Faster pace, but with calendar pressure
According to the latest analysis by Cotec and Ivie, as of June 2025, 78.481 billion euros of the Next Generation funds allocated to Spain had been called, and 58.394 billion had been resolved. Of these, 21.498 billion euros have been allocated to R+D+I and digitalization, representing 36.8% of the total executed.
The relevant data is not just the figure, but the dynamic: the execution pace has accelerated by 14.8% compared to the previous year. However, between June 2025 and August 2026, an additional 10.443 billion in RDI must be executed—equivalent to one-third of the Recovery Plan’s objective in this area.
The question is no longer whether the funds are activated, but whether the system will be capable of absorbing them with real impact.
Territorial and business concentration
The report detects significant territorial differences. The Community of Madrid concentrates 32.5% of the resolved R+D+I funds, followed by Catalonia (15.2%) and Andalusia (10.5%). In per capita terms, Madrid significantly exceeds the national average.
On the business level, large companies receive more than half (55%) of the funds allocated to companies, especially via tendering. SMEs improve their position when resources are channeled through grants.
This concentration raises a strategic question: are the funds reinforcing existing capabilities or expanding the innovative base?
Digitalization vs. Structural R+D
A 59% of the funds allocated to R+D+I has been directed toward digitalization, compared to 41% aimed at R+D in the strict sense. Furthermore, digitalization has reached more than 5,400 municipalities, while funds strictly linked to R+D+I are concentrated in just over 1,300 locations.
This highlights a clear difference between broad technological modernization and deep investment in scientific and technological capabilities.
Central administration as the management axis
Central government management accounts for 78% of the resolved R+D+I amount. Key summoning bodies include Red.es, the Ministry for Digital Transformation, the State Research Agency, and CDTI.
State weight confirms centralized governance of the process, with the autonomous communities playing a relevant but secondary role in terms of volume.
What is truly at stake for the innovation ecosystem
We are not facing a simple budgetary balance. We are facing a critical phase that will define whether NextGen will be a temporary injection of resources or a true structural turning point for the Spanish innovation system.
In just over a year, one-third of the committed R+D+I target must be executed. This implies more than just accelerating paperwork: it means mobilizing technical, administrative, and business capacities with enough maturity to absorb volume, maintain quality, and generate impact.
In this final stretch, three key dimensions for the ecosystem are at stake:
- Real absorption capacity: whether the system can execute faster without deteriorating the quality of the projects.
- Territorial and business balance: whether resources expand the innovative base or consolidate already strong hubs.
- Effective transfer: whether the spending on digitalization and R&D translates into applied technology, business scaling, and sustained competitiveness.
The fundamental question is not how much has been executed so far, but what will remain when the cycle ends. Because the true evaluation of NextGen will not be budgetary, but structural.
What is truly at stake for the innovation ecosystem
The issue is no longer solely about ‘spending on time,’ but about absorbing well: transforming extraordinary resources into capabilities that remain once NextGen ends. To this end, 2026 demands four very specific moves: (1) prioritize portfolios (fewer scattered projects and more packages with critical mass) and sequence investments so that digitalization does not remain a superficial modernization, but instead enables R+D and productivity; (2) reinforce capacidad administrativa y la de los beneficiarios (SMEs, universities, centers) with practical support—templates, guidance, consortium management, contracting—because international evidence shows that absorption depends as much on governance as on the actual capacity to execute projects; (3) moving from “procedural” milestones to performance metrics (adoption, scalability, return, installed capacities), as various analyses by the European Court of Auditors warn that current frameworks tend to measure implementation progress more than performance and impact; and (4) improve the multilevel coordination (State–CCAA–local) to avoid duplicities, facilitate synergies, and direct instruments toward the bottlenecks where the ecosystem loses traction. In other words: less calendar anxiety and more system design—because the final stretch of NextGen is, above all, a test of governance capacity and lasting impact.
