European Research Council (ERC)
The European Research Council (ERC) awards grants, through a challenging European competition, for excellent scientific research across all fields, initiated/driven by investigators. It thus supports ‘bottom-up’ research without predetermined priorities of a ground-breaking nature.
Your NCP contact for this programme
Margot Beereboom
margot.beereboom@fwo.be
+32 2 550 15 76
About this programme
The European Research Council (ERC) awards grants, through a challenging European competition, for excellent scientific research across all fields, initiated/driven by investigators. It thus supports ‘bottom-up’ research without predetermined priorities of a ground-breaking nature.
There are three types of grants which each support another phase in a researcher’s career, going from two years after the award of the PhD to an established research leader (Starting, Consolidator and Advanced grants). The Synergy grants address ambitious research problems with a group of two to four Principal Investigators (PIs) and their teams. The Proof of Concept grant is short-term complementary funding for recipients of the previous four main types of grants.
The 2024 work programme includes a call for each main frontier research grant, i.e. Starting, Consolidator, Advanced and Synergy Grant plus a call for complementary funding for ERC Principal Investigators, i.e. Proof of Concept Grant with two submission deadlines and a prize contest for the Public Engagement with Research award.
The 2025 work programme includes a call for each main frontier research grant, i.e. Starting, Consolidator, Advanced and Synergy Grant, plus a call for complementary funding for ERC Principal Investigators, i.e. the Proof of Concept Grant with two submission deadlines. The work programme contains also several other actions including public procurement, e.g. support to programme monitoring and evaluation, support to the Europe PMC initiative and assessment of the scientific impact of ERC-funded research.
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Work Programme & Calls
Infosheets
Infosheets contain edited content on aspects related to this programme. They are reviewed at least yearly.
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No infosheets available for this domain
Related links
Related links are easy pointers towards external information. We curate the list, but are not liable for the destinations.
- Background to lump sums introduction - ERC Advanced Grants 2024 call
- Webinar on lump sums funding - ERC Advanced Grant 2024 call
- ERC work programme 2024
- ERC work programme 2024 calls webinar
- Database ERC panel members
- ERC projects and statistics
- EURAXESS portal: ERC PhD and postdoc vacancies
- Showcase of citizen science by ERC grantees and other EU-funded projects
- Citizen Science and Frontier Research: ERC Annual Event 2022
- Citizen science in ERC projects
- ERC communication guidance
- ERC open science guidance
- ERC ethics guidance
- ERC FAQs
- ERC Gender Equality Plan 2021-2027
- ERC EGD projects – Cordis Results Pack
- ERC
- ERC projects COVID-19
- ERC COVID-19 portal
- Association of ERC Grantees
- ERC gender projects - Cordis Results Pack
Documents
Documents contain additional information related to this programme, and are similar to related links.
- ERC report on the evaluation of research proposals: the why and what of the ERC's recent changes
- ERC Study on the readiness of research data and literature repositories to facilitate compliance with the Open Science Horizon Europe MGA requirements
- Assessing the Influence of ERC-funded Research on Patented Inventions – Final report
- Mapping of ERC funded research in Horizon 2020 (2014-2020) - factsheets
Testimonial
Autoship - a new and durable way of freight transport
Autoship is, as the name suggests, an acronym for autonomous ship. Just like with self-driving cars, the possibilities of an unmanned boat seem endless. It can create more efficient freight transport, around the clock deliveries and these are just a few of the examples. The project has two societal challenges.
At first, De Vlaamse Waterweg was a bit hesitant as their experience with FP7 or Horizon 2020 projects was limited and they had not been very successful up until then. The fact that they were already doing basic research on the topic of autonomous boats, and the administrative help of NCP FLanders helped De Vlaamse waterweg to cross the line and get involved.
