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The EU-2026 budget will continue to “power” the EU’s politico-economic priorities and support strategic objectives, including competitiveness, migration management, security and defence, while maintaining momentum on green and digital transition. Thus, the annual EU-2026 budget includes: a) stable and predictable funding for Ukraine; b) reinforced funding for humanitarian aid and neighborhood policy, and c) security and defence issues.
Background
Generally, both the EU annual and the long-term budgets allow the EU institutions and the member states to deliver on socio-economic policy priorities and invest in large-scale projects that e.g. the EU countries could not finance on their own – either because of the projects’ size or their cross-border nature. By pooling resources, standing together against common challenges and helping all EU countries, their citizens and beyond, the EU budgets create value added, strengthen the EU-wide economy and geopolitical standing.
The EU annual budget helps create jobs, supports projects that improve our health, education, transport and energy infrastructure, builds EU supercomputer capacity and energy links, improves the security of our borders and helps combat climate change, while promoting the digital transition of our societies. And these are just a few examples!
In recent years, the EU budget has become an even stronger expression of EU solidarity by serving as the EU’s main crisis response tool. It is helping address the biggest challenges for the EU, including the coronavirus pandemic to the war in Ukraine, addressing climate change and building Europe’s strategic autonomy and ensuring the continent’s energy independence.
Additionally: https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/eu-budget/motion/today_en
The annual EU budget for 2026 includes the expenditure covered by the appropriations under the long-term budget ceilings, financed from own resources. These are topped up by expenditure under NextGenerationEU, financed from borrowing on the capital markets.
Commission’s opinion
Piotr Serafin, Commissioner for Budget, Anti-Fraud and Public Administration underlined that the present agreement reached between the EU co-legislators ensures the predictability of an EU budget that continues to advance the Union’s shared political priorities. This budget demonstrates that the member states can achieve more in a more cost-efficient way: “we have invested more in external security, defence, innovation, but also in programs directly benefiting our citizens, students and farmers”.
The annual budget for 2026 should now be formally adopted by the Council of the European Union and by the European Parliament. The vote in plenary, which will mark the end of the process, is currently scheduled for 26 November 2025.
Source: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_2694
The EU-2026 budget: main priorities
Building on the mid-term review of Cohesion funds, this budget creates major incentives and flexibilities for the member states to re-program available cohesion funding towards emerging priorities, notably in the areas of competitiveness, defence, affordable housing, water resilience and energy transition. This will make it easier for regions, which are at the core of cohesion policy, to redirect investments to areas of greatest need and to accelerate payments to recipients of EU funding on the ground.
The annual EU budget for 2026 allocates the following amounts to the various EU priorities (with the committed amounts in mln. Euros):
1.Single Market, Innovation and Digital – 22,163.0
2. Cohesion, Resilience and Values – 71,649.8
2.1. Economic, social and territorial cohesion – 56,594.0. Regional development and cohesion are to support economic, social and territorial cohesion, as well as needed infrastructure for the green transition and Union priority projects.
2.2. Resilience and Values – 15,055.8; of which, €4.3 billion – for Erasmus+ to create education and mobility opportunities for people, €397.0 million to support artists and creators around Europe, and €333.6 million to promote justice, rights, and values.
3. Natural Resources and Environment – 56,529.4
3.1. Market related expenditure and direct payments – 40,011.3. For example, €4.6 billion is assigned for European strategic investments, of which, €3.0 billion – for the Connecting Europe Facility to improve cross-border infrastructure, €1.0 billion – for the Digital Europe Program to shape the Union’s digital future, and €298.6 million – for InvestEU.
4. Migration and Border management – 5,018.9
5. Security and Defence – 2,813.5. The EU is facing unprecedented security challenges, which need to be addressed urgently in the 2026 budget, including funding for the European Defence Industry Program (EDIP). As agreed by Parliament and the Council in October 2025, the EDIP aims at strengthening the competitiveness and responsiveness of the European Defence Technological and Industrial Base, while ensuring the availability and supply of defence products, including through the funding for the Ukraine Support Instrument. The defence priorities are also served by the additional funding available under the European Defence Fund (EDF), for projects related to the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP).
On top of this, e.g. a further €3.9 billion will be available in grants under the Ukraine Facility, complemented by €7.2 billion in loans.
6. Neighborhood and the World – 15,600.0
7. European Public Administration – 13,277.5
Ad well as “Thematic special instruments” – 5,715.9
Total yearly appropriations – 192,768.1
Full overview of the annual budget 2026 can be seen at: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_25_2695
There are close connections between the annual budget for 2026 and the EU-wide next long-term budget. Thus, the budget for 2026 is agreed by the European Parliament and the Council in line with the current long-term budget, which runs until the end of 2027.
The Commission proposal for the next long-term budget as of 2028 was published in July this year, building on the lessons learnt from the current long-term budget, in particular as regards the need for more flexibility to respond to new and unforeseen developments.