Lund: For two decades the European Research Council has built its reputation on a single, almost stubborn idea: hand individual scientists generous, no-strings money and let curiosity do the rest. The 2026 work programme, now open on the EU Funding and Tenders Portal, keeps that creed but adds something the ERC has never offered before, a top tier called the ERC Plus Grant aimed at the boldest and riskiest proposals in the field.
The headline numbers are striking. The ERC Plus scheme carries a budget of 210 million euros and will award up to 7 million euros per project, for work spanning four to seven years. That sits above the familiar Starting, Consolidator and Advanced grants, and is meant for researchers whose ambitions outgrow the ceilings of the existing schemes. The wider 2026 programme commands roughly 2.7 billion euros, the single largest annual envelope the Council has managed under Horizon Europe.
What changes for applicants is not only the money but the process. The Council is moving to a two-part proposal structure with a Step 2 feasibility review, a design intended to weed out projects that sound visionary on paper but collapse under practical scrutiny. Eligibility rules have been widened, and researchers relocating to Europe can claim higher additional funding, a quiet acknowledgement that the continent is competing for talent against better-paid laboratories in the United States and Asia.
The timing matters. European officials have spent the past year fretting openly about the bloc’s slipping share of frontier science and the steady drift of star researchers abroad. A scheme that dangles 7 million euros at the most original minds is, in part, a retention tool dressed as a research instrument. The promise that applications are open to outstanding scientists from anywhere in the world signals the same intent in reverse, an attempt to pull talent in rather than watch it leave.
Sceptics will note the obvious tension. Concentrating very large grants on a handful of star projects risks starving the broad base of competent, less glamorous research that actually sustains a national science system. Every euro routed to a 7 million euro flagship is a euro unavailable to the early-career researcher scraping for a first Starting Grant. The Council insists the new tier supplements rather than cannibalises the existing schemes, but the budget arithmetic will be watched closely.
For now the practical question is who applies and who wins. Calls are published in the Official Journal and on the portal, with selection running through the Council’s peer-review panels over the coming months. The first cohort of ERC Plus laureates, expected in 2027, will become an early test of whether bigger cheques really do buy braver science, or merely louder press releases.
