Under the SME Fund 2026, the EUIPO's trade marks and designs voucher reimburses 75% of trade mark and design application fees where protection is sought inside the EU, and 50% where it is sought outside. The SME Fund 2026 FAQ puts €700 on that voucher as the maximum an SME can receive, and sets IP Scan reimbursement at 90%.
This is a reimbursement scheme, not a discount at the counter. Two things decide whether a founder ever sees the money, and neither of them is the percentage: the order you do things in, and how early in the call year you apply.
What the 2026 vouchers reimburse
The fund is organised as separate vouchers rather than one pot, and they behave differently — different rates, different ceilings, and, as it turns out below, different availability at any given moment. The two that matter to a company protecting a brand are the trade marks and designs voucher and the IP Scan.
Everything in the table is what the EUIPO publishes for the SME Fund 2026 call specifically, so a rate copied from an older edition of the fund is not necessarily the rate you will be paid.
| Voucher (SME Fund 2026) | What it reimburses | Rate | Maximum per business |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trade marks and designs | application fees where protection is sought inside the EU | 75% | €700 |
| Trade marks and designs | application fees where protection is sought outside the EU | 50% | €700 |
| IP Scan | a pre-diagnostic on what the business should be protecting | 90% | check the current cap on the EUIPO page |
The two rates sit inside one voucher and share one ceiling. The fees themselves are not set by the fund — they are set by the office you file with, and you take them from that office's own current schedule.
The cap binds before the percentage does
The headline figure is 75%. The number that governs a real filing is €700, which the FAQ frames as the maximum amount an SME can receive — per business, not per application. A second filing does not draw a second ceiling.
That changes how the scope decision should be made. Once your fee base is large enough, the cap rather than the rate determines what you collect, and every extra class or extra territory you add is paid at 100% by the company.
So decide scope on commercial grounds first — the core name, the classes covering what you actually sell, the territory you actually trade in — and treat the €700 as a fixed contribution rather than a fixed proportion. Founders who size the filing around the fund end up with a broader registration than the business needs and a bill that is mostly theirs.
The order of operations is where the money is lost
Whether a cost incurred before the decision can still be reimbursed is set out in the EUIPO's own grant terms rather than inferable from the percentages. Read it there before you pay any office fee.
The shape of the mistake is familiar from every other programme: spending first and applying afterwards is the most expensive habit in EU funding, because it is the kind of error that a good explanation does not repair. Timing conditions are settled by comparing a date on an invoice with a date on a decision, and neither date can be renegotiated after the fact.
The practical consequence is that the brand decision has to be made earlier than it feels necessary. A name you are still testing is not a name you file. But a name you are sure about should have its voucher application submitted before the filing is booked with an attorney, not after the attorney's confirmation lands.
Why the calendar decides this, not the eligibility
The 2026 call ran on a budget of €18,000,000 (EUIPO FAQ). That is a fixed pot shared across every eligible SME in the Union, and it does not last the year: as of 7 August 2026 the IP Scan and the trade mark and design vouchers are closed to new applications because their funds are exhausted, while the patent and plant variety vouchers remain open (EUIPO SME Fund 2026 page).
Read that carefully, because it reframes the whole exercise. The binding constraint on this fund is not whether you qualify. It is whether your application was ready in the part of the year when money was still there — and availability is decided voucher by voucher, so the patent side of the fund being open tells you nothing about the trade mark side.
The fund runs in annual windows, and the opening and closing dates for the current call are published on the EUIPO SME Fund page. Check them before the brand decision rather than after it.
The useful preparation — settling the mark, the classes and the territory, and confirming eligibility — is the part that takes weeks, and all of it can be done before a window opens. On the 2026 pattern, a brand decision taken late in the year is, in budget terms, a decision to pay the full fee yourself.
What the application is, and what it is not
Compared with the innovation programmes on a Luxembourg funding plan, this one reads as an administrative form rather than a competitive proposal — which is why it is worth the effort even for a single modest filing. The fields and the attachments the EUIPO actually asks for are listed on the fund's own application pages, and that list is the only version worth working from.
The things that go wrong are correspondingly clerical rather than substantive: bank details in a name that does not match the applicant, SME status the applicant cannot evidence when asked, and whatever activation window the decision itself imposes. That last one is the quiet killer. The decision email is a document to diarise, not to archive — a voucher that is never activated is worth exactly as much as one that was never granted.
Where the IP Scan fits
The IP Scan is the pre-diagnostic: an expert review of what a business owns and what it should protect, reimbursed at 90% under the SME Fund 2026 (EUIPO FAQ).
Sequenced properly it comes before the filing, because its output is exactly the scoping decision — mark, classes, territory — that the €700 ceiling forces you to take on commercial grounds. Sequenced badly, after the mark is already filed, it becomes a report confirming choices you can no longer change cheaply.
It also carries the same availability caveat as the trade mark voucher, which is why the scan and the filing are best planned as one dated sequence rather than two separate good intentions.
The company-name check is a different register
Founders routinely assume the name clearance done at incorporation covers the brand. It does not. Name availability is checked by submitting an electronic request for a certificate of name availability to Luxembourg Business Registers before incorporating, and the test applied is that the name must be different from that of any other existing company (guichet.public.lu).
That is a corporate-register test answering a corporate-register question. A trade mark answers a different question, in a different register, run by a different authority. The two are worth settling in the same few weeks, because the point at which the name is chosen is the only moment when changing it is still free.
Common questions
These are the questions that come after the percentage, and they are the ones that decide whether the money is realistically available to you this year.
How much can one company actually get back?
75% of the application fees where protection is sought inside the EU, 50% where it is sought outside, and no more than €700 in total for the business under the SME Fund 2026 trade marks and designs voucher. Apply those rates to the fee schedule of the office you are filing with to get your own figure.
Is the trade mark and design voucher open right now?
Not at the last check: as of 7 August 2026 the IP Scan and the trade mark and design vouchers are closed to new applications because their funds are exhausted, while the patent and plant variety vouchers remain open. Availability moves within a call year and is decided per voucher, so the EUIPO SME Fund 2026 page is the only place to read the live position.
When does the next window open?
The fund runs in annual windows and the EUIPO publishes each call's dates on its SME Fund page. Because the constraint is budget rather than deadline, the date to plan against is the opening, not the closing.
Am I an SME for this?
The EUIPO applies a published definition rather than a judgement call, and sets out the eligibility criteria on the fund's own pages. Settle that before you spend: a company that turns out to sit outside the definition has paid the fee and has nothing to reclaim.
Do I still pay the office fee myself?
Yes. Reimbursement means the cash leaves first and comes back later. Budget the full fee as money out and the voucher as a subsequent credit capped at €700.
The sequence, in order
- Decide whether the brand is one you will keep. If it is still being tested, stop here and revisit.
- Read the current window's dates on the EUIPO SME Fund page and put them in the calendar before anything else.
- Confirm the company meets the EUIPO's published SME criteria.
- Set the scope — mark, classes, territory — on commercial grounds, knowing €700 is the ceiling regardless of how wide you go.
- Take the fee figures from the current schedule of the office you intend to file with.
- Submit the voucher application, and incur no office fee until you have read the timing conditions in the decision itself.
- File, pay, then claim against the voucher inside whatever period the decision sets.
- Diarise the renewal date from the registration paperwork the day it arrives, and check the term against the filing office's own guidance rather than from memory.
The reason this belongs on the funding plan rather than the wish list is the €700 ceiling and the exhausted 2026 vouchers, read together. The sum is small enough that no one schedules a meeting about it, and the window is tight enough that the meeting is what costs you the money.