ERC PLUS GRANTS

Topic description

Expected Outcome: Objectives and profile of the ERC Plus Grant Principal Investigator The ERC Plus Grant supports outstanding Principal Investigators who address a major scientific challenge. Applications for ERC Plus Grants should be for projects that could not be carried out with a regular ERC grant. Applicants should explain how the proposed project aims go beyond those of a regular ERC project, for example, because they have a vision to transform their field or open a new field of research. Scholars at all career stages can apply for an ERC Plus Grant if they have an outstanding record of scientific achievement at the forefront of their field. Their intellectual leadership will be evaluated in comparison to peers at their own career stage. It is expected that a researcher may be the Principal Investigator of only one ERC Plus Grant in their lifetime. Applicants should be aware that every year, only some 30 ERC Plus Grants can be awarded across all fields and all career stages, compared to approximately 1000 Starting, Consolidator and Advanced Grants. This level of competitiveness should be taken into account when considering whether to submit an application. Size of ERC Plus Grants ERC Plus Grants may be awarded up to a maximum of EUR 7 000 000 for a minimum of four years or forty-eight months and up to seven years or eighty-four months. The maximum amount of the grant is not reduced pro rata temporis for proposals of shorter duration. No additional funding is provided for ERC Plus Grants. The ERC Plus Grant is awarded as a single lump sum contribution for the entirety of the project (broken down by beneficiaries – where applicable) based on a realistic estimate of the actual cost of the project, and fully covering the work to be implemented in the proposed action. For further information, please see the ERC Work Programme 2026 .

Conditions and documents

General conditions 1. Admissibility conditions: Proposal page limit and layout 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. 2. Eligibility 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 . 3. Proposal submission and description 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 4. Financial and operational capacity and exclusion 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. 5. Evaluation 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 ’. 6. Legal and financial set-up of the grants 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) . 7. Open Science Open science is a general principle of the Horizon Europe programme, and a core principle of the ERC. The ERC is committed to the principle of open access to the published output of research, including, in particular, peer-reviewed articles and monographs. It also supports the basic principle of open access to research data and data-related products such as computer code, algorithms, software, workflows, protocols, electronic notebooks, or any other forms of research output. The ERC considers that providing free online access to all these materials can be the most effective way of ensuring that the results of the research it funds can be accessed, read, and used as the basis for further advancement. Under Horizon Europe, all beneficiaries (including those of ERC grants) must ensure immediate open access to all peer-reviewed scientific publications relating to their results as set out in the Model Grant Agreement used for ERC actions. Open access must be provided with full re-use rights. Beneficiaries must ensure that they or the authors retain sufficient intellectual property rights to comply with their open access requirements. Publishing costs can be considered as eligible costs provided that the publishing venue (e.g., journal, book) is fully open access. In addition, beneficiaries of ERC grants funded under this Work Programme will be covered by the provisions on research data management as set out in the Model Grant Agreement used for ERC actions. In particular, whenever a project generates research data, beneficiaries are required to manage it in line with the principles of findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability as described by the ‘FAIR principles’ initiative and establish a data management plan within the first six months of project implementation. Open access to research data should be ensured under the principle 'as open as possible, as closed as necessary'. These provisions are designed to facilitate access, re-use and preservation of the research data generated during the ERC funded research work. ERC Work Programme 2026 Information for Applicants to the ERC Plus Grants 2026 call ERC Guide for Peer Reviewers (ERC Plus Grants 2026 call) ERC Historical Data on Personnel Costs for Lump Sum Evaluations ERC Rules of Submission and Evaluation under Horizon Europe Application and evaluation forms and model grant agreement (MGA): Application form templates — the application form specific to this call is available in the Submission System Standard application form (HE ERC PLUS) Model Grant Agreements (MGA) Multi & Mono Grant Agreement for Lump Sum Grants HE General MGA Additional documents: EU Financial Regulation 2024/2509 Rules for Legal Entity Validation, LEAR Appointment and Financial Capacity Assessment EU Grants AGA — Annotated Model Grant Agreement Funding & Tenders Portal Online Manual Funding & Tenders Portal Terms and Conditions Funding & Tenders Portal Privacy Statement List of Participating Countries in Horizon Europe

Budget overview

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  "budgetTopicActionMap": {
    "114501": [
      {
        "action": "ERC-2026-PLUS - HORIZON-ERC HORIZON ERC Grants",
        "budgetYearMap": {
          "2026": "210000000"
        },
        "deadlineDates": [
          "2026-09-02"
        ],
        "deadlineModel": "single-stage",
        "expectedGrants": 30,
        "maxContribution": 7000000,
        "minContribution": 0,
        "plannedOpeningDate": "2026-06-02"
      }
    ]
  },
  "budgetYearsColumns": [
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