) for projects within digital culture that provide insight into and reduce the ecological impact of digital technology. Data storage in the cloud, generative AI chatbots and other everyday digital habits carry major ecological consequences: the energy consumption of data centres, the raw materials used for hardware, and ever-growing e-waste. The Fund encourages projects that make the ecological (and therefore also social) impact of digital technologies and data consumption tangible, question it, and put alternative working methods into practice, around topics such as regenerative culture, degrowth, low-tech, the reuse of obsolete hardware, and responsibility for the technologies we use within digital culture. Applications may concern new projects or the reinterpretation or further development of existing initiatives that show scope for more depth or a changed approach. Collaborations in which designers, makers or researchers engage with sustainability from an intersectional perspective are explicitly encouraged. The grant may be used for artistic and substantive development, research, collaboration, knowledge sharing, presentation and documentation. ELIGIBILITY: individual makers, designers, researchers or collectives working on alternative ways of handling digital technology, registered with a Chamber of Commerce within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Grant awards a maximum of EUR 30,000; maximum project duration one year. This call is open from 17 August 2026, 15:00 CEST until 14 September 2026, 16:00 CEST. No application fee. Questions: digitalecultuur@stimuleringsfonds.nl.
Annual scheme funding festival organisations in the creative industries (design, architecture, digital culture, fashion, e-culture, etc.) presenting a 2027 edition. Application window opens 25 August 2026 at 15:00 CEST and closes 23 September 2026 at 16:00 CEST. Supports both content programming and the organisational/curatorial running of a festival; applicants must be organisations rather than individuals, but the scheme is the natural home for any artist-led collective or platform that runs a critical-AI / digital-culture / surveillance-focused festival event. Note the wider 2026 context: Stimuleringsfonds is restructuring its grant offering for 2027, and several individual schemes (Design, Digital Culture) have been reduced to two rounds in 2026. The Festivals scheme is a separate annual track and one of the cleaner ways to access SCI funding for an event-format project.
Waag Futurelab invites artists, theatre makers, choreographers, dancers, game designers and other creative practitioners to engage directly with seven experimental generative AI Enablers being co-created with technologists and dance, theatre and gaming professionals. The call is an invitation into the development process: selected artists get access to the technologies, datasets, interfaces and assumptions that shape these systems while they are still being built. Rather than testing whether the systems work, artists are asked to interrogate why they work the way they do, who they are designed for, what forms of creativity they enable or constrain, and what assumptions about culture, intelligence, authorship, labour, bodies, audiences and society are embedded in them. Waag is looking for individuals and collectives willing to move beyond adoption into investigation, and welcomes proposals that are speculative, critical, poetic, provocative, humorous, performative, constructive or disruptive, including work that challenges, misuses, reimagines, hacks, subverts or plays with the tools, exposes hidden biases, questions environmental costs, or imagines alternative technological futures. THE SEVEN AI ENABLERS, each requiring an on-site visit to its technology partner: the Generic Procedural Content Generation Enabler (text-to-3D assets and avatars, CERTH, Greece); the Data-Driven Cultural Content Adaptation Enabler (audience-aware creative content ideation with ranked candidate ideas, CERTH, Greece); the Cross-Domain Audience Engagement Analytics Enabler (turning heterogeneous cultural participation data into interpretable engagement signals, The Audience Agency, Warrington, UK); the Dance Style Analysis and Generation Enabler (dance video into virtual 3D choreography, dissected into body, effort, shape and space components, Centre of Excellence for Research & Innovation, Cyprus); the Immersive Design Integration Enabler for Dance & Theatre (NLP-driven XR environments with speech-to-3D scene editing, Cyprus); the Music-to-Movement Translation Enabler (audio into a time-aligned feature set spanning genre classification, emotional valence-arousal analysis, rhythm extraction and latent-space projection, feeding motion generation, spatial audio and visual choreography, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece); and the Adaptive Narrative Enabler for Games & Theatre (an evolutionary AI trained on creator-written story elements that generates infinite story variations, explicitly rejecting LLMs because of their dependence on copyrighted or public-domain corpora that encode 19th and early 20th century sexism, racism and imperialism, CAUSA Creation, Austria). ELIGIBILITY: artists, designers, creative technologists, theatre makers, dancers, choreographers and game designers, as individuals or collectives; applicants must hold a European VAT number. An info session with live demonstrations of the AI Enablers runs 31 July 2026, 10:00 to 11:30 CEST (meeting ID 995 7016 2341). Applications go through Homerun using the official Application Template, uploaded as a PDF; read the Guide for Applicants, which contains the full Enabler descriptions, before applying. Questions: zoenie at waag dot org. The AI Enablers and this call are part of the Horizon Europe project HAMLET, which aims to make generative AI accessible to cultural organisations of all sizes. Closes 30 September 2026, 23:59 CEST. Free to apply.
The Interdisciplinary grant is a new joint scheme of the six Dutch national cultural funds (Mondriaan Fund, Performing Arts Fund NL, Fund for Cultural Participation, Netherlands Film Fund, Creative Industries Fund NL, and the Dutch Foundation for Literature), announced on 7 July 2026. It supports makers and organisations whose work genuinely crosses the boundaries of the individual funds' disciplines (visual art, design, film, literature, performing arts, and cultural participation) and cannot be contained within a single discipline. TWO TRACKS: an Individual track for professional makers with a demonstrable interdisciplinary practice (at least one year of experience; income cap EUR 55,000 including the grant; approximately EUR 24,900 for 12 months); and an Organisation track for organisations running multi-discipline projects. AMOUNT: EUR 12,500 to 50,000 per project. ELIGIBILITY: makers and organisations based in the Netherlands or the Caribbean part of the Kingdom. APPLYING: handled through the Mondriaan Fund's online application portal (info@mondriaanfonds.nl); an account is required in advance. DEADLINE: 1 October 2026, 16:00 Dutch time (single application round).
The Creative Industries Fund NL (Stimuleringsfonds) runs this residency with Videotage, a Hong Kong-based non-profit media arts institution specialising in the promotion, presentation, creation and preservation of moving image and media art in all forms and languages. The Fund is recruiting one Netherlands-based designer, maker or observer working in digital culture to spend two or three months at Videotage's studio space in Hong Kong in 2027, conducting research, broadening their network, developing new work inspired by Hong Kong, and presenting their findings or completed works. The residency encourages crossovers and experimentation, giving the participant space to explore new methodologies, widen their creative practice and produce work that pushes the boundaries of digital culture, with a focus on social and urban dynamics. The 2027 edition takes the technological 'black box' phenomenon as its starting point and invites the resident to respond to that theme within the context of Videotage. ELIGIBILITY: you are an individual designer, maker or observer within the field of digital culture; you are established in the Netherlands, Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao, Saba, Sint Eustatius or Sint Maarten (Kingdom of the Netherlands); you are registered in the business register of the Dutch Chamber of Commerce (KvK) or another business register within the Kingdom of the Netherlands; and you have had a professional practice in the creative industry for at least four years. NOT open to duos, collectives or cooperative ventures, nor to designers and makers who receive a grant during the work period under the Talent Development Grant Scheme, the Open Call Self-taught Designer or the Open Call Emerging Design Practices ABCSSS. Note that accepting this open call means you cannot apply to those schemes and open calls in 2027. FUNDING: EUR 5,000 for two months or EUR 6,500 for three months, covering travel, insurance, living expenses, compensation for time invested and material and transport costs; accommodation, studio use and Videotage's facilitation are covered separately by the Fund. Submit your proposal to the Creative Industries Fund NL by 21 October 2026, 16:00 CEST.
Travel voucher for Dutch-based professionals in design, architecture and/or digital culture who have been invited by a foreign party to give a presentation, lecture or workshop. To apply you must have submitted an application to the Fund in the past five years that was positively assessed (previous International Vouchers do not count). The inviting foreign party must cover a proportionate share of the costs. Covers hourly fees, travel and accommodation directly related to the activity. IMPORTANT TIMING RULE: applications are accepted from 5 months to a minimum of 7 weeks before the activity begins, and processing takes about 6 weeks. This lead time can rule out activities that fall shortly after a round opens. Round 2 (4 May to 22 June 2026) has closed. Round 3 runs 8 September 2026 15:00 CEST to 27 October 2026 16:00 CEST, with a budget of EUR 33,000; given the 7-week rule it effectively serves activities starting from late October 2026 onwards. IMPORTANT PREREQUISITE: you must already have had an application to the Fund positively assessed within the past five years, and a previous voucher does not satisfy this, so this is not a viable first approach to the Fund. The window runs 8 September 2026, 15:00 CEST to 27 October 2026, but closes early once 20 complete applications are received. Maximum one voucher per applicant per calendar year.
Stichting DOEN, funded by the Dutch charity lotteries, supports pioneering initiatives within themes including the transformative power of imagination (art and culture), regenerative economy and solidarity economy. Applications are accepted year-round via the Mijn DOEN portal from legal entities only (no individuals) and must be received at least four months before the project starts; the assessment procedure takes about four months. Amateur art practice and standalone productions of films, books, CDs or websites are not supported. No application fee.
AFK is the City of Amsterdam's arts fund and the main route to project money for artists and organisations working in the city, and it was the significant gap in this desk's Dutch coverage. The Projectsubsidies 2026-2028 scheme funds art and culture projects across disciplines, split into four categories by scale and applicant type; requests up to EUR 7,500 in categories 1 and 2 are assigned to an assessment round by monthly draw, with published loting and gesprek dates. ELIGIBILITY: you must live or work in the municipality of Amsterdam or in Zaanstad, Oostzaan, Landsmeer, Waterland, Haarlemmermeer, Amstelveen, Ouder-Amstel or Diemen. Both individual makers and organisations can apply depending on category. NOTE: AFK periodically closes individual categories when demand outruns budget (categories 3 and 4 for professional art were temporarily shut in May 2026 and reopened on 1 July 2026), so check which categories are open before you start. Applications are in Dutch through the AFK portal. Phone 020 520 0520, weekdays 09:30-12:30 and 13:30-16:00.