On 20 July 2026 the European Commission adopted the Work Programme 2027 of the European Research Council (ERC), the document setting out the funding opportunities, grant budgets, call timetable and application rules for the coming year. Drawn up by the ERC Scientific Council and formally adopted by the Commission, it will be the last work programme of Horizon Europe.
With an overall budget of around €2.8 billion, the Work Programme 2027 is one of the most significant events of the year for European research. Its adoption also comes at a moment of transition: as Horizon Europe approaches its final year, the ERC is introducing a number of adjustments to its rules in order to address the steady growth in the number of applications and the increasing diversity of researchers’ career paths, while at the same time preparing the ground for the next framework programme.
What the Work Programme funds
The Work Programme 2027 covers the five main frontier research funding schemes: Starting Grant, Consolidator Grant, Advanced Grant, Synergy Grant and ERC Plus Grant. To these is added theProof of Concept, a grant addressed to ERC grantees who wish to explore the commercial and social innovation potential of results obtained within an already funded project.
Across the five main schemes, the ERC expects to fund approximately 1,058 grants: 373 Starting Grants, 296 Consolidator Grants, 311 Advanced Grants, 48 Synergy Grants and 30 ERC Plus Grants. To these are added around 400 Proof of Concept grants, for which a total budget of €60 million is foreseen. As always with the ERC, no thematic priorities are set, proposals may cover any field of research following the traditional bottom-up approach and excellence remains the sole evaluation criterion. The competitions are spread over roughly a year, with calls opening between July 2026 and June 2027:
- Starting Grant — opened on 22 July 2026, deadline 14 October 2026
- Consolidator Grant — opens 24 September 2026, deadline 12 January 2027
- Synergy Grant — opens 17 February 2027, deadline 11 May 2027
- Advanced Grant — opens 27 May 2027, deadline 26 August 2027
- ERC Plus Grant — opens 1 June 2027, deadline 1 September 2027
The opening of the Synergy Grant call was deliberately postponed to February 2027 in order to safeguard the quality of the evaluation process, given the growing workload on reviewers and on the ERC Executive Agency.
Broader eligibility windows
The most substantial change concerns the eligibility requirements for Starting and Consolidator Grants. For the Starting Grant, applicants must have defended their doctoral thesis no more than ten years before 1 January 2027; for the Consolidator Grant, the defence must have taken place between five and fifteen years before the same date. Previously, the eligibility windows were significantly narrower: two to seven years and seven to twelve years respectively from the award of the doctorate.
The rationale takes into account the growing diversity of academic career paths, which can vary significantly across countries and disciplines: scientific independence may in fact be reached at different moments in a career, as a path in mathematics or law may develop along very different timelines from those in the life sciences or engineering. Extensions of the eligibility windows remain possible in duly documented circumstances, such as parental leave, long-term illness or clinical training.
With the introduction of the new windows, it is also established that a researcher may receive, over the course of their career, at most one Starting Grant and one Consolidator Grant.
Limits on applications
To manage the growth in the number of applications against a substantially unchanged budget, the work programme also introduces new limits on the submission of proposals. A Principal Investigator (PI) may have only one proposal for an ERC main grant under evaluation at any given time and may submit only one eligible proposal to one of the main grants under the Work Programme 2027. Proof of Concept grants do not fall under these limitations; moreover, if a proposal is declared ineligible, another one may be submitted. Those who have already been awarded a Starting or a Consolidator Grant may not submit a new application to the same scheme. In addition, those who submitted eligible proposals to the Advanced or ERC Plus 2026 calls may not take part in the Synergy Grant 2027.
For Synergy Grants, particularly stringent rules apply: all Principal Investigators must maintain the eligibility requirements throughout the entire evaluation process and for the whole duration of the project; if a single one is declared ineligible, the entire proposal falls. It should nevertheless be noted that the stricter resubmission restrictions announced by the ERC in April 2026 were subsequently revised in part. Following reactions from the research community, the Scientific Council decided to maintain for Starting, Consolidator, Advanced and ERC Plus Grants the resubmission rules already applied in previous years. Resubmission restrictions have instead been confirmed for Synergy Grants.
Why it matters
For universities, research centres and researchers, the Work Programme 2027 represents both an opportunity and an exercise in strategic planning. The broader eligibility windows for Starting and Consolidator Grants open access to the ERC to researchers who, under the previous rules, would have remained excluded, while the new limits on the number of applications make it even more important to choose carefully the most appropriate scheme and the right moment to submit a proposal.
The programme also confirms the EU’s ambition to attract talent from all over the world. Under the Choose Europe initiative, applicants to Starting, Consolidator and Advanced Grants who relocate from a non-associated third country to the EU or to an Associated Country in order to carry out their ERC project can request up to €2 million in additional funding.
For 2027, the ERC Plus Grant is also confirmed for the second consecutive year. Open to researchers at any career stage, the scheme is intended for particularly ambitious projects that address a major scientific challenge and that, in terms of scope and vision, could not be carried out through an ordinary ERC grant.
Looking ahead
As the last work programme of the current Horizon Europe cycle, the Work Programme 2027 closes a period in which more than €16 billion in total has been allocated to the ERC. The measures introduced this year, broader access on the one hand and greater selectivity in the submission of applications on the other, anticipate some of the questions that will accompany the debate on funding frontier research under the next framework programme: how to respond to growing demand while at the same time ensuring adequate resources and a sustainable, effective evaluation system.
For further information, click here, or consult the full text of the ERC Work Programme 2027.