Smart textiles: Europe's textile renaissance

Over the past two decades, Europe’s traditional textile manufacturing has undergone a sharp decline, losing significant market share and jobs to emerging markets. Amid this challenge, technical textiles - specialized materials designed for performance rather than aesthetics - stand out as a growth area. Within that niche, smart textiles represent the most sophisticated and promising segment. Despite this potential, commercialization has stalled due to fragmentation between textiles, electronics, and IT sectors, high costs, limited automation, and supply chain challenges. 

Building connected value chains through SmartX 

Recognizing these obstacles, the SmartX Europe initiative embarked on building an integrated smart textiles ecosystem. This accelerator supported 25 innovation projects led by SMEs across Europe, backed by €2.4 million in funding and extensive coaching along the value chain. It revealed a critical reality: innovation alone isn’t enough. True progress hinges on cross-sector collaboration, linking textile manufacturers, electronics engineers, and ICT specialists to enable scalable production. This led to the launch of the SmartX Innovation Hub, a platform for sharing knowledge, tools, and building professional communities for smart textile development. 

BioFibreLoop: From functional to recyclable 

Meanwhile, the BioFibreLoop project is pushing the textile sector toward real sustainability. Focused on producing functional outdoor and active wear from bio-based and recyclable materials, like lignin, cellulose, and PLA, this EU-backed initiative is applying laser-based, bio-inspired surface functionalization to reduce reliance on harmful chemicals. One notable achievement: researchers at the German Institutes for Textile and Fibre Research successfully created lignin-cellulose fibers, demonstrating technical feasibility. However, sourcing consistent-quality lignin remains a hurdle. At the end of the project, BioFibreLoop targets a 90% reduction in raw material usage, a near-total elimination of hazardous chemicals, a 20% cut in greenhouse gas emissions - and a potential impact of €8.5 billion in revenues with 3,200 new jobs in the industry by 2035. 

New EU funding opportunities for smart and sustainable textiles 

As part of its commitment to green industrial transformation, the European Commission has recently launched a major initiative under Horizon Europe: the European Partnership for Textiles of the Future. Backed by a projected €60 million between 2025 and 2030, this partnership will support collaborative innovation projects that aim to make the EU textile sector more sustainable, circular, and digitally enabled. These calls will be part of Horizon Europe’s Cluster 4 (Digital, Industry and Space), guided by the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) developed by Textile ETP. 

In parallel, new calls are targeting bio-based circular textiles, encouraging the use of advanced materials, eco-design, and safe-and-sustainable-by-design (SSbD) principles. These funding opportunities aim to support projects that address material innovation, circular product life cycles, and robust environmental and social impact assessments. 

Conclusion: Building the future of European textiles 

These recent developments highlight a key message: initiatives like SmartX and BioFibreLoop are not isolated success stories. They are part of a growing EU-wide strategy to reshape the textile industry around two essential pillars: cross-sector collaboration and scalable sustainability. 

For policymakers, investors, designers, and R&D leaders, this is a crucial moment to get involved. Current EU funding priorities increasingly focus on: 

• supporting ecosystems that connect research, technology, and manufacturing, 

• integrating sustainability from the very first design stages, 

• strengthening communities like Textile ETP to foster innovation and shared learning. 

At NETO Innovation, we work with forward-thinking teams to turn these opportunities into meaningful, fundable projects. From building strong consortia to shaping high-impact proposals, we bring structure and strategy to ambitious ideas. 

Interested in exploring these funding calls for your next innovation? We’d be happy to connect. Contact us today to see how our team can support you.

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