The ERC Starting Grant by the numbers, 2024-2027 (EU)

Published 27 October 2026 · 8 sources · 11 min read

The ERC Starting Grant's success rate fell from 14.2% in 2024 to 8.8% in 2026 [5][3] — applications rose 38% over those two calls, from 3,474 to 4,807, while the budget fell about 10%, from EUR 780 million to EUR 705 million [5][3]. Two years, and more than a third of the chance gone.

The 2027 call then took applications up 60.4% in a single year, to 7,710 [2] — and the ERC says in the same release that the comparison does not mean what it looks like: the Scientific Council widened the eligibility window for 2027, from 2–7 years since the PhD to 0–10, and warns that "comparisons with previous calls and analyses of application trends should therefore take these changes into account" [2]. A pool roughly twice as wide produced roughly 60% more applications. Results are due in summer 2027 [2].

The money is unusually large for an individual grant: EUR 1.5 million over five years, with up to EUR 1 million more for costs the work genuinely requires, and up to EUR 2 million more for a principal investigator relocating to the EU from a non-associated third country [1].

Relocation is not hypothetical. Of the 2026 grantees, 21 are relocating to Europe from non-associated third countries — 5% of the 421 — and 20 of the 21 are coming from the United States, about double the previous year [3].

The rule most often got wrong is which date starts the clock. Since 2023 it is the certified date of your successful PhD defence, not the date the degree was awarded — the ERC changed it because "the term 'award' varies across countries and universities" [1].

Applications, grants and the success rate

The ERC publishes applications for four call years together, and grants for the 2026 call.

Applications and the year-on-year changes: 2027 facts and figures, including its own chart Number of Starting Grant applications by call year (2024-2027) [2]. Every success rate is the ERC's own printed figure — 14.2% and 12.2% from the two statistics PDFs [5][6], 8.8% from the 2026 award release [3] — and each reconciles against its own grants ÷ applications (14.22%, 12.17%, 8.76%).

421 is derived and the ERC did not print it. The ERC publishes the success rate (8.8%) and a chart of grantees by host country and domain; summing that chart gives 421, and 421/4,807 is 8.76%, which rounds to the published 8.8% [3]. The sum also reproduces the ERC's own sentence naming Germany 89, the UK 47, France 38, Switzerland 36 and the Netherlands 33 — which is what makes it a reconciliation rather than a guess.

The 2027 column is left blank rather than zero, because that competition has not been decided; the chart shows it as absent.

Where the 2026 grantees went

Grants by country of host institution, 2026 call. The host need not be in the grantee's own country — it is any public or private research organisation in an EU Member State or associated country [1].

Source: Grantees by Country of Host Institution and Domain, ERC Starting Grants 2026, the chart embedded in the award release [3]. The first five match the ERC's own prose in the same release. For the two earlier calls the ERC names only its leaders: 2024 Germany 98, Netherlands 51, UK 50, France 49 [5]; 2025 Germany 99, UK 60, Netherlands 44, France 41 [6]. Germany leads all three.

Grantees came from 25 EU Member States and associated countries; among them were 84 Germans, 50 Italians, 30 French and 24 Spanish, plus researchers of 48 other nationalities [3]. 169 US-based researchers applied, against 116 the year before [3].

The three domains

Applications: 2027 facts and figures [2]. Grants: the 2026 chart [3].

No per-domain success rate is given here, and that is deliberate: the applications are the 2027 call and the grants are the 2026 call, so dividing one by the other would invent a rate for a competition that has not been decided.

Women: applicants and grantees are two different figures

These are two populations and the ERC publishes them separately, so they are stated separately here rather than as one trend.

Grantee shares are the ERC's own: 44% in 2024 and 42% in 2025, which the ERC describes as "fairly stable" [5][6]; the 2024 figure reconciles against its statistics PDF, where 216 of 494 selected principal investigators are female (43.7%) [5]. Applicant shares are from the facts-and-figures releases: nearly 40% for 2024 [7], 40% for 2025 — "consistent with the submission rates from the previous two Starting Grants calls" [8] — 43% for 2026, which the ERC called "the highest rate since 2007" [4], and nearly 39% for 2027 [2].

⚠️ Grantee shares run above applicant shares in all three decided calls (44% against nearly 40%, 42% against 40%, and the 2026 pair is not comparable because its grantee figure is not published). That is what the table is for: the two columns are not interchangeable, and the grantee column is the higher of the two wherever both exist.

⚠️ The applicant share falling from 43% to nearly 39% is not evidence that fewer women applied. The 2027 window is 0–10 years rather than 2–7, so the denominator is a different population; the ERC's own warning about comparing calls across that change applies here too [2].

The money, and what it covers

Source: the Starting Grant page, How much? [1].

The 2027 call

Open 22 July 2026, deadline 14 October 2026 [1]. The Scientific Council earmarked EUR 594 million for an estimated 373 grants, and results are planned for summer 2027 [2]. The 2026 call was EUR 705 million [3]. No later call date is published on these pages.

Questions

Next in this series: the Consolidator Grant is the ERC's scheme for the stage after this one — the same three domains and the same PhD-defence clock, at EUR 2 million and a window that now overlaps the Starting Grant's between 5 and 10 years. See The ERC Consolidator Grant by the numbers.

How to read this: every figure is quoted from the source linked beside it and is never recomputed; where a number is derived here, the cell says so. Totals that are this post's own arithmetic are marked as such.