FFG Bridge Programmes

BRIDGE

Funds Austrian science-industry consortia transferring basic research toward industrial applications.

⚠ This may reflect a past cycle — verify the current call on the funder's site.

BRIDGE is a grant run by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), the national body that funds company and research-institute R&D in Austria. It sits in FFG’s BRIDGE programme, whose job is to carry early research toward practical industrial use — the bridge between a university lab and a usable product.

The grant pays up to 80 percent of a project’s eligible costs, and those eligible costs are capped at 360,000 euros. FFG does not publish a single maximum grant amount, so the real ceiling is that 80 percent share of the cost cap rather than a fixed cash figure. Projects can run for 1 to 36 months, and any field or technology is eligible — there is no thematic limit.

To apply, the project must be run by a consortium of at least one research partner and at least one exploiting company; applicants are based in Austria (other participating countries can join). Applications go in through FFG’s eCall portal at fixed call dates, with roughly one to two calls a year — it is not rolling. The most recent call, BRIDGE 2026/1, ran from 11 March to 11 June 2026 and is now closed; FFG had not announced the next call in the source we used.

External expert reviewers score each application on four weighted criteria — quality of the project (40%), economic potential and exploitation (30%), suitability of the participants (20%), and relevance to the programme’s goals (10%) — and judge whether the work is genuinely basic-research-oriented. Applications are rejected if they are incomplete, late, or lack a valid consortium contract between the partners.