ERC PLUS GRANTS

The conditions specific to ERC grants are described in the ERC Work Programme 2026 under the heading 'Admissibility, Eligibility, Resubmission Restrictions' and in the ERC Rules of Submission and Evaluation under Horizon Europe. An overview is provided below:

Admissibility: A proposal must be complete (including all sections under 1.5 Proposal Submission and Description section of the ERC Work Programme 2026), readable and accessible. It must be submitted electronically by a Principal Investigator before the respective call deadline. Proposals that do not meet these criteria or do not include a statement of support (host institution support letter) may be declared inadmissible.

The content of the proposal must relate to the objectives and to the grant type set out in the call, as defined in the ERC Work Programme 2026 (section 1.1 Objectives of ERC Grant Schemes). If a proposal is considered not to relate to the objectives of the grant or call for proposals, it will be declared ineligible.

Eligible Principal Investigators: The ERC grant schemes are open to researchers of any age and nationality, residing anywhere in the world at the time of application, and wishing to carry out their research in one of the EU or Associated Country-based Host Institutions (see Annex 3 of the ERC Work Programme 2026).

All Principal Investigators funded through an ERC Plus Grant must spend a minimum of 50% of their working time in an EU Member State or Associated Country and a minimum of 30% of their working time on the ERC project.

Eligible Host Institution: Any type of legal entity, public or private, including a university, a research organisation or an undertaking can host a Principal Investigator and their team. The host institution (Applicant Legal Entity) must engage and host the Principal Investigator for at least the duration of the project, as defined in the grant agreement. It must be established either in an EU Member State or an Associated Country (see Annex 3 of the ERC Work Programme 2026) as a legal entity created under national law, or it may be an international European research organisation (such as CERN, EMBL, etc.), or any other entity created under EU law. International organisations with headquarters in an EU Member State or an Associated Country shall be deemed to be established in that Member State or Associated Country.

Eligible countries:

The conditions specific to the ERC are described in the ERC Work Programme 2026 under the heading 'Admissibility, eligibility and resubmission restrictions' and in Annex 3. An overview is provided below:

The ERC actions are open to researchers of any age and nationality, residing anywhere in the world at the time of application, and wishing to carry out their research in one of the EU Member State or Associated Country-based Host Institutions (see Annex 3 of the ERC Work Programme 2026). Principal Investigators funded through the ERC frontier research grants shall spend a minimum percentage of their working time on the ERC project (30% for the ERC Plus Grant) and a minimum percentage of their working time in an EU Member State or an Associated Country (50%).

Eligible Scientific Field: Applications in any field of science are eligible for the ERC funding and the ERC welcomes research proposals of an interdisciplinary nature.

Restrictions on applications: Given the large number of applications received every year, and the need to uphold the quality and integrity of the evaluation process, restrictions apply. For further details please consult the ERC Work Programme 2026, heading 'Restrictions on applications’ and the corresponding Table 6 or the Frequently Asked Questions.

Proposals for ERC Plus Grant calls are submitted by the Principal Investigator, on behalf of the Host Institution (also referred to as the applicant legal entity); the responsibility for the research conducted as part of the project rests with the Principal Investigator.

The applicant shall choose a primary evaluation panel (as listed in Annex 1 in the ERC Work Programme 2026) and may also list a secondary evaluation panel. The applicant should indicate when they believe that the proposal is of a cross-panel or cross-domain nature.

Complete proposals must be submitted via the submission tool available through the Funding & Tenders Portal (to access the submission tool, you need to register first). More information can be found in the ERC Plus Information for Applicants and in the ERC Work Programme 2026 under the heading ‘Proposal Submission and Description’.

Proposals that do not include some or all of the sections listed below may be declared inadmissible. A complete proposal consists of the following elements (with the following page limits):

· The Administrative form Part A (including the Ethics Issues Table and the Budget Section) is available in the submission tool below. The Budget and Resources section, and the Depreciation costs section are part of this online form Part A. For more details, please refer to section 2.2 of the ERC Information for Applicants.

· Parts B (Part I of the Scientific Proposal, Statement of Vision, Curriculum Vitae and Track Record, Part II of the Scientific Proposal) and the Host Institution Support Letter templates are provided in the submission system as word-templates (they should be completed, uploaded and submitted via the submission tool as PDF files).

· Part I of the Scientific Proposal: up to 5 pages

· Part II of the Scientific Proposal: up to 7 pages

· Curriculum Vitae and Track Record: up to 4 pages

· Statement of Vision: up to 2 pages

· Resources and Time Commitment: up to 2 pages

· Host Institution Support Letter

· Ethics Issues Table

Financial capacity: Please refer to the ERC Rules of submission and evaluation under Horizon Europe section 4, Award Decision and Preparation of Grant Agreements.

Operational capacity: As indicated in the ERC Work Programme 2026, page 41 (footnote 79): Applicants that are subject to the administrative sanction of exclusion or are in one of the exclusion situations set out by the EU Financial Regulation are banned from receiving EU grants and can NOT participate. See articles 136 and 141 of the EU Financial Regulation, as well as important information on possible exclusion and registration of economic operators in the Commission’s Early Detection and Exclusion System (EDES) on the final page of this Work Programme.

Security: Please refer to the ERC Work Programme 2026, Annex 4.

Exclusion: Please refer to the ERC Work Programme 2026, page 73 : Applicants that are subject to the administrative sanctions of exclusion or are in one of the exclusion situations set out by the Financial Regulation are banned from receiving EU grants and can NOT participate.

The conditions specific to ERC are described in the ERC Work Programme 2026 under the heading 'Evaluation criterion, elements and procedure’ and in the ERC Rules of Submission and Evaluation under Horizon Europe, section 3.6 The evaluation of ERC grants. An overview is provided below:

Evaluation criteria

For all the main grants, excellence is the sole criterion of evaluation. The panels will primarily evaluate: the ground-breaking nature and ambition of the research project and, at the same time, the intellectual capacity and creativity of the Principal Investigator, with a focus on the extent to which the PI has the required scientific expertise and capacity to successfully execute the project. For ERC Plus Grants the past achievements of the applicants will be given more importance than for regular grants: the applicants are expected to be leaders in their field. The detailed evaluation elements applying to the excellence of the research project and the Principal Investigator are set out in the ERC Work Programme 2026.

Evaluation procedure

The proposal is evaluated in two steps with interviews taking place at Step 2. For the ERC Plus, the evaluation at Step 1 is carried out by peer review panels as listed in Annex 1 of the ERC Work Programme 2026. At Step 2, the complete research proposals are further assessed by 3-4 interdisciplinary panels with balanced representation from all scientific domains. The panels may be assisted by independent external experts working remotely.

Evaluation Outcome

At the end of Step 1 of the evaluation, the panels mark each proposal as:

· ‘retained’ (the proposal is of sufficient quality to pass to Step 2 of the evaluation) or

· ‘not retained’ (the quality may be high but not sufficient to pass to Step 2 of the evaluation).

At the end of Step 2 of the evaluation, the proposal receives one of the following scores:

A: the proposal fully meets the excellence criterion and is recommended for funding should sufficient funds be available;

B: the proposal meets some but not all elements of the excellence criterion and will not be funded.

Indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement:

Please refer to the ERC Work Programme 2026 under the heading 'Table 1: Provisional Details on the Main Calls for Proposals under Work Programme 2026’.

Please refer to the Multi & Mono Grant Agreement for Lump Sum Grants and Annex 5 of the MGA used for ERC actions under Horizon Europe (HE General MGA).