StartUp Europe Awards presents a methodology of awards for startups at local, provincial, regional and national level, promoting open innovation and collaboration between the different actors of European ecosystems, through public-private partnerships to support entrepreneurs. It also creates a network of contacts that inspires and makes local startups visible so that through this network they can scale their services and products globally.

StartUp Europe Awards (SEUA) is an initiative of the European Commission and the Finnova Foundation, supported by the President of the European Parliament, the President of the Committee of the Regions, the Vice-President of the Economic and Social Committee and Members of the European Parliament. SEUA is sponsored by StartUp Europe Accelerator of the Finnova Foundation.

The initiative recognises the efforts of the most innovative European startups at five levels (local, provincial, regional, national and European) in 18 categories by 2017: Creative Industries, Energy, Fintech, Environment, e-Health, IoT, Smart Cities, Social Innovation, Tourism, Water, Agritech, Legal, Space, Cybersecurity, Climate, Fashion, Edtech and Gastronomy.

SEUA17 offers 4 special awards this year: Best Public Administration for startups, which recognizes the efforts of the public administrations that support entrepreneurship and innovation; Best Media Partner, which chooses the media most committed to promoting the initiative and participating startups; Best startup of LATAM and .

StartUp Europe Awards already has the support of the President of the Committee of the Regions, DG Enterprise and DG Information and Communication Technologies of the European Commission, in this moments 12 MEP are taking part of this initiative, the Italian, Brando Benifei, Romanian  Sorin Moisă, Estonian Kaja Kallas, Romanian Victor Negrescu, Spanish Esther Herranz, Latvian Inese Vaidere, Italian Marco Zanni, Bulgarian Eva Maydell,  Croatian Ivana Maletić, Spanish Gabriel Mato, Irish Seán Kelly and Dutchman Lambert van Nistelrooij.  The Spanish Pablo Zalba, president of Official Institute of Credit. All of them have joined StartUp Europe Awards as ambassadors, supporting local events with their presence and closely following the progress of the StartUp Europe Awards.

Its dimension has also attracted the attention of several international media outlets that have become Media Partners, as Forbes, Independent, Spanish Public Television, La Libre, o EUnews.

The StartUp Europe Awards 2016 final was held at the European Parliament and was honoured by President Antonio Tajani. The ceremony was also attended by the Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, Carlos Moedas; the President of the Committee of the Regions, Karl-Heinz Lambert; the Vice-President for Communication of the Economic and Social Committee, Gonçalo Lobo Xavier; the Director-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, Michel Servoz, the Spanish Ambassador in Belgium, and several members of the European Parliament.

Currently, all the national country manager are celebrating their owns final. The StartUp Europe Awards European winners are coming soon.