ERC Proof of Concept Grant
Funds existing ERC grant holders in testing the commercial or societal potential of already-funded research through a fixed EUR 150,000 top-up grant.
The European Research Council (ERC) — the European Commission's dedicated funder for frontier research — runs the Proof of Concept Grant as a follow-on award open only to Principal Investigators who already hold one of its four main grants (Starting, Consolidator, Advanced, or Synergy). The ERC's Work Programme 2026 continues the scheme on the same terms as before: a fixed lump sum of EUR 150,000 …
Any field of science or scholarship already covered by the applicant's underlying ERC Starting, Consolidator, Advanced, or Synergy Grant. The Proof of Concept grant funds follow-on work to test the commercial or societal potential of ideas from that project — it does not open a new topic of its own.
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