ERC Starting Grant
European Research Council (European Commission)
Bottom-up grants for individual researchers starting their own independent team, in any field including social sciences and humanities. No predetermined research priorities.
- Indicative award
- up to $1.6M (total award)Page publishes up to EUR 1.5 million for 5 years, plus up to EUR 1 million additional where justified, or up to EUR 2 million for PIs relocating from non-associated third countries. USD maximum approximates the EUR 1.5 million headline; no USD figure is published.
- Timing
- Annual cycleAnnual cycle · OctPublished deadline: 2026-10-14 — 12 days awayStarting Grant 2027 call opens 22 July 2026 with a 14 October 2026 deadline, per the funder's page.
- Who can apply
- Early-career faculty, Postdoctoral
- Eligibility
- Principal investigator must have 0-10 years of experience since PhD award (extensions apply); any nationality; the research must be hosted by an institution in an EU Member State or a Horizon Europe associated country.
- SSWR clusters
- Topics
- frontier research · independent team · europe · horizon europe
- Apply at
- https://erc.europa.eu/apply-grant/starting-grant
- This entry
- Curated by the working group. Written 2026-08-07. Funder link last confirmed to resolve on 2026-09-25.
Amounts and dates on this page are indicative and are maintained by people rather than scraped. Funders change ceilings, windows and eligibility without notice; confirm all details at the source above before applying.
Also on the Research Design and Measurement shelf
- Evidence-based policy fundingArnold Ventures$250k–$5M · Rolling / open
- Federal prize competitions and challengesU.S. federal agencies (Challenge.gov)$5k–$500k · Rolling / open
- Crowdfunding for research projectsExperiment$1k–$25k · Rolling / open
- Grants.gov — the federal opportunity indexU.S. federal governmentNot a cash award · Rolling / open
- Restricted data access, summer program and data fellowshipsInter-university Consortium for Political and Social ResearchNot a cash award · Rolling / open · Jun, Jul, Aug
- Emergent VenturesMercatus Center, George Mason University$1k–$100k · Rolling / open