ERC Starting Grant Call supports for excellent Principal Investigators at the career stage at which they are starting their own independent research team or programme. Principal Investigators must demonstrate the ground-breaking nature, ambition, and feasibility of their research proposal.
A competitive Starting Grant Principal Investigator must have already shown the potential for research independence and evidence of maturity, for example by having produced at least one important publication as main author or without the participation of their PhD supervisor.
Applicants are expected to have defended their first PhD at least 2 and up to 7 years prior to 1 January of the call year.
The effective elapsed time since the PhD defence date can be reduced in certain properly documented circumstances like: maternity, paternity or parental leave, long-term illness, disability, national service, clinical training, major disasters, seeking asylum or gender-based violence or any other form of violence. For example, for maternity the effective elapsed time since the award of the first PhD will be reduced by 18 months for each child born before or after the date of the successful defence of their first PhD degree.
Starting Grants may be awarded up to a maximum of 1.5 Million Euros for a period of 5 years. However, this budget may go up to a maximum of 2.5 Million Euros to cover the purchase of major equipment and/or access to large facilities and/or other major experimental and field work costs excluding personnel costs. Principal Investigators moving to the EU or an Associated Country like Türkiye from elsewhere as a consequence of receiving the ERC grant can request up to 2 Million Euros additional budget for eligible "start-up" costs (e.g., for setting up a lab, recruiting a team, purchasing equipment).
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 ERC-2026-StG Call:
The ERC-2026-StG call is launched on 9 July 2025 and is expected to close on 14 October 2025.
Official Call Page
Important documents for the call
Information for Applicants to the Starting and Consolidator Grant 2026 Calls
Standard application form (HE ERC StG) (Fillable forms in .rtf format can be accessed through the application system)
ERC Guide for Peer Reviewers (StG, CoG) (the new version is not published yet)
ERC Rules of Submission and Evaluation under Horizon Europe
Important Notes Regarding the Call:
Note 1: 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 2: 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-StG 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 €1.5 million for the project proposal. Thus, the total support they may receive can reach up to €3.5 million.
Not 3: The reference date of the ERC-2026-StG call is 1 January 2026, and researchers who have made their first successful doctoral defence between 1 January 2019 and 31 December 2023 can apply to this call.
Note 4: As of 2023 calls the ERC changed the methodology of the calculation of PhD reference date for the eligibility period. According to the new rule the date of the successful PhD defence will be used. Whenever the PhD certificate does not show the PhD defence date, applicants should provide a written confirmation from the awarding institution stating the defence date together with the PhD certificate. When planning your application preparations, it is recommended to consider that this approval process may take some time.
Note 5: Applicants who have been victims of gender-based violence or any other kind of violence will be able to obtain an extension of the period following their PhD that allows them to apply for Starting and Consolidator Grants. In addition, an explicit reference to parental leave will be added to the grounds for extension of the eligibility period alongside maternity and paternity leave.
Note 6: For the preparation of your ERC-2026-StG application, you can apply to the ERC Principal Investigator Development Program (EBAG) developed by TÜBİTAK to receive support from experts or institutions during your project preparation process.
Projects applying to the EBAG program are expected to be mature enough to meet the ERC first-stage evaluation criteria (a draft B1 form will be required at the application stage). If your application is supported, you may:
(1) Participate in proposal writing and submission training,
(2) Receive pre-evaluation support (for consultancy companies or experts including ERC Mentoring Initiative),
(3) Receive interview training if you are invited to the second-stage evaluation
After the approval of your general application, a separate sub-application is required for each service procurement in accordance with TÜBİTAK's criteria. The EBAG program is accepting applications for the ERC-2026-StG call. Applications will be accepted until 45 days before the call deadline. Evaluations are conducted on a rolling basis, so you do not need to wait for the final deadline to apply. It is advised to consider that the experts or consultant companies providing these services may be busy or have a high workload as the call closing dates approach.
Note 7: You can review the projects funded in previous Starting 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 CORDIS page, where you can access interim/final reports, open-access data and publications, as well as related news.
Note 8: The events to be organized in relation to the call are listed below:
ERC 2026 Work Programme Launch Webinar
📅 10 July 2025 – Organized online by ERCEA.
Details
ERC 2026 Calls National Information Day
📅 14 July 2025 – Organized online by TÜBİTAK.
Details
For access to video recordings and presentations of other information days and trainings, you may contact: ncperc@tubitak.gov.tr.
List of ERC Panel Members:
2025 StG The Preliminary List of Panel Members (NEW!)
2007-2024 StG 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. (new!)
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.
Additional Documents
EU Grants AGA - Annotated Model Grant Agreement
EU Financial Regulation 2018/1046
Rules for Legal Entity Validation, LEAR Appointment and Financial Capacity Assessment
Funding & Tenders Portal Online Manual
Funding & Tenders Portal Terms and Conditions
Funding & Tenders Portal Privacy Statement
Association agreements to Horizon Europe
Information Regarding the Closed ERC-2025-StG Call:
The ERC-2025-StG call was launched on 10 July 2024 and it was closed on 15 October 2024.
Indicative evaluation timeframe for this call is available in this link.
You can access the initial statistics regarding the applications here. This call received a total of 3,928 applications, reflecting a 13% increase compared to the previous call. As stated in the ERC 2025 Work Programme, approximately 483 projects are planned to be funded with €751 million.
Information Regarding the Upcoming ERC-2027-StG Call:
The ERC-2027-StG call is expected to be launched on July 2026 and closed on October 2026. Some important changes are expected in this call.
Note 1: The Scientific Council has announced that in the 2027 Work Programme, the PhD eligibility window for StG and CoG calls will be broadened. Under the new rule:
Researchers may apply to the StG call from the moment they defend their PhD up to 10 years afterward.
The CoG call will be open to researchers who defended their PhD 5–15 years ago
The exact method of calculation has not yet been officially published. More details on the implementation of this rule will be shared in due course.
Note 2: The Scientific Council has decided that, starting with the 2027 calls a researcher will be allowed to receive a maximum of one StG and one CoG grant throughout their career. No such limits will apply for AdG and SyG grants.
You can access the official press release via the ERC website:
https://erc.europa.eu/news-events/news/changes-2026-and-2027-work-programmes
