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Up to €1.5M over 5 years
Plus up to €1M for justified extra costs; 2027 call closed 14 Oct 2026Up to €1.5M over five years for an early-career researcher to build their own team
AI-generated cover illustration. Programme details are sourced separately below.
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Dates come from the official programme and portal records shown below.
Recorded editorial check · yesterday (9 Nov 2026)
The ERC Starting Grant pays up to €1.5 million over five years for a researcher who finished their PhD in the last ten years to run their own frontier-research project and team at a host institution in the EU or an associated country. Up to €1 million more can be requested for justified costs such as major equipment, and up to €2 million for a researcher moving to Europe from elsewhere. The grant reimburses actual costs: 100% of eligible direct costs plus a 25% flat rate for indirect costs.
The ERC Work Programme 2027 widened the eligibility window. For ERC-2027-StG, the PhD must have been defended between 1 January 2017 and 31 December 2026, with documented extensions for maternity (18 months per child), parental leave, long illness, national service and clinical training. Anyone who has already held a Starting Grant cannot apply again for one.
ERC-2027-StG opened on 22 July 2026 and closed on 14 October 2026, with an indicative €594.1 million for about 373 grants. Step 1 results are due 11 May 2027, final results 24 August 2027 and grant signature around 22 December 2027. The odds are tough: the 2026 call funded 421 of 4,807 proposals, an 8.8% success rate, worth €705 million.
This is a research grant for a person, not money for a company.
This describes the stated cohort and evaluation stage, rather than the outcome of a future application.
Check the eligibility window against your PhD defence date, including any extensions you can document.
Agree the host institution and obtain its signed support letter.
Write the proposal: the extended synopsis (Part B1, scored at step 1 with your CV and track record) and the full scientific proposal (Part B2).
Submit on the EU Funding & Tenders Portal before the call deadline (17:00 Brussels time).
If you pass step 1, prepare for the interview with the evaluation panel in Brussels at step 2.
Up to €1.5 million for up to five years. You can request up to €1 million more for justified costs, or up to €2 million if you are moving to Europe from outside the EU and associated countries to take up the grant.
Researchers whose first PhD was defended between 1 January 2017 and 31 December 2026, extended for documented maternity (18 months per child), parental leave, long-term illness, national service or clinical training. Past Starting Grant holders cannot apply again.
The 2026 call funded 421 of 4,807 proposals, an 8.8% success rate, worth €705 million (ERC statistics, September 2026).
The ERC funds a principal investigator at a host institution in the EU or an associated country. Most hosts are universities and research organisations. The grant pays for research, not for building a company; spin-out work is funded later through ERC Proof of Concept and the EIC.
ERC-2027-StG closed on 14 October 2026. The next Starting Grant call will be set in the ERC Work Programme 2028, which is not yet published.
Programme facts, dates and figures checked against the official sources on 2026-11-09.
Research updated: 2026-11-09
Official call documents take precedence. A listed reference is not necessarily indexed in full by the AI.
Read the complete text reference →
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