The European Research Council – ERC, has published information about the 2025 calls for proposals with deadlines in autumn 2024 and in 2025.
ATTENTION: Conversely to previous years, deadline for ERC Consolidator is in January 2025.
ATTENTION: In 2024, ERC introduced significant changes to the proposal structure and slight changes
                      to the evaluation logic, these changes remain in place in 2025 – see below.

If you consider submitting a project proposal to any of the upcoming ERC calls – especially Starting or Synergy, please contact IMMEDIATELY the Project Management Department (Ludmila Součková, ludmila.souckova@natur.cuni.cz), if you aren’t already in touch with us.

Please, keep in mind that according to Rector’s Directive n. 9/2023, at least 1 month before the relevant deadline, an agreement must be reached between the applicant, the relevant department and the faculty management on the conditions under which the project will be carried out if successful in the ERC competition and this agreement must be approved by the Dean Advisory Board (Kolegium děkana); and a preliminary version of the full proposal must be sent to the University’s rectorate via the project department of the faculty also 1 month before the relevant deadline.

Please, contact us also if you plan or consider applying for an ERC grant in a longer time frame (e.g. in 1–2 years), so that you can take advantage of the support offered to ERC applicants.
About ERC on Faculty of Science website – including information about support for (potential) applicants.

ERC calls of the Work Programme 2025

  • ​ERC Starting Grants
    For Principal Investigators 2–7 years after PhD (reference date 1 January 2025)
    who are starting their own independent research team.
    ► Maximal project duration 5 years.
    ► Maximal grant amount EUR 1.5 million (plus up to EUR 1 million “additional funding” e.g., for purchase of major equipment or extensive fieldwork).
    ► Opening: 10. 7. 2024.
    ► Deadline: 15. 10. 2024.
    ► Faculty news about the call 
         – including internal guidelines and earlier internal deadlines.
     
  • ERC Synergy Grants
    Multidisciplinary projects of 2–4 Principal Investigators. The projects must demonstrate the added value of the collaboration that could lead to breakthroughs which would be impossible by the individual PIs working alone. Each of the PIs must have a track record making them a competitive applicant for ERC Starting, Consolidator or Advanced grant depending on their career stage.
    ► Maximal project duration 6 years.
    ► Maximal grant amount EUR 10 million (plus up to EUR 4 million “additional funding” e.g., for purchase of major equipment or extensive fieldwork).
    ► Opening: 11. 7. 2024.
    ► Deadline: 6. 11. 2024.
    ► Faculty news about the call 
         – including internal guidelines and earlier internal deadlines.
     
  • ERC Consolidator Grants
    For Principal Investigators 7–12 years after PhD (reference date 1 January 2025)
    who already have a “core” of their own independent research team, but still need to consolidate it.
    ► Maximal project duration 5 years.
    ► Maximal grant amount EUR 2 million (plus up to EUR 1 million “additional funding” e.g., for purchase of major equipment or extensive fieldwork).
    ► Opening: 26. 9. 2024.
    ► ATTENTION, CHANGE, deadline: 14. 1. 2025.
    ► Faculty news about the call 
         – including internal guidelines and earlier internal deadlines.
     
  • ERC Advanced Grants
    For internationally recognised scientists (usually more than 12 years after PhD) who are active in research and are significantly influencing their research field.
    ► Maximal project duration 5 years.
    ► Maximal grant amount EUR 2.5 million (plus up to EUR 1 million “additional funding” e.g., for purchase of major equipment or extensive fieldwork).
    ► Opening: 22. 5. 2025.
    ► Deadline: 28. 8. 2025.
     
  • ERC Proof of Concept Grants
    Only for successful ERC grantees to verify innovation potential of results or ideas arising from a funded ERC project.
    ► Deadlines: 13. 3. 2025, 18. 9. 2025.
     

What is ERC?

ERC funds research that is expected to lead to advances at the frontiers of knowledge. The grants support excellent Principal investigators (PIs) and their research teams. The PI must demonstrate ground-breaking nature of the proposal, it must not be a mere continuation of previous achievements. The ERC research grants operate on a "bottom-up" basis without predetermined priorities. ERC grantees obtain long-term funding giving them a lot of flexibility in pursuing their research goals.

Restriction of resubmissions
PI whose proposal is evaluated as category C may not apply for an ERC grant in the 2 following years. PI whose proposal is evaluated as category B in the Step 1 of the evaluation may not apply for an ERC grant in the 1 following year.

About ERC on Faculty of Science website

 

Changes in 2025 and changes still in force from 2024

  • Curriculum Vitae and Track Recordare joint into a single section up to 4 pages in length.
  • In all types of grants, the PI should present in the CV and Track record section a list of up to 10 research outputs(e.g.: publications, articles deposited in a publicly available preprint server, books, book chapters, conference proceedings, data sets, software, patents, licenses, standards, start-up businesses…).
    (Before 2024, it was up to 5 selected publications in case of Starting, and up to 10 selected publications in Consolidator and Advanced.)
    In case of Advanced, it is no-longer required that only results from the last 10 years should be presented, however, there emphasis on more recent
  • Strong emphasis is put on the PIs providing factual explanationof the significance of the selected outputs, how it impacted their research field, and how it demonstrates their capacity to successfully carry out the proposed project. (Conversely, quantitative indicators, like number of publications or citations, shouldn’t play a significant role in the evaluation.)
    See also Evaluation of research proposals: the why and what of the ERC's recent changes (source).
  • The “Funding ID”section (overview of grants the PI is currently holding or applying for) in newly part of the “Scientific Proposal” (Part B2), and therefore, will be visible for the evaluators only in Step 2 of the evaluation.
  • Small changes of the evaluation elements(questions the evaluators are asked) took place, e.g.:
    ► In case of the Research Project, it is evaluated whether the proposed research does “address important scientific challenges” (formerly, it was just “address important challenges”).
    ► In case of Advanced PIs, the “leadership in the training and advancement of young scientists” is no longer part of the evaluation criteria.
  • For Starting, Consolidator, and Advanced, a maximum of 44 proposalsper ERC evaluation panel will be retained for the Step 2 of the evaluation. It is possible for a proposal to be evaluated as category A in the Step 1 of the evaluation and not be retained for the Step 2 – in this case, the PI will be able to resubmit the proposal the following year.
  • In case of Starting and Consolidator, the eligibility periodcan be can be extended, among others, also in cases of documented reduced amount of working time due to disability, and documented inability to work due to major disasters.
  • In case of Starting and Consolidator, a separate form “Template for requesting an extension of the eligibility period” is included in the templates to be used by researchers who request extension of their eligibility period. This filled document is then uploaded as an annex of the application.
  • In case of Synergy, an excel table newly included in the templates should be used to describe the resources needed for each PI including time commitment and, if applicable, justification of the requested “additional funding”.
  • The Advanced call is implemented under the lump sum funding model: the budget must be justified in slightly more detail at the proposal stage, but then no actual costs need to be reported at the implementation stage (only project activities).
    Therefore, there have been some changes regarding the budget table and justification (“Section 3 – Budget” filled online), and an excel table is included in the templates where information on depreciation and usage of all equipment items must be filled in.
  • There has been a slight revision of the structure of the evaluation panels, their description and keywords, namely for:
    PE6: Computer Science and Informatics;
    LS3: Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and Regeneration;
    LS5: Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System;
    SH3: The Social World and Its Interactions;
    SH4: The Human Mind and Its Complexity;
    SH5 Texts and Concepts.
    See the ERC Work Programme 2025, Annex 1 (from p. 65).
  • And whoever has read this far gets a lollipop from me.

 

News published by Ludmila Součková on 10. 7. 2024.

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