Paris, the city of light, love, amazing baguettes and..the best innovation ecosystem in 2017! Paris has been named most innovation European city in 2017, following Amsterdam who won the awards in 2016. The runner-ups: Tallin and Tel Aviv. They get to ‘go home’ with 100 000 euros, that will be used for scale up and to further expand the cities’ innovations. The award is a great result of Paris’ effort and innovation strategy. Over the past couple of years ‘the city of light’ has seen more incubators calling Paris their home than every other city. Paris now hosts Station F: the world’s largest start-up campus. Station F is located in a former railway depot. It can house more than 1 000 start-ups as well as companies Facebook, L’Oréal and Microsoft.

Application for the European Capital of Innovations awards were open for EU Member States with over 100 000 inhabitants and countries associated to Horizon 2020 (biggest EU research and innovation program that offers nearly €80 billion of funding over 7 years – 2014-2020)