America has an accelerator capital. California holds 30% of US programs and San Francisco alone functions as a gravitational center.
Europe has nothing like it. France leads this database with 34 programs, which is 18% of the total, and Germany sits one point behind at 33. The top five cities combined account for just 22% of the list.
That single structural fact changes how a European founder should approach the whole exercise.
This is a free, ungated database of 190 startup accelerators across 28 European countries and 125 cities. Thirteen fields per program: name, classification, country, city, domain, LinkedIn URL, program offering, admission criteria, application form, timeline, target segmentation, portfolio overview, and a classification note.
Below: where the programs are, what they fund, and why applying in Europe works differently than it does in the US.
What you will find in this article
- How European accelerators distribute across countries and cities
- Why only a third of them publish an application form, and what to do about it
- Which sectors European programs actually back
- Why almost none of them disclose their terms upfront
- How the European market differs structurally from the American one
- How to build a shortlist of five programs worth your time
Paris and London tie at 12 programs each. Berlin follows with 8, Madrid with 6, then Stockholm and Kyiv with 4 apiece.
The tail is the real story. The database covers 125 cities, and 100 of them host exactly one accelerator. Lille, Leipzig, Prague, Budapest, Frankfurt, Valencia, Cascais, and dozens of smaller places each appear once or twice.
Ukraine at six programs is worth pausing on. A country at war still runs an active accelerator ecosystem, concentrated in Kyiv, and it barely registers in English-language coverage of European startups.
For a founder, polycentricity cuts both ways. There is probably a program within a two-hour train ride of you, which is convenient. There is also no single place where going physically puts you at the center of everything, which means your program choice matters more than your city choice.
Only a third of these programs publish an application form
This is the most practically important finding in the dataset, and it is a gap rather than a feature.
Of the 190 programs, 60 include a direct application form URL. That is 32%. Only 36 publish an application timeline, meaning 81% of European accelerators in this file give no public indication of when they open.
Compare that to the American picture, where the large majority of programs list a form and a deadline. European accelerators, especially the regional and university-linked ones, tend to run on a quieter cycle: a call goes out through local networks, a cohort fills, and the website never changes.
Now look at what the file does have. Every single one of the 190 programs has a LinkedIn URL. One hundred and eighty-six have a domain. One hundred and sixty-five, or 87%, include a portfolio overview.
The dataset is telling you something about how this market works. You do not apply to European accelerators primarily through forms. You reach the people running them.
The practical sequence:
Follow the program on LinkedIn and watch for cohort announcements. Most European programs announce openings there long before they update a website.
Find the program director or manager. They are almost always visible on the company LinkedIn page, and at a 20-person accelerator they read their own messages.
Ask one specific question rather than pitching. "Is the spring cohort open to Series A hardware companies based outside the EU?" gets an answer. A deck attachment does not.
Go through the portfolio. The portfolio overview field is filled for 165 programs. Find the company closest to yours, contact that founder, and ask what the program was actually like. Founders answer this question honestly and often at length.
What European accelerators actually fund
Ranking the sector mentions across the program and segmentation fields:
Climate, energy, and sustainability lead with 21 programs. Health, biotech, and medtech follow at 18. Space and aerospace appear in 14, which is disproportionately high and reflects the ESA-linked incubator network across the continent. Education technology shows up in 11, deep tech and hardware in 10, then SaaS, fintech, and agrifood at 8 each.
Artificial intelligence appears in only 7.
That last number deserves a caveat. The program description fields in this dataset are thinner than in the equivalent American file, so absolute counts understate reality across the board. Even allowing for that, the ranking is informative: European accelerator programming is weighted toward climate, health, and space in a way the American market is not, and AI-specific programs are a much smaller share of the picture.
On stage, 51 programs describe themselves as early stage, 31 mention scaleup or growth, 20 mention seed, and 14 mention pre-seed. B2B appears 71 times across the segmentation fields, making it the single most common qualifier in the dataset by a wide margin.
If you are building consumer, your realistic pool is considerably smaller than 190.
Almost nobody publishes their terms
Fourteen programs out of 190 mention equity at all. Fourteen mention a specific monetary figure. Five state explicitly that they take no equity.
Where numbers do appear, the median investment is around €100,000, and the few disclosed equity stakes cluster near 5%. Hook in Paris is one of the rare programs that states its terms plainly: $50,000 for 5%, ten startups per cohort, weekly sessions and a demo day.
The silence elsewhere is not necessarily hostile. A large share of European accelerators are publicly funded, university-attached, or corporate-sponsored, and many take no equity because they are not investing. They provide space, mentorship, and access to a grant pipeline instead. One hundred and one of the 190 mention mentorship as a core offering, and 28 include office or coworking space.
But you cannot tell which is which from the file, and that means one question has to come first in every conversation: what do you take, and what do you give. Ask it in the first email. A program that will not answer clearly is answering clearly.
Where the portfolio data does exist, it is genuinely useful. Startup Wise Guys in Estonia reports over 20 exits and more than €460M raised across its portfolio. MassChallenge Switzerland has run 1,175 startups through its programs since 2016, with portfolio funding above CHF 2.9bn. Those are the kinds of numbers that separate a real program from a room with a projector.
How Europe differs from the United States
If you are weighing both markets, the structural differences matter more than any individual program ranking.
Neither market is better. They demand different behavior.
American programs are easier to research and harder to get into, and the trade you are making is dilution for prestige and network. European programs are harder to research, often easier to enter, and frequently cost you nothing in equity because the money is coming from a public or corporate budget rather than a fund.
The cross-border friction is the part founders underestimate. A program in Lisbon, one in Tallinn, and one in Munich have different incorporation expectations, different residency requirements, and different working languages. Check all three before you commit to a relocation.
Building a shortlist of five
Start with sector, not prestige. Climate, health, and space are the well-served categories in this file. If you are in one of them, filter there first and you will still have a real list.
Filter by stage honestly. Fifty-one programs say early stage and 31 say growth. Applying to the wrong tier is the fastest way to waste a quarter.
Use LinkedIn as the primary channel, since it is the only field that is complete for every program in the database.
Read the portfolio overview before you read the program offering. What a program has actually done tells you more than what it says it offers.
Ask about terms in the first message. Equity, check size, residency requirements, and language of the program. Four questions, one email.
If you sell to startups rather than joining one
An accelerator is a pre-qualified cohort with a shared calendar and a director who wants the portfolio to succeed. One relationship reaches 20 to 50 companies at once.
The European version of this play works differently than the American one, for the same reason applications do. There is no central directory and no clean form. The route in is the program manager on LinkedIn, and the offer that opens the door is something the cohort actually needs, usually a workshop, a template pack, or tool credits, delivered without a pitch attached.
The upside is that far fewer vendors are doing this in Europe than in the US, because the market looks harder to navigate from the outside. The database removes most of that difficulty.
Four mistakes worth avoiding
Assuming a quiet website means a dead program. Most of these accelerators simply do not maintain their public pages. Check LinkedIn before you write anything off.
Optimizing for the famous names. Europe's polycentric structure means a regional program with 12 relevant mentors in your sector will often beat a bigger brand where you are the only company in your category.
Ignoring the equity-free programs. A meaningful share of European accelerators are publicly or corporately funded and take nothing. If dilution is your constraint, that is a genuine structural advantage over the American market.
Applying without asking about residency. Cross-border requirements vary by program and by funding source. Find out before you plan a move, not after.
FAQ
Is the database free? Yes. No form, no email, no gate. Open the sheet and make a copy.
How many accelerators does it include? 190 programs across 28 European countries and 125 cities.
Which European country has the most accelerators? France, with 34 in this dataset, narrowly ahead of Germany at 33 and the United Kingdom at 22.
Do European accelerators take equity? Many do not. Only 14 of the 190 programs mention equity at all, and a significant share are university-linked, publicly funded, or corporate-sponsored programs that provide support without investing. Confirm terms directly with each program.
How much do European accelerators invest? Where figures are disclosed, the median sits around €100,000. Most programs in this file do not publish a number, which is itself a signal that many are not writing checks.
How do I apply if there is no application form? Only 60 of the 190 publish a form. For the rest, contact the program through LinkedIn, which is populated for all 190 entries, and ask directly about the next cohort.
Can international founders apply? Often yes, but residency and incorporation requirements vary by country and by funding source. Publicly funded programs are the most likely to have restrictions.
How current is the data? Cohort dates and program terms change frequently, and 81% of entries have no timeline listed. Verify with the program before planning around it.
What to take away
Europe has no accelerator capital. France leads at 18% and the top five cities cover only 22% of the market, with 100 cities hosting exactly one program each.
Only 32% publish an application form and 19% publish a timeline, but 100% have a LinkedIn presence. The way into a European accelerator is a person, not a form.
Climate, health, and space lead the sector mix, and B2B is the single most common qualifier in the file. AI-specific programming is far less prominent here than in the US.
Seven percent mention equity. Ask about terms in your first email, because the file will not tell you.
We use datasets like this one to build outbound campaigns into accelerator cohorts, portfolios, and the companies inside them. If that is the channel you want opened, book a free consultation.
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