Investigator-driven frontier research
Funds the researcher, not the project and not the company.
European Research Council grants back individual principal investigators to pursue ambitious research of their own design, hosted by an institution. The only criterion is scientific excellence: no consortium, no impact pathway, no market.
ERC grants at a glance
- Applicant
- An individual principal investigator
- Host
- An institution in an EU or associated country
- Schemes
- Starting, Consolidator, Advanced, and Synergy for small teams
- Sole criterion
- Scientific excellence
- Consortium
- Not required
What applicants get wrong
Eligibility is a window measured in years since your PhD
Which scheme you may apply to is determined by time elapsed since your doctorate, with defined extensions for parental leave and certain other circumstances: a formal condition, not a preference, and one that closes. Researchers routinely discover they have aged out of Starting, or that an extension they were entitled to was never claimed. Establish the window before writing anything.
Who it is for
Formal eligibility is set by the call text and changes between rounds. This is the shape of a typical applicant.
- Principal investigators at any career stage
- Researchers with a host institution in an eligible country
- Any field, including the humanities and social sciences
- Ambitious, high-risk research agendas
This funds part of the project, not all of it
Work out what you would need to fund yourself, and what typically covers the gap.
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