Grants to support archival use
Archives Portal Europe (APE) is the online gateway to the archival heritage on and from Europe, giving online access to 650,000 archival collections including hundreds of millions of documents. APE is the domain aggregator for archives from and about Europe, ensuring that their collections are also accessible through Europeana.eu and the common European data space for cultural heritage.
AP issues annual grants to promote the use of archival collections from the APE network by researchers, artists and creative practitioners. These grants are open to applicants from anywhere in the world who require archival research as part of their work, whether they are independent researchers, academic scholars, or artists from any field working on projects grounded in archival heritage.
In addition, APE offers a dedicated grant to support the digitisation of archival descriptions. This type of work is often overlooked in funding schemes for digitisation, which tend to prioritise digital objects rather than the archival descriptions and metadata that make collections discoverable, accessible, and reusable.
Three grant streams
For 2026, APE offers three grants, all with an application deadline of 27 February.
The two Research Grants provide €500 each to researchers working on an academic paper or research project that requires consultation of archival material held by one of APE’s Content Providers. Applicants may come from any discipline and be at any stage of their career. A university affiliation is not required: priority is given to researchers who do not have access to alternative sources of funding. Priority is also given to research projects that highlight the potentialities offered by APE in historical research, such as comparative and international research, and research where archival collections are used to show new points of view (e.g., the unification of Italy or Germany analysed through Spanish archives).
The Creative Grant awards €2,000 to artists and creative practitioners from any field — including writing, performing arts, filmmaking, and digital arts — whose work is based on archival material. The grant may be used to support archival research trips, as well as the digitisation or preparation of materials, including rights clearance where necessary. Preference will be given to projects based on archival material from archives that are Content Providers for APE, but it is not a requirement.
Finally, the Digitisation Grant offers up to €10,000 to current or prospective Content Providers to support the ingestion of new archival collections into Archives Portal Europe. While document digitisation may be included, projects should primarily focus on the preparation of archival descriptions for APE and/or the improvement of metadata for collections already available on the Portal but not yet optimised for discoverability. Any archive in the world can apply, as long as they agree to become Content Providers for APE, and the archival collections are part of the European archival heritage.
Further support
In addition to the financial aid, the grants will also offer aid to the research; participants who made the shortlist but are not awarded the grant may be offered this aid.
This year we are also offering several project-based job opportunities, including one for the creation of educational tools, which may appeal to researchersThe deadline is also 27February.
Becoming an APE Content Provider is completely free of charge and enables institutions to share their archival holdings through the largest online search engine for European archives. The grants are designed both to support individuals in accessing archives and to help archival institutions strengthen their digital strategies, including the integration of their collections into Archives Portal Europe and, as APE is an aggregator for Europeana, into Europeana.eu as well.
Apply now
The deadline for the 2026 APE Grants is 27 February. Full information, including reports from previous grant recipients and details on required outputs, is available on our website. If you would like to discuss your project before applying, please contact [email protected].
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