
Innovative
Smart Solutions
for rural areas
FUTURAL will prototype, test, and demonstrate community-led, social, technological and business innovations in different geographical and socio-cultural rural contexts. It will deliver a set of digital Smart Solutions to address key societal, environmental and financial challenges and empower rural communities to engage in change.
Smart solutions tailored to rural communities’ needs

Our news

FUTURAL forges new collaborations to amplify its impact in rural communities!
As 2024 progressed, the FUTURAL project signed a series of Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs), demonstrating its commitment to rural innovation, sustainability, and digital solutions. These partnerships with seven distinct Horizon

ESRS Congress: Call for academic abstracts on rural innovation ecosystems and social innovation in rural areas
Submit your abstract until 14/02/2025 The Pisa Agricultural Economics group (PAGE) from the University of Pisa, the Department of Architecture of the University of Bologna, and the James Hutton Institute

EU Rural Innovation Forum
Context FUTURAL (Empowering the future through innovative smart solutions for rural areas) is an EU – funded innovation project led by the Agricultural University of Athens, involving 21 partners across
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FUTURALOur Vision


Community-led innovations
Co-design, implement, monitor, and evaluate community-led social and business innovations based on digital smart solutions.
Smart Solutions
Test, pilot, and demonstrate the digital smart solutions for the 5 FUTURAL domains to address social and environmental challenges faced by rural communities.
Capacity Building
Strengthen the capacity of rural communities to realise the potential of community- led innovations based on the proposed SS.
Networking and synergies
Establish synergies with rural innovator and CAP networks, smart villages, organisations, and other projects to enhance relations and knowledge exchange.
Scale-up
Propose policies and governance frameworks to maximise the project’s contribution in achieving future CAP objectives related to smart villages and develop business models to mainstream solutions.
FUTURAL's Results
For more resilient and sustainable rural areas, better connected and capable of improving their citizens’ well-being
OC smart solutions
Metasearch Platform
Inclusive business models
Policy guidelines and Governance Frameworks
Ecosystem and capacity building
Open Call
To fuel the growth trajectory of digital solutions for rural area empowerment and boost the overall project impact, FUTURAL will launch a single Open Call providing Financial Support to Third Parties as a mechanism to increase the number of Smart Solutions available to rural communities and accelerate network expansion.
The Open Call will encourage SMEs and other interested parties (startups and research organisations) to develop and apply their own smart solutions within the 5 FUTURAL domains, increasing the number of SS available to rural communities.
The Open Call will accept proposals from consortia of 2-4 parties (≥1 technical party and ≥1 rural community) and will result in at least 10 projects (max 120k euro per project – up to 60k Euro for each third party.
Our Partners
The FUTURAL collaboration brings together 21 partners from ten (10) EU countries to reinforce a multi-actor approach by bringing together academic and research institutes, industrial companies, service providers and non-profit organisations from across the IT, Social Science and Humanities, Business, Rural research, policy and public administration sectors.