O-CEI plenary meeting
The O-CEI project convened its plenary meeting in Bilbao on 20–21 January 2026, bringing together partners from across Europe to review progress, tackle challenges, and set the stage for a crucial European Commission review next month.
With eight large-scale pilots underway, the meeting offered a clear snapshot of how the project is turning ambitious plans into tangible outcomes and preparing to showcase its first-year achievements to policymakers and stakeholders. All eight pilots reported meaningful advances, turning infrastructure plans into operational experiments. Seeing tangible improvements in productivity demonstrates the real-world potential of CEI technologies.
Open Calls: Selecting Projects to Drive Impact
The first Open Call round concluded successfully:
- 242 proposals received, with 149 passing evaluation and 24 projects pre-selected for fundings
- All pilots will integrate at least one funded project, ensuring direct alignment with real-world use cases.
- A kick-off for these projects is planned for 3–4 March in Valencia
Standardisation and Long-Term Vision
Beyond pilots and platform development, O-CEI is aiming high in standardisation. The project is proposing a “CEI asset management framework” for ISO SC41 submission in June 2026, leveraging its hourglass model for technical and operational alignment, and it is highlightening the importance of formalising O-CEI’s approaches to ensure the European Commission recognises their methodologies in the 2026 ICT rolling plan. Through this, O-CEI seeks to influence both industry best practice and broader European strategy for cloud-edge-IoT deployment.
Action points or success
The meeting concluded with a clear roadmap of critical actions to meet reporting, technical, and operational deadlines, from financial submissions to PoC demo preparation. With the EC review looming, every partner is focused on ensuring that O-CEI’s first year is a story of measurable progress, collaboration, and readiness for impact.
The O-CEI plenary in Bilbao showcased the momentum, innovation, and coordination driving Europe’s cloud-edge-IoT ecosystem. From operational pilots to international standardisation efforts, the project is laying the groundwork for transformative technology adoption and proving that collaboration at scale can turn ambitious visions into actionable reality.