The purpose of Synergy Grants is to bring two to four principle investigators and address ambitious research questions using their complementary skills, knowledge and resources in unprecedented ways. With this scheme the ultimate goal is to give support to a close interactions that will enable transformative research at the forefront of science, capable of yielding ground-breaking or even unpredictable scientific results and/or cross-fertilizing disciplines.
The researchers applying to Synergy Grant are expected to explain the synergies between them in detail and the groundbreaking discoveries that a single researcher cannot achieve alone but can only be achieved together. Synergy Grant Calls are expected to be highly competitive, where only exceptional applications will be accepted.
Synergy Grant projects are evaluated differently than other ERC calls. First of all, researchers who apply for SyG are required to select “keywords" instead of a panel, unlike StG, CoG, AdG calls. In addition, the evaluation of StG, CoG, AdG calls is planned to be two-stage, while the SyG call is has a three-stage evaluation. In the first stage, B1 form is examined, in the 2nd and 3rd stages the whole project proposal will be evaluated and in the 3rd stage, the principal researchers will be interviewed.
Synergy Grants may be awarded up to a maximum of EUR 10 million for a period of 6 years. However, up to an additional EUR 4 million in total can be requested in the proposal to cover (a) "start-up" costs for Principal Investigators moving to the EU or an Associated Country from elsewhere as a consequence of receiving the ERC grant, and/or (b) the purchase of major equipment, and/or (c) access to large facilities, and/or (d) other major experimental and field work costs, excluding personnel costs.
One Principal Investigator in a Synergy Grant Group to be based anywhere in the world, including outside the territory of the European Union (EU) Member States and Associated Countries.
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-SyG Call:
The ERC-2026-SyG call is launched on 10 July 2025 and is expected to close on 5 November 2025.
Official Call Page
Important documents for the call
SyG 2026 - Information for Applicants
SyG 2026 - Application Forms (rtf. format is available in submission system)
SyG 2026 - Guide for Peer reviewers (new version is not published yet)
ERC Rules of Submission and evaluation under Horizon Europe
MGA used for ERC actions under Horizon Europe (HE General MGA)
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” of the B1 form): This section should include the state of knowledge, how the project will contribute to the field, the scientific questions to be addressed, project objectives, and the overall approach or research strategy to achieve these objectives. The page limit for this section remains at 5 pages, as before.
Part II of the Scientific Proposal (formerly the B2 form): This section should describe the research methodology, work plan, risk assessment and mitigation measures, justification of the requested budget and resources, and any additional background information not included in Part I. For SyG applications, collaboration arrangements that will enable the SyG group to carry out the project must also be described here. This section is now limited to 10 pages for SyG. This page limit does not apply to the justification of the requested budget and resources.
The ERC Scientific Council also announced that 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: For the preparation of your ERC-2026-SyG 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. To benefit from the support, it is required that at least one principal investigator to be hosted in a host institution in Türkiye.
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-AdG 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 3: You can review the projects funded in previous Synergy Grant calls, along with their principal investigators, 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 4: You can access the training video prepared by the ERC specifically for the Synergy Grant here.
List of ERC Panel Members
2025 SyG The Preliminary List of Panel Members (NEW!)
2018-2024 SyG 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-SyG Call:
The ERC-2025-SyG call is launched on 11 July 2024 and it is closed on 6 November 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 712 applications, reflecting a 30% increase compared to the previous call. As stated in the ERC 2025 Work Programme, approximately 48 projects are planned to be funded with €500 million.
