ERC Synergy Grants 2026: Bringing 48 research teams together to tackle science’s biggest challenges
The scheme enables groups of two to four researchers with complementary expertise to pursue ambitious research questions that they could not address individually. Researchers choose the questions and decide how best to investigate them. The grants are part of the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme.
Ekaterina Zaharieva, European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation, said:
‘With 17 of the 48 selected teams involving researchers based outside Europe, Synergy Grants highlight the international scope of frontier research. These partnerships bring together complementary expertise, perspectives and capabilities from across the world, strengthening research and helping European teams address scientific challenges that they could not tackle alone.’
President of the European Research Council, Prof. Maria Leptin, said:
‘The most exciting scientific advances often begin with questions that challenge established ways of thinking. The Synergy Grants give exceptional researchers the opportunity to combine their different approaches and pursue ideas that might otherwise remain out of reach. The selected teams have demonstrated both the ambition and the creativity needed to explore uncharted territory. Congratulations to all the awardees – I look forward to seeing where their curiosity and determination will lead’.
How can we push the boundaries of sustainable infrastructure and engineer materials built to last? What will it take to unlock the full potential of quantum computing and tackle problems beyond the reach of today’s computers? How does migration reshape the languages children acquire in their earliest years? And could cutting-edge light-based therapies open new frontiers in vision restoration? From challenging technological limits to uncovering the complex mechanisms that shape our world, these are among the questions the newly selected Synergy Grant teams will pursue.
Read more about the selected projects
Facts and figures
A total of 957 proposals were submitted for this call, of which approximately one in twenty were selected for funding. The successful teams will receive an average of €10.4 million per project. The selected projects will be carried out at universities and research centres in 26 countries across Europe and beyond. The United Kingdom (23 projects), Germany (22) France (14) and the United States (12) will host the highest numbers of successful teams.
Six projects will take place in countries that have so far hosted relatively few ERC grants - Poland (3), Czech Republic (2), Greece (1), Portugal (1), Hungary (1) and Romania (1). The international reach of the Synergy Grants is also reflected in the fact that around 35% of the funded projects will involve researchers based outside the EU and associated countries, most of them in the United States. Finally, women account for approximately 25% of the researchers participating in the selected projects.
See the full list of winning research projects
About the ERC
The ERC, set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. It funds creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based across Europe. The ERC offers four core grant schemes: Starting Grants, Consolidator Grants, Advanced Grants and Synergy Grants. With its additional Proof of Concept Grant scheme, the ERC helps grantees to bridge the gap between their pioneering research and early phases of its commercialisation. The new ERC Plus Grants scheme is open for applications since June 2026. The ERC is led by an independent governing body, the Scientific Council. Maria Leptin has been the President of the ERC since November 2021. The overall ERC budget from 2021 to 2027 is more than €16 billion, as part of the Horizon Europe programme, which is under the responsibility of Ekaterina Zaharieva, European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation.
