IRIS postdoctoral fellowship

IRIS is an MSCA postdoctoral programme COFUNDed by the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), and the European Commission under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (Horizon Europe). Running from 2025 to 2030, IRIS will recruit 36 international postdoctoral researchers—24 at ULB and 12 at VUB—through two open calls, each for a period of 30 months.

IRIS has a bottom-up approach, welcoming applications from all research fields with a focus on interdisciplinarity and regional priorities, aligned with the Brussels-Capital Region’s six societal challenges.

Call opening: 1st March 2026 at 14.00 CET 
Call closing: 30th June 2026 at 17.00 CET 
Eligibility check: 1 - 18 July 2026 
Evaluation by external international experts:  Up to December 2026
Results to applicants: Beginning of February 2027
Start of projects: 1st May 2027 (earliest) to 15th September 2027 (latest) 

Eligibility criteria

• Applicants of any age and any nationality are eligible to apply. 
• Eligible applicants are in possession of a doctoral degree or have successfully defended the doctoral thesis by the deadline of the call.
• Holders of a PhD degree with maximum 8 years of full-time research experience since obtaining the PhD (applicants can calculate research experience deducting periods of: maternity/parental leave, compulsory national military service, long term sick or family care leave, and procedures for obtaining refugee status)
• Eligible applicants must not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Belgium for more than 12 months during the last 3 years before the call deadline.

Requirements for IRIS

Confirmation of two supervisors who have the expertise, infrastructure, resources and capacity to supervise your fellowship.

Required documents

To apply for IRIS postdoctoral fellowship, you will need to prepare and upload the following documents in PDF format:

• Research proposal 
• Narrative CV
• Ethics self-assessment
• Reference letter
• Research experience and Mobility Calculator 
• Evidence of PhD (scanned document)
• Passport/Identification document (scanned document)

Please use the following mandatory templates in your application file:

• Research proposal template
• Narrative CV template
• Ethics self-assessment template
• Letter of recommendation
• Research experience and Mobility Calculator

Research proposals are developed and written by the applicant.

Submission Platform

Applications can be edited and re-submitted until the call closes.  Applications sent via e-mail, post, etc. will not be considered. It is the responsibility of the applicant to submit the application on time. The submission platform will be automatically deactivated at precisely 17:00 CET on 30 June 2026 and will not be able to accept further submissions. No extension will be granted.

Please, check the step by step procedure in the Guide for Applicants.

APPLY

If you experience any difficulty launching the platform, please close your browser and try again. If this is insufficient, please contact us at IRIS@ulb.be