Advanced Grant

ERC Advanced Grant Call supports excellent Principal Investigators who have already shown a record which identifies them as an exceptional leader in terms of originality and significance of their research contributions. Principal Investigators must demonstrate the ground-breaking nature, ambition, and feasibility of their research proposal.

Advanced Grants may be awarded up to a maximum of 2.5 Million Euros for a period of 5 years. However, this budget may go up to a maximum of 3.5 Million Euros to cover the purchase of major equipment and/or, access to large facilities and/or, other major experimental and field work costs. The budget may go up to 4.5 Million Euros for eligible "start-up" costs for Principal Investigators moving to the EU or an Associated Country like Turkiye from elsewhere as a consequence of receiving the ERC grant.

Contact:

For your questions regarding the call, to receive support in preparing your proposal and to discuss the relevance of your project idea please contact us, the ERC National Contact Points at TÜBİTAK, via ncperc@tubitak.gov.tr.

Information Regarding the Upcoming ERC-2026-AdG Call

The ERC-2026-AdG call is expected to open on 28 May 2026 and close on 27 August 2026.

Note 1: Researchers intending to apply to the call are advised to begin their preparations based on the updated ERC 2026 Work Programme.

Note 2: Starting from the 2026 calls (ERC Work Programme 2026), the ERC Scientific Council has simplified the application format and reduced the page limits. Accordingly:

Part I of the Scientific Proposal (formerly, the Extended Synopsis) should describe the overall idea of the proposed research project, including the current state of knowledge and how the research will contribute to the field, the scientific questions the project will attempt to answer, the objectives of the project, and the overall approach or research strategy to achieve those objectives. As in the past, the length of this section will be limited to five pages.
Part II of the Scientific Proposal should describe the implementation in detail: the research methodology, work plan, risk assessment and mitigating measures, justification for the requested budget and resources, and any further necessary background not included in Part I. The length of this section, will now be limited to seven pages for Starting, Consolidator, and Advanced Grant applications.

The ERC Scientific Council also announced that the feasibility will no longer be assessed at Step 1; thus, Part I of the Scientific Proposal should no longer include details on the feasibility of the scientific approach but present a convincing overall research strategy. All aspects relating to feasibility should be covered in Part II of the Scientific Proposal. The full statement by the Council can be accessed here.

Note 3: For your preparations for the ERC-2026-AdG call, you may apply to TÜBİTAK’s ERC Principal Investigator Development Programme (EBAG) to receive support from experts or expert organisations during your project preparation process.

Projects applying to the EBAG programme are expected to meet the maturity level required to address the ERC’s Step 1 evaluation criteria (a draft B1 form will be requested at the time of application). If your application is approved, you may:
(1) participate in training on proposal writing and presentation,
(2) receive preliminary project evaluation support (including the ERC Mentorship Initiative for both expert organisations and individual experts),
(3) receive interview training support if you are invited to the Step 2 evaluation.

Following the approval of your general application, a separate sub-application must be submitted for each service procurement in line with TÜBİTAK’s criteria. The EBAG programme is currently accepting applications for the ERC-2026-AdG call. Applications will be accepted until 13 July 2026, which is no later than 45 days before the call deadline. Evaluations are conducted on a rolling basis, so there is no need to wait until the deadline to apply. Considering that experts and expert organisations may become increasingly busy as ERC call deadlines approach, it is recommended to submit your EBAG applications without delay.

Note 4: According to the new rules, researchers applying with an ERC project to move to an EU Member State or Associated Country are now eligible to request an additional €1 million on top of the existing €1 million start-up support (for activities such as setting up a lab, building a team, purchasing equipment, etc.). For example, a researcher applying to the ERC-2026-AdG call with the intention of moving from the USA to Turkey can request up to €2 million in additional funding on top of the standard maximum of €2 million for the project proposal. Thus, the total support they may receive can reach up to €4.5 million.

Note 5: The ERC Scientific Council decided to the use of lump sum funding as a pilot for Advanced Grant calls. A new frequently asked questions page is available on ERC website. Also a webinar organized by the ERC can be watched in YouTube and the presentation of the webinar can be downloaded here. There has been no change in the funding model of other calls.

Note 6: You can review the projects funded in previous Advanced Grant calls, along with their principal investigators and the panels that funded them, via the ERC Dashboard. By clicking on the project acronyms, you will be directed to the CORDISpage, where you can access interim/final reports, open-access data and publications, as well as related news.

Note 7: The events organized in relation to the call are listed below:

ERC 2026 Work Programme Launch Webinar - 1st Part
📅 10 July 2025 – Organized online by ERCEA.
Details
ERC 2026 Work Programme Launch Webinar - 2nd Part
📅 11 September 2025 – Organized online by ERCEA.
Details
ERC 2026 Calls National Information Day
📅 14 July 2025 – Organized online by TÜBİTAK.
Details
ERC Grants: What to Expect in 2026 Calls Information Day
📅 24 September 2025 – Organized online by ERCEA.
Details
ERC 2025 Advanced Grant Call Information Session
📅 22 May 2025 – Organized online by TÜBİTAK.
Details

Note 8: You can write to ncperc@tubitak.gov.tr to access the video recordings and presentations of the previously organized information days and training sessions.

Information Regarding the Closed ERC-2025-AdG Call

The ERC-2025-AdG call was launched on 22 May 2025 and closed on 28 August 2025.

Official Call Page (call is closed)

Important documents for the call:

ERC Work Programme 2025 (updated version)

Information for Applicants to the Advanced Grant 2025 Call

Standard Application form (HE ERC AdG) (Fillable forms in .rtf format can be accessed through the application system)

ERC Historical Data on Personnel Costs for Lump Sum Evaluations

ERC Guide for Peer Reviewers (AdG) (new!)

ERC Rules of Submission

Multi & Mono Grant Agreement for Lump Sum Grants

HE General MGA

Important Dates and Statistics:

The evaluation process of the ERC-2025-AdG call, which closed on 28 August 2025, is currently ongoing.

You can access the expected evaluation timeline here.
You can find the initial statistics on the applications here. This call received a total of 3,329 proposals, representing a 31% increase compared to the previous call. As stated in the ERC 2025 Work Programme, approximately 276 projects are expected to be funded with a budget of €638 million.

List of ERC Panel Members

2024 AdG List of Panel Members (New!)

2008-2024 AdG List of Panel Members (aggregated)

Note 1: You can review the Panel Members serving since 2014 using the search engine available on the ERC's website.

Note 2: This information is given for reasons of transparency. Under no circumstances should peer reviewers be contacted by applicants, potential applicants, any host institution or beneficiary. Please also note that ERC peer reviewers are bound to confidentiality during the evaluation and afterwards. Hence, they are not permitted to communicate about the evaluation and/or specific proposal(s) with the principal investigators or potential team members or persons linked to them, even after the completion of the evaluation process.