European Partnership for Pandemic Preparedness (BE READY Partnership)

European Partnership dedicated to strengthening the EU’s capacity to prevent and respond to infectious disease threats, through the launch of joint transnational calls for research and innovation projects.

The European Partnership for Pandemic Preparedness (BE READY NOW) is a 10-year European Partnership launched in January 2026 under Horizon Europe that aims to strengthen the EU’s capacity to prevent and respond to infectious disease threats. It will enhance coordination, accelerate knowledge acquisition, support the development of medical countermeasures and build a research infrastructures ecosystem including an EU-wide network of clinical research.

BE READY NOW brings together public funding agencies, ministries of research, ministries of health, public health institutes, universities, clinical networks and research infrastructures active in pandemic preparedness and leverages their capacities to conduct a comprehensive research response.  Its mission is to establish a European Research and Innovation ecosystem that is optimally prepared for future health crises caused by infectious diseases, which can respond to them swiftly and efficiently and that is fully integrated in the wider European institutional Health Security framework.

The Partnership is guided by its Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA), which defines its thematic priorities and strategic objectives and acts as a guiding document for the European research ecosystem over its first phase in 2026-28. The SRIA adopts a comprehensive research approach that encompasses fundamental, technical, epidemiological, and clinical domains, while also incorporating social sciences and humanities, in line with an integrated One Health approach.

The SRIA sets out the following three axes:

• Understand & Prepare: increase scientific knowledge on pandemic relevant matters and contribute to a better prepared European research ecosystem.
• Prevent & Anticipate: improve infrastructures, processes and workflows to establish an ever-warm research system of coordinated networks, covering all aspects of research.
• Respond & Control: at the time of a crisis, provide guidance on the use of research resources for the rapid development of countermeasures.

It also establishes the following five priorities:

• Accelerate knowledge on infectious diseases in a coordinated and integrative manner.
• Boost health innovation and early development of innovation.
• Train, educate and communicate.
• Strengthen research ecosystem readiness.
• Conduct research activities at the time of a crisis to develop, monitor and evaluate interventions aimed at combating pathogens.

The SRIA is a living document, and will be updated as necessary at the time of a crisis to include outbreak-specific content. It will ultimately be reviewed at the end of the first phase of BE READY NOW to usher in the second phase of the Partnership.

The Partnership will issue annual Joint Transnational Calls (JTC) to support transnational, interdisciplinary research and innovation projects addressing the strategic research priorities defined in the SRIA. These calls will foster collaboration between researchers and other stakeholders across Europe and beyond, with the aim to increasing knowledge and strengthening readiness for emerging health threats through interdisciplinary cooperation.