ERC Starting Grants
The ERC Starting Grants are designed to support excellent Principal Investigators at the career stage at which they are starting their own independent research team or programme. Principal Investigators must demonstrate the ground-breaking nature, ambition, and feasibility of their research proposal.
Are you a talented early-career scientist who has already produced excellent supervised work, is ready to work independently and shows potential to be a research leader? The ERC Starting Grant could be for you.
Who can apply?
Researchers of any nationality with 2-7 years of experience since completion of PhD, a scientific track record showing great promise and an excellent research proposal can apply.
What proposals are eligible?
Criteria
Applications can be made in any field of research
The ERC's grants operate on a 'bottom-up' basis without predetermined priorities.
Location
Research must be conducted in a public or private research organisation (known as a host institution/HI). It could be the HI where the applicant already works, or any other HI located in one of the EU Member States or associated countries.
Host Institution
Applications for an ERC grant require a single Principal Investigator (PI) to submit the application on behalf of their host institution.
The host institution must offer suitable conditions for the PI to independently lead the research and manage funding. The PI can be hosted by any legal entity in an EU Member State or associated country.
The PI does not need to be employed by the host institution at the time of proposal submission, but a mutual agreement and commitment are necessary if the proposal is successful.
Team
ERC grants support projects carried out by an individual researcher who can employ researchers of any nationality as team members. It is also possible to have one or more team members located in a non-European country.
How much?
Starting Grants may be awarded up to € 1.5 million for a period of 5 years. (pro rata for projects of shorter duration). However, an additional € 1 million can be made available to cover eligible “start-up” costs for researchers moving from a third country to the EU or an associated country and/or the purchase of major equipment and/or access to large facilities and/or other major experimental and field work costs.
An ERC grant can cover up to 100% of the total eligible direct costs of the research plus a contribution of 25% of the total eligible costs towards indirect costs.
How to apply?
ERC grant applications can only be submitted in response to a Call for Proposals.
The ERC has yearly calls for proposals covering all scientific fields.
For an ERC grant application to be complete, it needs to include the administrative forms, the research proposal and the supplementary documents. The completed proposal should be submitted by the specified closing date.
Calls are published on this page, the EU Funding & Tenders Portal and in the Official Journal of the European Union.
How does the evaluation process work?
Proposals are evaluated by selected international peer reviewers who evaluate proposals on the basis of excellence as the sole criterion. It will be applied to the evaluation of both the research project and the Principal Investigator in conjunction.
Open call
- Call details: ERC-2025-StG
- Deadline date: 15 October 2024 - 17:00 Brussels time
- Please note: The submission link is not available at this moment. We are working to make it available as soon as possible.
- Meanwhile, see here the applicable proposal templates: Part B1, Part B2 and HI template letter.
Key documents
- ERC Work Programme 2025
- Info for applicants StG 2025
- Guide for peer reviewers
- Gender Equality Plans guidance
- Bias awareness
- Find more documents
