European and UK VC Firms You Can Apply to Directly: Seed Funds, Angel Syndicates and Public Co-Investors

European VC firms with open applications are more numerous than their US counterparts because Europe’s seed market is partly built on public money and tax relief, both of which require formal application processes. This guide, part of the Kurums Venture Capital hub, lists the UK seed funds, continental VCs, accelerators and public co-investors that take direct submissions as of October 2026, explains the SEIS and EIS rules that decide which British funds can invest in you, compares every route’s cheque, stage and requirements in one table, and sets out what a European application must contain to clear the first filter.

Which UK seed funds accept direct applications in 2026?

Seedcamp, Fuel Ventures, SFC Capital and Haatch all run public pitch forms; Octopus Ventures invites decks through its contact page; Ascension and Concept Ventures describe pre-seed mandates without a published form. All of them are active in SEIS/EIS-qualifying rounds.

Seedcamp is the reference point. Its FAQ states a first cheque of $350K to $1.25M, a stage range from pre-product to early revenue, a focus on Europe or companies with a European angle, and a process — first call, possibly a second, then a 45-minute partner pitch — that it aims to complete within two weeks of the first meeting. Companies that have already raised more than a couple of million dollars are told they are probably not a fit. The “Pitch Us” link on seedcamp.com leads to a structured form; Seedcamp also publishes its standard pre-seed advance subscription agreement, which is useful reading before any UK pre-seed negotiation.

Fuel Ventures invests £150k to £3m from pre-seed to Series A in tech companies with early commercial traction, and takes submissions through a dedicated page linked from its founders page. SFC Capital describes itself on its Raise page as investing £100k to £300k for a 10–20% stake, often leading, in SEIS-qualifying companies with initial traction; founders register through a startup portal, pitch in an initial meeting, go through investment-team meetings and due diligence, and receive terms after an investment committee. Haatch backs UK B2B software founders through SEIS and EIS funds, with a Typeform pitch linked from haatch.com and a stated goal of getting companies to £1m ARR and beyond.

Octopus Ventures, one of Europe’s largest early-stage investors, lists seven areas (B2B software, bio, climate, consumer, deep tech, fintech, health) and a pre-seed-to-Series-A sweet spot on its site; the stated first step is to send your deck, after which the team sets up a call if there is a fit. Ascension describes itself as a pre-seed and seed investor backing 300+ founders across the UK, Europe and North America at ascension.vc, but publishes no form; approach it as a researched cold email. The UK’s larger firms — Index, Balderton, Atomico, Molten — do not run open routes and are profiled in the guide to the top UK and European VC firms.

How do SEIS and EIS shape who gets a UK cheque?

The Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme and the Enterprise Investment Scheme give UK taxpayers 50% and 30% income-tax relief respectively on qualifying investments, so most UK pre-seed and seed funds raise their money on the condition that they invest only in companies that qualify. If you do not qualify, those funds cannot invest, regardless of how good the pitch is.

The SEIS limits were widened in April 2023. A company can raise up to £250,000 under SEIS in total, must have gross assets of £350,000 or less before the investment, must have been trading for less than three years, and must have fewer than 25 full-time-equivalent employees; investors can put in up to £200,000 a year at 50% relief and pay no capital gains tax on a disposal after three years. These are HMRC rules; the SeedLegals guide to SEIS rules confirms the £350,000, 25-employee, £200,000 and 50% figures, and the £250,000 raise cap is set out in HMRC’s venture capital schemes guidance. EIS is the larger sibling: the commonly cited limits are £5m per year and £12m lifetime (higher for knowledge-intensive companies), fewer than 250 employees, gross assets under £15m, and the first qualifying investment within seven years of first commercial sale, with investors relieved at 30% on up to £1m a year (£2m if the excess goes into knowledge-intensive companies). Confirm the current figures with HMRC or an adviser before relying on them, because the thresholds are revised at Budgets.

Three practical consequences follow. First, apply for SEIS/EIS advance assurance from HMRC before you approach SFC Capital, Haatch, Fuel or Seedcamp; the funds expect it and it takes weeks. Second, structure the round so that the SEIS portion is used before EIS money, because the schemes have ordering rules. Third, do not take convertible or SAFE money from a non-qualifying source in a way that breaks the “risk to capital” condition — the funds’ lawyers will check. The relief is why the UK has an unusually deep pre-seed market, and why a UK application is as much a compliance exercise as a pitch.

Which continental European VCs take cold pitches or open forms?

Kima Ventures (France), Speedinvest (Austria and Europe-wide), Cherry Ventures (Germany, by email), Earlybird (contact page) and High-Tech Gründerfonds (Germany, pitch-deck upload) all accept unsolicited submissions; Point Nine does not publish a route.

Kima Ventures is Europe’s highest-volume seed investor. Its site describes roughly 100 new investments a year at a one-off ticket of about €150k, any sector and any stage, and third-party trackers counted 132 new investments in 2025. Founders pitch through the website with a business-model overview, the market opportunity and the planned use of funds. Kima is Paris-based and invests across Europe, with stated interest in the US, and its sheer deal count makes it the most realistic open door on the continent for a pre-seed company with a working product.

Speedinvest invests from pre-seed to growth across six verticals — AI and infrastructure, climate and industrial tech, deep tech, fintech and DeFi, health and bio, marketplaces and consumer — in Europe and, through a dedicated team, the Middle East and Africa. Its Connect page links a Typeform application and warns that only shortlisted founders will hear back. Cherry Ventures (Berlin, London, Stockholm) asks for investment inquiries at an opportunity@ email address on cherry.vc. Earlybird (Berlin, London, Milan, Munich) invests from pre-seed to Series A with initial tickets of up to €12M and invites founders to reach out via a contact link on earlybird.com; its Digital East fund covering Turkey and CEE is discussed in the Asia, Middle East and Turkey guide. Point Nine, which writes $1–10M cheques into SaaS and AI companies globally from Berlin, publishes no form or inbox on its site; a warm introduction or a well-targeted email to a specific partner is the route. The mechanics of that email are in the cold outreach playbook.

Which public co-investors and grant programmes accept applications?

High-Tech Gründerfonds in Germany, the EU’s EIC Accelerator, Enterprise Ireland’s Pre-Seed Start Fund and Bpifrance’s Bourse French Tech are the four largest public or public-private routes with formal applications in 2026; Innovate UK’s Smart grants are paused.

High-Tech Gründerfonds (Germany)

HTGF is Germany’s dominant seed investor, financed by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs, KfW Capital and more than 45 corporate and family-office investors. Its fourth fund closed at €493.8M in February 2023, per the HTGF press release, and the fund invests up to €1M in a seed round and up to €4M per company across rounds. The English site states the criteria plainly: companies no older than three years, headquartered in Germany or with a German base of operations, and a sweet spot of €800,000 or more for initial pre-seed and seed tickets, across digital tech, industrial tech, life sciences and chemistry. Submissions go through a pitch-deck upload page. HTGF co-invests with private VCs and angels and is often the first institutional cheque in a German company.

EIC Accelerator (EU)

The European Innovation Council’s Accelerator is the largest open-application instrument in Europe. The EIC page sets out a lump-sum grant of under €2.5M for activities at technology readiness levels 6–8, equity or quasi-equity investment of €1M to €10M from the EIC Fund (with larger amounts through the STEP Scale-Up strand), and blended finance combining both. The 2026 budget is €220M for the Accelerator Challenges and €414M for Accelerator Open. Eligible applicants are single SMEs, including spin-outs, from EU member states and Horizon Europe associated countries, plus small mid-caps (up to 499 employees) for investment only; UK applicants can apply only for the grant-only strand. The process has three steps: a short proposal (12-page form, up to 10 slides, a 3-minute video) batched on the first Tuesday of each month with feedback in four to six weeks; a full proposal (20-page form, implementation plan, financials, letters of intent, freedom-to-operate analysis) with 2026 cut-offs on 7 January, 4 March, 6 May, 8 July, 2 September and 4 November; and a jury interview, after which investment due diligence by the EIC Fund typically takes two to six months. Only one application may be in the system at a time.

Enterprise Ireland and Bpifrance

Enterprise Ireland’s Pre-Seed Start Fund offers up to €100,000 per business on a convertible loan note that converts at a 20% discount to a future priced round, aimed at manufacturing and internationally traded services companies with a stated interest in climate solutions, per the agency’s launch announcement; applications are prepared with the regional Business Innovation Centres. Bpifrance’s Bourse French Tech is a grant capped at €30,000 covering up to 70% of eligible costs for companies registered in France for less than a year with fewer than 50 employees, with a deep-tech variant (BFT Emergence) of up to €90,000; applications go through the Mon Bpifrance portal after a meeting with a regional account manager, according to the Hayot Expertise summary of the 2026 rules. Innovate UK’s Smart grants, by contrast, have been paused since January 2025 with no rounds planned for the 2025/26 financial year, so UK founders should watch the Innovation Funding Service rather than plan around them.

Which European accelerators have open calls?

Techstars London (applications close 18 November 2026), Startup Wise Guys (flagship up to €100k, rolling programmes), Antler’s European residencies (London, Amsterdam/Berlin, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Oslo, Stockholm, Paris) and Entrepreneur First (London) all have live or regular calls; Sequoia Arc’s European cohort runs as an open call but its 2026 timing should be verified on Sequoia’s site.

Techstars’ London programme opened applications on 24 August 2026, closes them on 18 November 2026, starts on 8 March 2027 and holds demo day on 3 June 2027, on the standard $220k deal ($20k for 5% plus a $200k uncapped MFN SAFE) reported by TechCrunch. Startup Wise Guys, founded in Estonia in 2012, runs B2B programmes across the Baltics, Southern Europe, Türkiye, Ukraine and Africa in Building, Growing and Scaling tracks; its flagship advertises up to €100,000 of investment against a €35,000 programme cost, with equity negotiated per company and applications through the Dealum platform, according to Causo Hub’s 2026 guide. Antler’s European terms follow the Nordic model described in its July 2025 post — €200,000 split between €100,000 for 8.5% and a €100,000 uncapped MFN SAFE, with up to €300,000 of matching — and applications go through antler.co/apply. Sequoia’s Arc page describes a bi-annual open call for pre-seed and seed founders with small cohorts of about ten companies, no standard terms, and a four-day intensive; the programme has historically run separate Americas and Europe cohorts, but check the page for a live window before relying on a date from an aggregator.

How accelerators create investor access, and whether the dilution is worth it, is covered in the accelerators and demo days guide; the detailed application mechanics for YC, Techstars and Antler are in the YC, Techstars and Antler guide.

How do the European and UK routes compare on requirements?

The table collects cheque, stage, geography, route and the stated requirement that most often disqualifies applicants, as published by each organisation in October 2026.

Sources: each organisation’s site and the cited reports, reviewed October 2026. SEIS/EIS figures are subject to HMRC revision; EIC dates per the 2026 work programme.

What must a European application contain to pass the first filter?

Four things beyond the deck: proof of eligibility (SEIS advance assurance, German registration, EU SME status), a specific reason you fit this fund’s vertical or geography, one unambiguous traction number with its definition, and a use-of-funds line that matches the cheque size you are applying for.

European forms are more compliance-heavy than American ones and associates are trained to check the compliance fields first. A UK application without advance assurance, a German application from a company older than three years, or an EIC short proposal from a company without an EU entity will be rejected before anyone reads the product section. The second filter is vertical fit, which is why Speedinvest, Octopus and Haatch list their areas so prominently; an application that does not say which area it belongs to and why gets routed to nobody. The third is internal consistency between the form, the deck and any public data — Companies House filings in the UK are checked routinely. The guide to what VC application forms screen for goes through each field with strong and weak examples, and the investor-ready deck and data room guide covers what the deck must prove at pre-seed and seed.

The final element is the ask. Kima writes ~€150k cheques; Seedcamp writes $350k–$1.25M; HTGF’s sweet spot is €800k+; the EIC’s equity starts at €1M. An application asking for a €3M seed round from Kima, or a €150k pre-seed from the EIC, signals that the founder has not read the page, and that signal is fatal. State the round size, the lead you want, and how this cheque fits.

How should a founder outside Europe use these routes?

Non-European founders can access most of the private routes if they have a European angle — a European customer base, a European co-founder, or a plan to incorporate in Europe — and most of the public routes only by establishing an eligible entity first.

Seedcamp says it backs companies with a distinctly European angle wherever they are born and has team members in New York and on the US West Coast. Kima’s interest in the US is explicit. Speedinvest’s MEA team invests beyond Europe. On the public side, the EIC allows third-country applicants to relocate before the full application, HTGF accepts a German base of operations rather than a German HQ, and SEIS/EIS require a UK permanent establishment rather than UK founders. For a founder in Turkey, the Gulf or India, the practical sequence is to apply to the private forms first with a European angle clearly stated, and to treat the public routes as a second phase once an entity exists; the regional options closer to home are in the Asia, Middle East and Turkey guide, and the full global list is in the VC firms accepting open applications guide. The macro backdrop — a seed market that remains open while mid-stage rounds have narrowed — is set out in the analysis of the venture capital barbell effect. Browse the full VCs Accepting Applications pillar for the companion guides.

Frequently Asked Questions