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The BCI Briefing

Regional reportWhere is it happening?

Europe

Organised around university hospitals, public institutes and consortia more than around venture rounds, with a long record in fully implanted and epidural systems and in non-invasive BCI products that are already certified and sold.

The European Union, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway and the rest of geographic Europe, including Russia.

Growing steadilyConfidence high

Research trajectory, from scholarly works by author country: +10% a year over the latest three years, +12% in the three before. Data as of 8 Oct 2026.

Field snapshot

798
scholarly works in 2025
21% of the world count; 29% in 2019
393
PubMed papers in 2025
held as individual records
36
registered studies open now
18 with an implanted interface
10
companies profiled
in 6 countries
$57.5M
disclosed in recorded rounds
2 rounds; a sample
7
regulatory milestones recorded
kept apart by type

Profiled companies at their headquarters, from the year each was founded.

10 marks on the companies layer in 2026, Europe. Hover a mark, or use the list.

Marks are records, not decoration. Country marks sit at the centre of the country, not at an institution. Mark area follows the count, so a few large countries dominate; use the region zoom to read the rest. 3 profiled companies have not disclosed a location and are not placed. 36 countries with a small number of works have no position recorded and are not drawn. Clinical counts come from ClinicalTrials.gov and under-count studies outside the United States.

Research momentum

Authors in Europe published 798 scholarly works on brain-computer interfaces in 2025, +15% on the year before. Over the latest three years output grew +10% a year, against +12% in the three years before; the world as a whole grew +23% a year.

0200400600800201020122014201620182020202220242026639
Scholarly works a year by authors in Europe (works)
YearEurope
2010156
2011221
2012238
2013309
2014289
2015337
2016333
2017332
2018418
2019424
2020466
2021568
2022600
2023608
2024695
2025798
2026639
Fig. 01 — Scholarly works a year, EuropeOpenAlex, by author country. The dashed segment is 2026 to date.
Country by country · scholarly works
Country2025Growth a yearTrajectory
United Kingdom183+10%Growing steadily
Germany118+1%Slowing
Italy94−3%Slowing
France83+12%Accelerating
Netherlands78+24%Accelerating
Spain67+8%Accelerating
Russia58+6%Growing steadily
Switzerland48+1%Stable
Poland37+19%Accelerating
Belgium30+19%Accelerating
Austria28+12%Accelerating
Portugal26+6%Slowing

Countries with at least five works in 2025. A work with authors in several countries counts once in each.

Companies and initiatives

  • CorTec

    Freiburg, Germany · 2010

    A fully implanted closed-loop system that both records from and stimulates the cortical surface.

    Bidirectional BCI

  • ONWARD Medical

    Eindhoven, Netherlands · 2014

    Spinal cord stimulation therapies, with a brain–spine interface in development.

    Neuromodulation

  • INBRAIN Neuroelectronics

    Barcelona, Spain · 2019

    Graphene-based cortical interfaces for high-resolution recording and stimulation.

    Neural interface

  • Clinatec

    Grenoble, France

    A French research centre developing wireless epidural recording implants.

    Core BCI

  • ABILITY Neurotech

    Geneva, Switzerland · 2025

    A fully implanted ECoG system that sends raw neural data through the skin by infrared light.

    Core BCI

  • FUTRUE Neurosciences

    Gräfelfing, Germany

    A German company developing a micro-ECoG array, with ambitions it has stated more fully than it has shown.

    Neural interface

  • Neurosoft Bioelectronics

    Geneva, Switzerland

    Soft, stretchable electrode arrays for the brain surface, tested during surgery in people.

    Neural interface

  • g.tec medical engineering

    Schiedlberg, Austria · 1999

    An Austrian maker of complete BCI systems and of the amplifiers much of the field's research is recorded with, in business since 1999.

    Core BCI

  • neuroloop

    Freiburg, Germany · 2016

    Selective stimulation of the vagus nerve with a multichannel cuff electrode, to lower blood pressure that medication cannot control.

    Bioelectronic medicine

  • MED-EL

    Innsbruck, Austria · 1990

    One of the makers of the cochlear implant, the most widely used neural prosthesis.

    Neuroprosthetic

Clinical programmes

ClinicalTrials.gov lists 36 open studies with a site in Europe, 18 of them involving an implanted interface. 12 studies started in 2025.

Capital

Disclosed funding only: the rounds recorded by the Briefing, not a market total.

Regulatory environment

Devices are CE marked under the Medical Device Regulation after assessment by a notified body. There is no single agency decision and no complete public list of certificates, so most CE marks are known through the manufacturer's own statement. We label them as company reported for that reason.

Clinical investigations are authorised country by country, by a national authority and an ethics committee. That is one reason European programmes form around individual hospitals: Utrecht, Lausanne, Grenoble, Freiburg, Graz.

The United Kingdom and Switzerland run their own systems outside the EU framework.

  1. 18 Sep 2026Brain Interchange: second Breakthrough designationUS FDA · Breakthrough Device designationA designation speeds interaction with the regulator. It is not a clearance or approval.
  2. 8 Apr 2026Brain Interchange: Breakthrough designation for strokeUS FDA · Breakthrough Device designationA designation speeds interaction with the regulator. It is not a clearance or approval.
  3. 19 Dec 2024ARC-EX authorised through De NovoUS FDA · De Novo marketing authorisationStimulation of the spinal cord through the skin, to improve hand strength and sensation in adults aged 18 to 75 with chronic incomplete cervical spinal cord injury. Nothing is read from the brain; the brain–spine interface remains investigational.
  4. Feb 2024ARC-BCI receives Breakthrough Device designationUS FDA · Breakthrough Device designationA designation speeds interaction with the regulator. It is not a clearance or approval.
  5. 30 Oct 2023baroloop: Breakthrough designationUS FDA · Breakthrough Device designationA designation speeds interaction with the regulator. It is not a clearance or approval, and the indication is hypertension, not a BCI use.
  6. 24 Jan 2020cortiQ PRO clearedUS FDA · 510(k) clearanceStatistical evaluation of high-gamma activity in intracranial EEG recorded with the company's amplifier, to be read together with the original waveform. A mapping aid for the surgical team. It is not an implant and not an interface for the patient to use.
  7. 2019recoveriX certified in EuropeEU (notified body) · CE markMarketing in Europe as a medical product. Stated by the company; CE certificates are not published centrally and we have not seen this one.

Institutions in the corpus

  • UMC Utrecht

    Utrecht, Netherlands

  • EPFL / Lausanne University Hospital

    Lausanne, Switzerland

  • Clinatec, CEA / CHU Grenoble Alpes

    Grenoble, France

  • Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals

    Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

  • University College London Hospitals

    London, United Kingdom

  • University of Manchester / Northern Care Alliance

    Salford, United Kingdom

  • Hôpital des Quinze-Vingts

    Paris, France

  • LMU University Eye Hospital

    Munich, Germany

  • University of Bonn

    Bonn, Germany

  • Miguel Hernández University

    Elche, Spain

  • University of Oxford, PNPL

    Oxford, United Kingdom

  • Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering

    Geneva, Switzerland

  • Graz University of Technology

    Graz, Austria

  • Technical University of Munich

    Munich, Germany

Institutions appear here because a profiled study or paper names them. It is not a ranking, and many active groups are missing.

Latest developments

  1. 29 Sep 2026MED-EL Company launches TICI UNICO in Europe with a CE mark: a cochlear implant with no external part. It is not approved in the United States.
  2. 18 Sep 2026CorTec Second Breakthrough designation, for communication in non-progressive quadriplegia; three stroke participants implanted to date.
  3. 20 Aug 2026ABILITY Neurotech Intraoperative study under way in Germany. A one-year home-use study in people with ALS is planned for late 2026 at UMC Utrecht, with TU Graz and CorTec as partners; the company says a Dutch ethics committee has approved the device dossier.
  4. 24 Jun 2026INBRAIN Neuroelectronics First-in-human study completes with ten participants.Source record
  5. 20 May 2026Neurosoft Bioelectronics Seed round of $7.5 million led by Skybound Venture Capital; the company says its arrays have been tested in ten patients in two studies, at UTHealth Houston and UMC Utrecht.
  6. 8 Apr 2026CorTec FDA Breakthrough Device designation for stroke motor rehabilitation.
  7. 2 Apr 2026g.tec medical engineering BrainSTEP, a study of gait rehabilitation after stroke with 30 participants, reaches primary completion.
  8. 31 Mar 2026FUTRUE Neurosciences Company announces a 512-electrode micro-ECoG array and says it aims to lay the foundation for first clinical applications later in 2026.

Open questions and outlook

Forward-looking judgements by The BCI Briefing, with their reasoning on the Trends page. Uncertain by nature.

What we cannot see here

  • Europe is not one ecosystem, and we do not treat it as one: the country table on this page shows how uneven it is.
  • European device investigations are only partly visible in public registries. Studies not registered on ClinicalTrials.gov are missing from our counts.
  • Several organisations we know of are not profiled because we have not verified them. They are listed below as leads, not as findings.
  • EU Clinical Trials Information System / EUDAMED is not connected. Not yet connected. CTIS covers medicines; device investigations are only partly public through EUDAMED.
  • Europe PMC is not connected. Not yet connected. Would add preprints indexed from bioRxiv and medRxiv.

Known to us, not yet verified

  • Bitbrain (Spain)
  • Corticale (Italy)
  • Newronika (Italy)
  • Precisis (Germany)
  • Phosphoenix (Netherlands)
  • Amber Therapeutics and Bioinduction (United Kingdom)
  • Neurotechnika (Russia; registered rehabilitation study)

Leads are pointers for us to check: a study sponsor in a registry, a name in a report. They say nothing yet about what an organisation does, and none is counted anywhere on this site until it has a profile with sources.

Sources cited for this region’s profiles are in English.