EU Agri-Hackathon for Ruralities Living Lab audiences

Congratulations to the applicant consortium led by Regional Cluster North-East (Bulgaria) on being selected from the SMP-COSME-2026-TOURSME-01 competitive call, "Supporting sustainable competitiveness of tourism SME". Rural communities across the eastern flank of the EU are structurally exposed to economic shocks in ways that urban and coastal tourism destinations are not. The B2B Green Corridor aligns with the EU’s Tourism Transition Pathway that identifies several priority action areas that are directly implemented. The framework as a whole — not just tourism — is anchored in the idea that sectors cannot navigate the Twin Transition individually; they need ecosystem-level coordination between large and small actors, between public and private, and across borders. This is precisely the architecture that B2BGreen Corridor espouses. The project establishes a trans-national thematic rural tourism route spanning from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. The project creates a living ecosystem connecting rural tourism SMEs along a Forest and Rural Heritage corridor that is geographically and culturally coherent but currently invisible to European and international visitors as a unified destination. interlocking innovations drive the project:

- a fully designed transnational route with mapped itineraries, partner agreements, destination infrastructure, and a joint brand identity based on a PWA portal proven efficient and effective in Interreg, capturing tourism to less-travelled destinations;

- a digital sustainability capacity-building program delivered across partnering countries, training rural SME tourism operators in green and digital competences;

- support to meet environmental and management standards and providing an ECO-SEAL self-assessment and Twin Transition toolkit enabling SMEs to certify and market their sustainability commitments to visitors

A Financial Support to Third Parties (FSTP) scheme distributes mini-grants to SMEs for green and digital investments along the route.

Visit the B2B Green Corridor online at www.b2bgreencorridor.com,

https://www.linkedin.com/company/b2b-green-corridor?trk=public_post_feed-actor-name

Baltic-to-Balkan Green Corridor for Sustainable Tourism

EU Agri-Hack breaks with the assumption that hackathons demand coding expertise, welcoming instead an audience most events overlook — people with little-to-no technical digital skills. Through the event sponsored by Ruralities Living Lab, we will bring together rural actors — farmers, rural industry SMEs, regulators, rural youth, and Fifth Helix community partners — into the hackathon learning environment as full co-creators, not passive beneficiaries. Our team in Southern Italy is led by the Pomarico (Basilicata) Municipality. Activities include designing challenge briefs in accessible, non-technical language, pairing rural domain knowledge with digital facilitation, and building inclusive teams so outcomes stay practical, scalable, and rooted in real rural needs. Beyond the event itself, the EU Agri-Hackathon addresses the digital divide, uniting rather than separating rural communities from the innovation infrastructure urban and academic hubs take for granted. Send us an email by clicking the button above if you wish to participate in the event. EU Agri-Hackathon - Agriculture and rural development - European Commission https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/vision-overview/digitalisation/eu-agri-hackathon_en

Ruralities in Action