The CDTI Innovación presents the Spain Innovation Report 2026 to boost the attraction of investment and multinational R&D centers

CDTI Innovación has presented the Spain Innovation Report 2026 at an event held at the ICEX headquarters in Madrid. The report, developed for CDTI by the I+E Foundation—which brings together multinational companies with a strong presence and investment in Spain—analyzes the Spanish innovation ecosystem and provides international decision-makers with a rigorous and well-documented assessment of Spain’s attractiveness as a destination for R&D investment and the establishment of globally oriented innovation centers.

The event was closed by the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Universities, Juan Cruz Cigudosa, and featured the participation of the Director General of CDTI, José Moisés Martín Carretero, who moderated a roundtable on the key factors of R&D in Spain from an international perspective, with executives from HP Iberia, Ericsson Spain and Portugal, and IBM Spain.

The Spain Innovation Report 2026 confirms a unique moment for the Spanish economy. Spain has moved beyond being merely an attractive market to becoming a hub from which large multinational companies develop innovation with global reach. Companies from sectors as diverse as telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity have chosen Spain to establish R&D centers that operate across their international structures. This transformation is the result of years of innovation support policies and an ecosystem that CDTI, together with other stakeholders, has helped to build and strengthen.

The report is structured around three pillars: Spain’s strengths in attracting investment in terms of economic potential, infrastructure, human capital, and emerging sectors (“Spain to come”); the conditions, facilities, and incentives it offers for innovation and project development (“Spain to stay”); and its strategic position as a hub connecting Europe, Latin America, and North Africa (“Spain to start”). Each of these pillars is directly aligned with the vectors of CDTI Innovación’s 2024–2027 Strategic Plan, which guides the Center’s activity toward strengthening Spain’s innovation ecosystem and enhancing its international projection.

Among the highlights, the report notes Spain’s position as the fourth-largest economy in the European Union and the twelfth in the world, with four consecutive years of attracting foreign direct investment exceeding €30 billion. The country also boasts one of the most extensive fiber optic networks in Europe, urban 5G coverage above the European average, and R&D investment that in 2024 grew at nearly twice the continental average. Spain is also the third-largest recipient of Horizon Europe funding and offers one of the most competitive R&D tax incentive frameworks in Europe.

The report also identifies sectors in which Spain already holds a leading position or shows strong potential for leadership: renewable energy and green hydrogen, biotechnology and the pharmaceutical industry, the aerospace industry, and cybersecurity. CDTI Innovación focuses a central part of its activity on these areas through dedicated funding calls, participation in major European initiatives, and its international CDTI-SOST office network, present in ten countries and covering more than fifty markets.

The Spain Innovation Report 2026 provides international site selection decision-makers with solid, well-documented data to consider Spain as a priority location for their R&D centers, given the country’s strengths in talent, infrastructure, incentives, ecosystem, and strategic positioning to ensure optimal results. CDTI Innovación, as a key player in promoting growth based on technological innovation and in financing business R&D in Spain, is ideally positioned to support multinational companies seeking a reliable partner country with the necessary capabilities and a rapidly expanding ecosystem of excellence.

The full report is available at this link:

CDTI Innovación

The Centre for the Development of Technology and Innovation (CDTI E.P.E.) is the innovation agency of the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, whose objective is to promote technological innovation in the business sector. CDTI’s mission is to ensure that Spain’s business fabric generates and transforms scientific and technical knowledge into globally competitive, sustainable, and inclusive growth. In 2025, within the framework of its 2024–2027 Strategic Plan, CDTI provided more than €2 billion in support to Spanish companies and startups