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In 2025, North Macedonia continued to make progress in advancing its Smart Specialisation (S3) agenda, consolidating earlier strategic work while shifting decisively towards implementation. A major milestone was the publication and wide dissemination of the national Smart Specialisation Strategy 2024–2027 together with its accompanying Action Plan. Throughout the year, concrete steps were taken to operationalise the strategy, including the development of implementation activities and the strengthening of monitoring instruments.
The year was also marked by strong regional and European engagement. North Macedonia actively participated in regional S3 exchanges, notably the S3 Conference held in Brussels on 18 June 2025, as well as several Western Balkans policy events. These forums helped link national S3 implementation efforts with EU Smart Specialisation practice, cohesion policy principles and future funding opportunities, reinforcing the country’s alignment with European research and innovation frameworks.
Capacity building played a central role in this progress. Through the POLICY ANSWERS project, targeted support was provided to policymakers and civil servants throughout 2025, focusing on policy design, coordination and implementation. This support fed directly into national S3 work and strengthened institutional readiness for the next phase of implementation. These efforts will continue into early 2026 through follow-up POLICY ANSWERS activities.
At the local level, Smart Specialisation advanced through intensive stakeholder engagement and participatory policy design. A key driver of this progress was the Entrepreneurial Discovery Process (EDP) conducted under the POLICY ANSWERS project. Through a series of thematic workshops and a joint Policy Mix event, the EDP successfully engaged 156 stakeholders from across the quadruple helix—business, academia, public authorities and civil society.
Interactive methodologies such as the World Café method and the Start–Continue–Stop technique ensured that discussions moved beyond conceptual debate and resulted in concrete, actionable proposals. These inputs directly informed the development of the forthcoming S3 Action Plan 2026–2027, strengthening its relevance and ownership among stakeholders.
Looking ahead to 2026, the focus will be on rolling out the Action Plan measures, monitoring and evaluating early results through merit-based SMART indicators, and further strengthening implementation capacity. North Macedonia will also continue its active participation in the S3 Community of Practice and regional cooperation platforms supporting Horizon Europe and ERA alignment.
Importantly, the sustainability of these capacity-building efforts has now been secured through a landmark agreement between INOVA and the European Commission under the IPA Greening Business Facility. This agreement embeds the strategic training and policy design approaches initiated by POLICY ANSWERS into a permanent and systematic programme within the economy. As a result, North Macedonia has established a durable financial and operational framework to support the green transition roadmap and ensure continuous stakeholder dialogue and policy learning well into the future.
This article is based on input from POLICY ANSWERS partners in North Macedonia: MIR Foundation and Agency for Innovation Activity, Scientific and Technological Development and Entrepreneurship (INOVA).