The Munich Startup Festival 2026 took place today at Backstage Munich — now in its fourth year and firmly established as the city’s central meeting point for founders, investors, and the wider startup ecosystem.
What made today’s edition notable
The program moved well beyond networking. Six panels on the main stage, additional workshops on side stages, an Impact Area dedicated to social innovation, and speakers drawn directly from the ecosystem — as Munich Startup, the city’s official startup portal, has been tracking all year — rather than the usual conference circuit:
Bastian Nominacher, co-CEO of Celonis and active angel investor
Daniel Krauss, co-founder, CIO and CHRO of Flix SE
The founder of NanoTemper, also VP Entrepreneurship at LMU
Leadership from TUM Venture Lab Aerospace
Closing remarks and the €10,000 Munich Startup Award for “Munich’s Best Startup 2026,” presented by Dr. Christian Scharpf, Munich’s State Minister for Labour and Economic Affairs
2,445 active startups in the Munich region, part of Bavaria’s 4,400+
€2.7 billion invested in Munich startups in 2025
Munich now matches Berlin’s startup density for the first time
42% of employees at Munich startups and scaleups are international professionals
55% of Bavarian startups originate in university research (TUM, LMU) — well above the national average
Deeptech and defencetech are the ecosystem’s fastest-growing categories
Munich also ranks #2 in Germany and #40 globally in the StartupBlink Global Startup Ecosystem Index, home to four unicorns and companies like FlixMobility and Personio. Nationally, Germany recorded 3,622 new startup foundings in 2025 — a new record — with AI-first business models driving much of the growth, per the Startupdetector Report.
That last figure — the deeptech share — is the one most relevant to our work.
The gap we see repeatedly
A university lab produces strong deeptech IP. A team spins it out. They raise a pre-seed round and start talking to VCs — and almost never, at the same time, to the EU funding instruments built for exactly this stage: Horizon Europe, the EIC Accelerator, Chips JU, and Digital Europe.
These instruments fund R&D without taking equity. For research-intensive startups — precisely the profile Munich produces at scale — they’re frequently a better first step than a priced round, and they can run in parallel with one.
How Nexuswelt supports this — our roadmap
At Nexuswelt, we work with founders, SMEs, and research organisations to convert strong technology into a fundable EU project. In practice, that follows four stages:
1. EU Funding Entry & Participation Roadmap — Reviewing your organisation’s fit, identifying the right programme route (Horizon Europe, EIC Accelerator, Chips JU, Digital Europe, or Interreg Europe), and preparing a realistic next-step roadmap.
2. Partner Search & Consortium Building — Identifying and aligning the right partners, roles, and governance structure before a proposal is drafted.
3. Proposal Support and Project Dissemination & Communication — Building the exploitation logic that reviewers score alongside the technical case — the part most technically strong teams underweight.
4. EU Project Management and EU Project Training & Onboarding — Supporting delivery after award, and preparing teams for follow-on funding and market exploitation across Europe.
The goal throughout: funding that extends runway and de-risks R&D, without competing with the equity conversation already happening in the room.
Related Nexuswelt programme support: Munich-based startups, deeptech spin-offs and research-driven SMEs can begin with Nexuswelt’s EU Funding and Innovation Support to identify the most realistic non-dilutive funding route alongside private investment. Depending on technology readiness and market strategy, organisations can then explore dedicated support for Horizon Europe, Chips JU and Digital Europe. Nexuswelt also supports partner search and consortium building, proposal writing and strategic proposal support and project-level dissemination, communication and exploitation planning for startups moving from strong technology to a competitive European funding application.
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