Transitioning from NGI to Open Internet Stack — open calls temporarily paused
Taking stock of a decade of Next Generation Internet initiative
NLnet Foundation will temporarily pause its open calls in order to take stock of over a decade of the Next Generation Internet initiative, and in particular its very successful NGI Zero programmes. As NGI is in a concluding phase, after the summer the regular application process will be opened with three new programmes under the new Open Internet Stack umbrella. In the meantime only proposals for the remaining two NGI pilot projects NGI Taler and NGI Fediversity can be submitted. Ongoing projects are not affected.
Over 10.000 applications and 1.400 projects
On March 16th 2016 the Next Generation Internet initiative was launched by means of a high level expert workshop in Brussels, led by DG CNECT's erstwhile director of Net Futures dr. Mário Campolargo and featuring NLnet's Director of Strategy Michiel Leenaars. NLnet conducted and contributed the foundational study Next Generation Internet 2025 together with Gartner Europe in 2018, and has been operating a comprehensive series of ambitious grant making programmes within the NGI initiative non-stop as of later that same year. NGI became a leading initiative of the European Commission, provide building blocks for a trustworthy, human-centered and secure internet.
NGI/NGI Zero has met with a huge need from the technical community, and in parallel developed into a strategic policy instrument for Europe. The programmes were popular from the start, but continued to gain momentum. NLnet alone received over 10.000 applications over the lifetime of NGI, of which over 2500 applications were submitted in just the first five months of 2026. So far, from almost 8500 applications across five NGI Zero programmes a total of 1215 projects were funded — and another 215 projects came from almost two thousand applications through adjacent NGI programmes involving NLnet. These range from post-quantum cryptography and libre silicon toolchains to decentralised social media, independent mobile operating systems, productivity tools and new internet standards. On June 1st 2026, the final open call for NGI Zero's Commons Fund (the latest and most comprehensive fund within NGI) closed.
Time to take stock
The next phase of NGI will be its transition into the so called "Open Internet Stack", which is part of the new Tech Sovereignty package of the European Commission. The size and unique depth of the NGI Zero portfolio makes it one of the most ambitious research programmes of its kind yet
, says Michiel Leenaars, director of Strategy at NLnet Foundation. NGI Zero involved over a million hours of FOSS development by researchers and software engineers from across the globe, and hundreds of thousands of hours of dedicated support by an army of experts. Before we move ahead full steam with a new large initiative partially modelled after and building on this vast effort, we believe we should properly invest time and energy in closing off the current concluding chapter, and learn what is to be learned — so we can do even better in the future
.
Temporary stop on submissions
After nearly ten years of uninterrupted operation of back-to-back NGI calls, NLnet will therefore temporarily pause its open calls in order to take stock of NGI Zero — and prepare for the new challenges that come with the Open Internet Stack initiative. The responsible thing to do now is to take a step back to understand where we are after a decade of unprecedented effort, and prepare for what comes ahead
, says Leenaars. NGI Zero has shown here is a large and vibrant ecosystem of organisations and people willing to take up the gauntlet and develop high end technologies for the common good. The broader adoption of digital commons in Europe's technology strategy is testament to the viability and success of this appproach. We'll continue to help the community to develop trustworthy, resilient and sustainably open technologies — but we also need to play into (and benefit as much as possible from) the new opportunities that today's political awareness for digital sovereignty and strategic development of technology brings.
NLnet will temporarily not accept new submissions until its evaluation of NGI Zero is completed. Ongoing projects are not affected in any way by this measure, and will be able to continue their important work without any interruption. After the summer, the foundation will reopen its regular open calls as well as launch no less than three new programmes as part of the new "Open Internet Stack": Restack, CodeSupply and ELFA. The foundation is actively looking for ways to continue broader support for technology commons beyond these initiatives.
NGI Taler and NGI Fediversity remain open
An exception to the temporary suspension of submissions are the two ongoing pilot programmes NGI Fediversity and NGI Taler which both address strictly targeted domains. In the case of Fediversity this is a service hosting platform based on reproducible packaging (Nix/NixOS), and in case of NGI TALER it is the privacy-preserving payment system GNU Taler. For these two programmes proposals can still be submitted according to the regular bi-monthly schedule.
