The Vanguard Initiative 3D-Printing Pilot is pleased to announce that registrations are now open for the Advanced Manufacturing Business Innovators Meeting 2026, taking place in person on 15 September 2026 in Genk, Flanders, Belgium.
Co-organised with Sirris and supported by the VI Efficient & Sustainable Manufacturing (ESM) Pilot, the event will bring together industrial companies, technology providers, research organisations, clusters, and policymakers from across Vanguard Initiative’s 20+ member regions.
Any stakeholder located in one of those regions can join : Aragon, Asturias, Autonomous Province of Trento/Trentino, Cantabria, Dalarna, East-Netherlands, Emilia Romagna, Flanders, Galicia, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Lombardia, Lower Saxony, Malopolska, Navarra, Norte, North Rhine-Westphalia, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Slovenia, South Netherlands, Wallonia, Wales.
Participants can look forward to:
- Networking & partnering: company booths, project-building sessions, and dedicated networking moments with Belgian and European actors active in advanced manufacturing, smart manufacturing, additive manufacturing, AI, robotics, and advanced materials.
- Industrial challenge sessions: leading companies including ASCO and Materialise will present concrete technical challenges, from digitalisation in the factory of the future to data governance in additive manufacturing. A call for solutions will follow among participants.
- Lab visits : a tour of Sirris’ advanced manufacturing demonstrators, including AGV/AI applications, cobot polishing, and laser-based manufacturing facilities.
- Horizon Europe project-building — three parallel sessions hosted by Sirris, covering project concepts linked to Horizon Europe Cluster 4 calls and open to participants with relevant capabilities.
Organisations – from the above mentioned regions – interested in contributing to the programme can still submit under two open calls until 15 July 2026:
- Industrial Ambition Owners: we are looking for industrial companies willing to present a concrete industrial challenge, operational bottleneck or strategic ambition that could benefit from expertise available within the VI ecosystem (25 regions). This call is targeted at OEMs, end-users, manufacturing companies and leading actors within industrial value chains. The objective is to connect companies facing specific industrial challenges with the European network of technology providers, research organisations and innovation partners active in advanced manufacturing.
- International Project Concept Owners: we are looking for organisations willing to present a concrete international innovation project concept for which they are actively seeking partners and preparing a funding application. This call targets project ideas that are already sufficiently mature to be translated into a collaborative proposal under a specific and identified funding opportunity.
If interested in applying, please contact Jean-François Romanville.
👉 Register here before 25 August 2026