Restack
Building a healthy open internet stack
More about: Guide for Applicants | Who is behind this? | Eligibility | FAQ
The first call of Restack will open up on June 1st 2026, with a deadline of August 1st 2026 12:00 CEST (noon). Check out the guide for applicants and the frequently asked questions.
It is clear that the commons model works, and continues to gain ground. Free and open source software and hardware, open standards, open data & AI, open science, creative commons and open educational resources are democratising innovation and learning, and are together driving society and industry forward at an unprecedented pace. But it is also obvious that a limited set of actors has hijacked mainstream technology, and their domination is no longer primarily serving users. The answer to this failing market lies in collective action and public investment.
This is where Restack comes into play. The goal of this new fund is to help deliver, mature and scale new internet commons across the technology stack, from libre chips to middleware without a vendor lock-in, from productivity tools to 'local-first' infrastructure — and of course the end user applications needed to consume those networked services. We restack because there is no other viable way. If we want to reclaim digital self-sustainability and yield the full benefits from technology as a society, we need to have an entire stack that is open from the ground up — period.
Only though enough critical mass of shared building blocks and collective pooling of resources and capabilities will our governments, businesses and civil society be able to count on digital security and long term operational availability — and steer towards more fair, innovative economies and societies. And there is no time to waste.
... the only way to unfail the current market is to restack and rebuild — and change the parameters
Our common moniker 'Open Internet Stack' may sound like others will solve everything for us. Reality is more harsh: we'll need to deliver the future we want ourselves. That is why we chose the verb Restack for this programme: no digital sovereignty without putting in the actual work. Restack is a collective opportunity and a call to action to secure our own infrastructure, to pave the way for permission-free innovation and in the end to reestablish a stable public sphere.
Between now and 2030 we will award 7 million euro in small to medium-size R&D grants towards technology building blocks and other practical contributions to the establishment of a competitive and robust open internet stack.
For that, we need your contributions. We are seeking project proposals between 5.000 and 50.000 € — with the possibility to scale them up signficantly if there is proven potential. Next to financial support, we provide all kinds of help too — ranging from accessiibility scans and security audits to reproducible packaging, and from support with copyright compliance and governance to standardisation.
Today's technology is burdened with 'dark stack' components only available as volatile proprietary services, as well as with many cascading dependencies and hidden liabilities. There is also plenty of technical debt and things that were left intentionally broken. That needs to change. With Restack we build from the ground up, and accepting only the sky as the limit. What networked technology can you contribute? We are open to new ideas and disruptive technologies on every layer, but also want to nurture and scale existing technologies that are still future-proof — we are interested in practical, real-world impact.
Project results shall always become available under a recognised free or open source license. Proposals need to fit within the goal of an Open Internet Stack, and should make a concrete contribution to bring that goal closer. We stimulate the creation and use of norms and standards, as these enable interoperability and redundancy in implementation, and reduce the risk of future compromise and failure. We are interested in improving and decoupling infrastructure layers, service management and deployment innovation as well as actual services and their client-side counterparts. Have a look at the ongoing projects (or projects from several older NGI Zero programmes) to see the kind of efforts we mean, but don't be afraid to send something completely different if you think you can contribute to the topic — it really is an open call.
The first call of Restack will open up on June 1st 2026, with a deadline of June 1st 2026 12:00 CEST (noon). Check out the guide for applicants and the frequently asked questions.
Open Internet Stack
Open Internet Stack is an initiative by the European Commission to work towards an resilient operational stack of strategic technology commons worthy of trust — a stable and defendable foundation to foster healthy and strong democracies and economies, delivering the European vision of next generation digital infrastructures. It aims to deliver an ecosystem of deployable, scalable, and secure technologies that allow for permissionless innovation, contribute to quality of life and deliver strategic autonomy .
Open Internet Stack builds on the Next Generation Internet initiative, a multi-annual series of research and innovation programmes and associated support programmes to re-imagine and re-engineer the internet for the third millennium and beyond to shape a value-centric, human and inclusive society for all. Through the NGI Zero grantmaking programmes and scale-ups like NGI Fediversity, NGI TALER, the Next Generation Internet initiative established a large set of trustworthy building blocks ready to be turned into reliable infrastructure, products and services.
The goal of Open Internet Stack is to provide practical tools that public administrations, SMEs, and individual users can adopt and adapt to their specific needs — delivering digital autonomy and strenghtening competitiveness.
Acknowledgements
Restack is made possible with financial support from the European Commission's DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology through Horizon Europe grant agreement No. 101299072.
