Luxembourg does not run a single startup grant but a shelf of instruments, each with a published amount. Fit 4 Start pays a selected startup up to €150,000, released in instalments rather than as one cheque. Primo-création pays €12,000 to a first-time founder in commerce or craft. Young Innovative Enterprise reaches €1,000,000 against a private raise. R&D project aid covers up to 60% of industrial research for a small enterprise.
The map
Below is each instrument, the situation it is designed for and the amount its official page publishes; the sections that follow add the conditions that filter applicants.
| Fits you if | Programme | Headline amount | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-revenue tech team | Fit 4 Start | grant up to €150,000 | guichet.lu |
| First shop, workshop or service business | Primo-création | €12,000 | guichet.lu |
| Closing or preparing a private round | Young Innovative Enterprise | up to €1,000,000 | guichet.lu |
| Building something technically new | R&D project aid | up to 60% of industrial research, small enterprise | guichet.lu |
| Operating SME with an expert project | SME Packages Digital | 70% of a €3,000–25,000 project | guichet.lu |
| Deep tech with breakthrough potential | EIC Accelerator | grant to €2,500,000, equity €1,000,000–10,000,000 | eic.ec.europa.eu |
| About to register a trade mark | EUIPO SME Fund | 75% of trade mark and design fees, capped at €700 | euipo.europa.eu |
| Financing an innovative company | SNCI | innovative-enterprise loan up to €1,500,000 | snci.lu |
| Earning from your own software | IP Box | 80% exemption on qualifying net IP income | impotsdirects.public.lu |
Fit 4 Start: the headline is not the cash you plan with
Fit 4 Start is the national accelerator: 6 months of coaching, co-working and a grant reaching €150,000. The number to build a runway on is the first tranche, because guichet.lu publishes the payout in stages: €50,000, then €80,000, then €20,000.
The gates: a team of at least 2, a company no older than 5 years, and a focus in digital technologies, health or space, or the field specified in the Fit 4 Start call — which is why the call text matters more than the programme page. Our selection guide covers what the jury rewards.
Primo-création: the gates, not the amount, decide this one
Primo-création is the simplest instrument here — €12,000, non-repayable, paid as monthly instalments of €2,000 over 6 months, for newly created micro-enterprises in the commerce and craft sectors. No jury, no cohort, no pitch.
It is also the one most often discovered too late — its conditions are dated, not qualitative. Guichet.lu sets conditions nobody can fix retroactively: the business permit behind the company may be at most 6 months old, the applicant must not have held an earlier business permit in the previous 10 years, and any stake held in another company must stay at or below 25%.
A founder a year into trading has usually failed the first of those; the dedicated guide walks the rest.
Young Innovative Enterprise: the raise-matching instrument
Young Innovative Enterprise is the one sophisticated founders most often miss: co-funding up to 70% of a young company's financing needs, to a maximum of €1,000,000, on a funding plan of at most 3 years. The scheme now sits under the law of 6 June 2025, so figures published before it describe the previous regime.
The company must be under 5 years old, show turnover of at least €40,000, and spend at least 15% of its expenses on R&D — the criterion behind Luxinnovation's innovation certificate, where the file is genuinely tested. The aid attaches to a private raise, so it belongs in the fundraise window rather than after the money is spent; the YIE guide covers the sequencing.
R&D project aid: the rate grid, printed
For technical work outside a fundraise, the RDI framework co-funds the project itself, at a rate turning on how far the work sits from market and how big the applicant is.
| Project category | Small enterprise | Medium enterprise | Large enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| Industrial research, base rate | 60% | 50% | 40% |
| Experimental development, base rate | 40% | 30% | 20% |
Which category the project falls into is the most consequential line in the file, and it is argued rather than declared — the same work written up as prototyping and as industrial research draws different rates. There is a floor as well as a ceiling: aid must reach €1,000 for an SME and €100,000 for a large enterprise. R&D & Innovation Aid has the plain-language version.
Established SMEs: co-funding an expert project
SME Packages Digital reimburses 70% of eligible costs on a project of €3,000–25,000, leaving the company the minority share of an expert engagement.
The usual entry point is Fit 4 Digital: an assessment fixed at €5,000, covered in full by a grant of the same amount, whose costed action plan can itself become the SME Package application — chaining covered in the assessment guide and the SME Packages guide.
EU instruments: grant and equity are separate decisions
At the EIC Accelerator, the grant and the investment are separate components. Blended finance means a grant component plus direct equity or quasi-equity such as convertible loans, the equity leg running €1,000,000–10,000,000.
Take the grant alone and a hard limit applies: under the EIC Work Programme 2026, grant-only support can be provided only once to a beneficiary during Horizon Europe, for a maximum of EUR 2.5 million covering activities of TRL 6 to 8. It covers work of at most 24 months. For the 2026 calls the Commission has put €414,000,000 behind EIC Accelerator Open and €220,000,000 behind the Challenges; our EIC guide compares the doors.
Horizon Europe funds consortia rather than companies, at 100% for a research and innovation action and 70% for an innovation action, though other funding rates may be set out in the specific call or topic conditions. For a young company the entry is joining a consortium, not leading one.
At the opposite end of effort, the EUIPO SME Fund reimburses 75% of EU trade mark and design fees up to €700, 50% of fees outside the EU, and 90% of an IP scan.
It is budgeted per call year — €18,000,000 for 2026 — and it empties: 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. Check the voucher first; the trademark guide has the detail.
Loans and tax: the categories founders skip
SNCI is a public-law bank, not a grant body, packaging its lending as proStart, proDevelop, proInnovate and proTransfer. Loans are not gifts, but public co-financing changes what a bank will agree to.
| Instrument | SNCI's share | Amount | Condition to watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Création-Transmission loan | up to 40% | €5,000–250,000 | own funds of at least 15% |
| Innovative enterprise loan | up to 35% | up to €1,500,000 | company under 8 years old |
| RDI loan | up to 40% | up to €250,000 | tied to the R&D project |
| Equipment credit | — | €12,500–2,500,000 | applied for through your own bank |
Terms differ by product, and the longest SNCI runs is 15 years. On the tax side, the IP Box covers qualifying net IP income, including income from self-developed software, under article 50ter L.I.R. — but it is not a rate applied to revenue: the 80% exemption applies only to the share of net eligible income produced by the modified nexus ratio in article 50ter, alinéa 6 L.I.R. Per-asset expenditure tracking therefore starts with the first qualifying spend.
A separate investment tax credit is claimed inside the corporate tax return, not at a ministry.
How programmes stack
Programmes combine more often than founders expect, but the cost allocation in the first file constrains what is left for the next — design the combination before the first filing.
| First | Then | Why the order works |
|---|---|---|
| Fit 4 Start | Young Innovative Enterprise | prototype money first; YIE then attaches to the seed raise |
| R&D project aid | IP Box | co-funding covers the build; the exemption covers the income |
| Fit 4 Digital | SME Packages | the assessment produces the plan; the package funds it |
| Any grant | SNCI | the grant shrinks the need; SNCI co-finances the rest with your bank |
| Anything | EUIPO SME Fund | IP fees sit on their own cost line |
What actually sinks an application
Almost nothing here is lost on the idea. Files fail on paperwork and sequencing.
Your own documents date the project. A signed quote, an engagement letter, a purchase order — each carries a date, and those dates are what an assessor reads when deciding when the project began. File before they exist; they cannot be revised afterwards.
The permit is a prerequisite, not a parallel track. Where the activity needs a business permit, aid files reference it: the chancellery fee is €50 and the ministry has 3 months to answer, so a permit started the same week as the application is already the critical path.
The credential trips people up. National files run through the company's business eSpace on MyGuichet.lu, which needs a private or professional LuxTrust product, a Luxembourg electronic identity card, or an eIDAS device from another European country. The LuxTrust App is advertised as active within 48 hours: comfortable at incorporation, uncomfortable in the last week of a call.
Assessors read the cost table before the vision. A project split into work packages, each with a named deliverable, staffing days and a cost line, is legible; a lump sum labelled "development" is not.
Common questions
These come back once the shortlist is narrow and planning turns into cash-flow arithmetic.
How fast does the money actually arrive?
Not as one payment. Fit 4 Start releases €50,000 first, with €80,000 and €20,000 to follow; Primo-création pays €2,000 a month across 6 months. Build the runway on the first tranche.
Is there a grant for simply starting a company?
No. Every instrument here funds something specific: a first commerce or craft business, a research project, an expert engagement, an IP filing. Nothing funds incorporation itself, and none of it replaces revenue.
What to do with this
A Luxembourg entity opens the national schemes, while the EU instruments set their own eligibility. Pick the instrument whose gate you already pass, read its official page for the current call, and write the project up before commissioning it.
By then the remaining work is clerical rather than creative — assembling the application file and its annexes in the order the form asks for them, with the permit number, the RCS extract and a costed breakdown already in hand. A Luxembourg entity opens the national schemes; the Sàrl-S guide covers the fastest route.