Currently 18 active open calls open to applicants in the Netherlands, across AI, arts, film, journalism, research, tech and cross-disciplinary practice. 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.
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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.
Open call from the Creative Industries Fund NL supporting designers in deepening and professionalising their own practice rather than delivering an external client project. It funds practice development across design, architecture, digital culture and the crossovers between them, and the Fund explicitly names digital storytellers and sound designers among eligible practitioners, which makes it one of the more accessible routes for a maker working between technology and art. ELIGIBILITY: designers with an independent practice of at least four years, established in the Netherlands or the Caribbean part of the Kingdom. Temporary collectives may apply with one lead applicant. Grants run from EUR 8,250 to EUR 28,250. The window runs 19 August 2026, 15:00 CEST to 17 September 2026, 16:00 CEST.
Fonds Podiumkunsten's route for Dutch festivals and venues bringing in exceptional foreign performing arts and concerts that Dutch audiences would otherwise not see. The applicant must be a Netherlands-registered legal entity running a venue or festival and carrying artistic and financial responsibility for its own programme, so individuals and sole traders cannot apply. Grants are calculated from travel and transport costs of the incoming artists, at a maximum of EUR 25,000 per production and EUR 75,000 per applicant across several productions. The core test is that the foreign work is rarely or never seen in the Netherlands and substantially enriches the existing Dutch offer, which favours experimental, non-canonical and cross-disciplinary programming over mainstream touring. Experimental music and sound-art programming is not excluded; the selection criterion is rarity and added value, not genre. Applications go through the Mijn Fonds portal and there is no fee. Four rounds run each year. TIMING: because the scheme competes against a shared EUR 267,500 per-round pot and assessment takes several weeks after the deadline, organisers should apply at least one full round ahead of the performance date and must not have the activity already underway. Success rate in 2025 was 60 percent of 33 applications.
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.
Joint open call from the Creative Industries Fund NL and the Cultural Participation Fund supporting platforms that develop design-based learning, covering product design, textile and fashion, spatial design and creative coding. Maximum EUR 75,000 per application from a EUR 720,000 pool, with regional quotas including the Caribbean part of the Kingdom. ELIGIBILITY IS NARROW: only foundations (stichtingen) may apply. Educational institutions and organisations already receiving four-year BIS funding are excluded, and individuals cannot apply. Deadline 23 September 2026, 16:00 CEST.
The Grey Space in the Middle in The Hague invites young transdisciplinary makers based in the Netherlands whose practices engage with the intersections of art, technology and society to submit an existing artwork for State of States, a thematic exhibition diptych unfolding across two group shows (27 November - 6 December 2026 and 7 - 17 January 2027). The exhibition explores how artists locate themselves within a state, political or holistic, informed by digital culture: statehood, belonging, digitalism, inclusion/exclusion, space-claiming and network-systems are the guiding keywords. Selected artists are divided into groups of five per exhibition; each receives a EUR 375 fee, and can earn up to EUR 725 more for co-organising and participating in a context programme developed collectively between selection and build-up. APPLY with a description of the artwork (max 500 words), up to 10 images, recordings for moving image or sound work, a portfolio and a link to socials/website. Deadline: 25 September 2026, midnight.
BNG Cultuurfonds funds arts and culture projects that add value for Dutch municipalities and their inhabitants, explicitly including temporary exhibitions, public programmes and festivals developed by professional makers. Media art, digital culture and cross-disciplinary work qualify as long as a professional maker's artistic vision leads the project. Only stichtingen (foundations) may apply: no sole traders, associations, individuals, or foundations in formation. Applications go by email to aanvraag.cultuurfonds@bngbank.nl with a signed form, a project plan of at most 3,500 words, a specified budget and coverage plan, current statutes and a recent KvK extract. The grant is EUR 5,000 to 15,000 and can cover no more than 35 percent of the budget. TIMING IS THE MAIN TRAP: for the 27 September 2026 deadline, feedback comes at the end of December 2026 and the project may not start before 1 January 2027, with applications for earlier-starting projects rejected outright with no exceptions. Missing documents are flagged up to one week before the deadline, so anything submitted in the final week cannot be corrected. Plan for roughly four months of lead time. Excluded: amateur art, talent development, education-focused projects, semi-permanent public art, publications, building or renovation, and regular operating costs. Further rounds: 3 January 2027, 28 March 2027, 27 June 2027, 3 October 2027 and 2 January 2028.
The mid-size project strand of Stichting Cultuur Eindhoven, the arm's-length body that distributes the city's culture budget, and the main municipal route for an Eindhoven organisation to fund a festival, exhibition or public programme. Awards go up to EUR 35,000 and cover a maximum of 80 percent of eligible costs, so at least a fifth of the budget must come from elsewhere. Unlike the Snelgeld strand this route is closed to individuals: only private-law legal entities established in Eindhoven may apply. Rounds run three times a year in fixed windows; the next opens 1 September and closes at 17:00 on 30 September 2026, which is round 1 of the 2027 cycle. TIMING: the decision lag is long by municipal standards at up to 13 weeks after the submission window closes, so a September 2026 application is decided around the end of December 2026 and activity should be planned for 2027. Given Eindhoven's design and technology profile, media-art, design and creative-technology programming fits the remit particularly well. The parallel Snelgeld strand offers up to EUR 5,000 on rolling intake, reopening 1 September 2026 and running until 31 December 2026 or until the tranche budget is exhausted, whichever comes first.
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 Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in China, in partnership with artist-run space Making Space in Guangzhou, invites Netherlands-based artists, makers, curators, writers, researchers and other cultural practitioners to a six-week residency in spring 2027. Making Space (est. 2017) focuses on art and social practice with an emphasis on long-term research, local knowledge and care-driven collaboration. The residency is process-oriented with no obligation to produce finished work; the resident takes part in at least one public exchange (talk, workshop, reading group, screening, performance or open studio). SUPPORT: EUR 2,700 travel and artist fee subsidy (fixed per application; duos or collectives share the amount), accommodation in Guangzhou, shared studio space, curatorial and research support with access to local networks, and logistical support for public programming (extra funding may be considered for public programmes). The resident arranges their own China visa; Making Space provides an invitation letter. LOOKING FOR: practitioners engaging with alternative education, ecological justice, migration and labour, social practice, intergenerational narratives, diaspora and transdisciplinary collaboration; English communication required. APPLY by email (makingspace2017@gmail.com) with a 200-word bio, CV, 2-page project proposal and portfolio (max 20 pages) in a single PDF, in English. Result expected late November 2026. Deadline: 3 October 2026, 23:59 CST / 17:59 CEST.
The larger of The Hague's two municipal project bands and the appropriate route for an organisation running a festival or substantial public programme in the city. Awards range from EUR 10,000 to 30,000 against an annual ceiling of EUR 600,000 for the whole strand. THE CO-FINANCING REQUIREMENT IS SEVERE and is the single most important planning constraint: the municipal culture budget may fund at most 30 percent of the total project budget, so an applicant seeking EUR 30,000 must already have roughly EUR 70,000 secured or plausibly projected elsewhere. Only legal entities may apply; individuals and informal collectives must use Category A instead (EUR 2,000 to 10,000, 70 percent coverage ceiling, next window 1 to 15 September 2026). Professional arts and culture organisations running public projects in music, theatre, dance, film, literature, visual arts or combinations are eligible. The next window opens 1 October and closes at 17:00 on 15 October 2026. TIMING: the decision term is 12 weeks after the window closes, so an October 2026 application is decided around early January 2027 and activity should be scheduled from 2027 onward. Applications are handled through the municipality's subsidy system, which migrated to Easyfunders in April 2026. This scheme is independent of Stroom Den Haag. The underlying regulation runs to 31 December 2028.
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.
A one-off 2026 call letting Dutch cultural institutions reuse and adapt digital technology that other institutions have already built and published in the open DigitALL Toolkit, for example translation software shared between theatres or a streaming platform adapted for a new venue. Grants run up to EUR 30,000 and cover technical modification, integration, production and deployment costs. Eligible applicants are museums, theatres, music venues, festivals, film theatres and professional performing arts producers. Applications are submitted online and assessed in order of receipt rather than comparatively, with a decision within ten weeks. The deadline was extended from 31 May 2026 to 1 November 2026 after high demand. IMPORTANT RESTRICTION: this route cannot be used to further develop your own pilot internally; it exists specifically to spread another institution's working technology across the sector. For developing something new, use the DigitALL pilot contribution instead.
Artist's Fee reimburses part of the compensation an institution pays an artist for work on an exhibition: producing new work, production-related labour, event activities, and providing artwork for presentation. It does not cover expenses such as materials or transport. WHO CAN APPLY: visual arts institutions in the Netherlands or the Caribbean part of the Kingdom that publicly exhibit contemporary visual art and/or heritage without a sales objective, and that subscribe to the Fair Practice Code, the Culture Governance Code and the Diversity and Inclusion Code. CONDITIONS: the artist must hold a bachelor's degree in visual arts or have at least three years of professional experience; the fee must comply with the Fair Pay Rate Table 2023; the application must be submitted at least two months before the exhibition opens; the exhibition must open within 12 months of application; artist invoices must be paid within one month; and institutions already receiving other fair pay funding for 2025-2028 are not eligible. AMOUNT: up to 50% of the standard amount excluding VAT where the fee meets at least 100% of the guideline, with a minimum application of EUR 100. APPLY through the online system after creating an account, with a signed artist contract, the exhibition budget, artist CVs and a recent Chamber of Commerce registration. Note for artists: this is applied for by the institution, not by you, but it is worth pointing an exhibiting venue towards.
Art Heritage Festival supports festivals, biennales, triennales and similar events dedicated to the presentation of visual art and/or heritage, held in physical spaces and occurring no more than once a year. The scheme backs activities that reach diverse audiences or create meaningful public engagement with art and heritage. WHO CAN APPLY: non-profit organisations based in the Netherlands or the Caribbean part of the Kingdom; institutions for art education and post-academic institutions are excluded. NOT FUNDED: journals, publications, documentaries, symposia, conferences or online-only festivals. CONDITIONS: events must be publicly accessible and held no more than once a year; the project cannot receive simultaneous funding from other Mondriaan Fund grants or specified national cultural programmes; the organisation must subscribe to the Fair Practice Code, the Culture Governance Code and the Diversity and Inclusion Code; and fair artist compensation is mandatory where artists are involved. AMOUNT: up to 40% of eligible project costs, on a project budget above EUR 25,000. APPLY through the Mondriaan Fund online system after registering an account. Allow three months for processing; activities that have already happened cannot be funded.
Art Heritage Presentation funds presentations that are innovative and non-standard, rather than business-as-usual programming: exhibitions featuring internationally renowned artists, engaging shows offering fresh perspectives, public co-creation projects, and presentations built around special loans or commissioned work. WHO CAN APPLY: cultural institutions in the Netherlands and the Caribbean part of the Kingdom that focus on presenting cultural heritage and/or visual art, including museums, art centres and archives; art education and post-academic institutions are excluded, and the institution must be a non-profit legal entity established in the eligible territory. CONDITIONS: presentations must be open to the public; festivals, biennales and other events recurring annually or less often are handled by the separate Art Heritage Festival scheme, not this one; the organisation must subscribe to the Fair Practice Code, the Culture Governance Code and the Diversity and Inclusion Code; and artist fees must be realistic and included in the budget. AMOUNT: up to 40% of variable project costs, on a project budget above EUR 25,000. APPLY online after registering an account, with an institutional profile, project plan, presentation plan, itemised budget and, where applicable, artist information with visual documentation.
Cultuurloket DigitALL funds the digital innovation of the Dutch cultural sector and is the strongest dedicated digital-culture route currently open to Dutch cultural organisations. It is the successor to the discontinued Kickstart Cultuurfonds, backed by the VandenEnde Foundation, VSBfonds, Ammodo, Het Cultuurfonds and others. The pilot contribution of up to EUR 75,000 supports developing and running a first pilot, prototype or live version of a digital tool, which covers a wide range of creative-technology work embedded in festivals, exhibitions and public programmes. Eligible applicants are theatres, music venues, film theatres, museums, festivals and professional performing arts producers, with collaborations between institutions given priority. The pilot must be tested with the intended public audience, not only with experts, and funding cannot be used exclusively for hardware acquisition. Applications go through an online portal with no deadline and are handled in order of receipt. TIMING: a decision follows within ten weeks of submission, so plan roughly three months of lead time between applying and project start. Training and knowledge development through partner organisations is only covered when included in the submitted budget, so build it in from the outset.
The closest thing the Netherlands has to a dedicated regional art-and-technology fund, being a public-private scheme co-financed by ASML and sited in the country's main technology region. It funds professional cultural projects of high quality with national or international reach, which in practice covers festivals, exhibitions and public programmes including media art and creative technology work. Private-law legal entities only (stichting, vereniging or BV); both new and existing cultural organisations qualify. Projects are assessed on societal impact (must address at least two of accessibility, inclusivity, diversity, social cohesion), cultural entrepreneurship and sustainability, alongside professional artistic quality. Applications are accepted all year round via a two-stage route: an intake where Brabant C scouts give an initial assessment, followed by a full application, pitch session and decision. TIMING RULES ARE STRICT and are the main planning constraint: the full application must be submitted a minimum of 12 weeks before the project starts, and the project may not begin until at least 12 weeks after a complete application has been approved. The internal clock runs roughly two weeks for a completeness check, about six weeks to the pitch session, and about four weeks from pitch to decision. Brabant C never covers more than half the budget, so a matched partner is required from the outset. A separate Brabant C matching scheme for impactful culture projects is open year-round through 31 December 2026 for Brabant-based organisations outside the Brainport region.