European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grants Open for Applications

A total of €584 million is available for the awards to support mid-career researchers of any nationality who wish to carry out frontier research, in any field or subject, in EU Member States or associated countries.

The European Research Council (ERC) is part of the Pillar I (Excellent Science) strand of Horizon Europe. The ERC provides attractive, long-term funding to support excellent investigators and their research teams to pursue ground-breaking, high gain and high risk research.

The ERC operates five main grant programmes to support projects and investigators at progressive stages of development: Starting Grants, Proof of Concept Grants, Consolidator Grants, Advanced Grants and Synergy Grants.

The 2024 edition of the ERC Consolidator Grants are now open for applications. Eligible Principal Investigators (PIs) should have successfully defended their first PhD more than seven and less than 12 years prior to the call for proposals.

Investigators must have already shown research independence and evidence of maturity, such as by having produced several important publications without the participation of their PhD supervisor. PIs must intend to spend at least 40% of their working time on the ERC project and at least 50% of their time in an EU Member State or associated country.

PIs of any age and nationality may apply to carry out research in a host institution established in an EU Member State or associated country. The researcher may be residing in any country in the world at the time of application, but the host institution must be in an EU Member state or associated country.

Applicants may request up to a maximum of €2 million for a period of five years, in addition to a maximum of €1 million in additional start-up costs to move country, purchase major equipment or access large facilities.

Applications must be submitted by the 12 December 2023 (17:00 Brussels time) deadline.

(This report was the subject of a ResearchConnect Newsflash.)