NRF Global Leader Grants
Funds world-class Korean researchers leading collaborative programs and building high-visibility scientific leadership.
The NRF Global Leader Grants (리더연구 유형B) are awarded by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) under authority delegated by the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) to support world-class Korean researchers pursuing novel scientific achievements and new technology development in science and engineering. The FY2026 first-tranche call was issued on November 13, 2025 under MSIT Notice No. 2025-1005, with detailed guidelines published on November 20, 2025 in HWP and PDF formats. The call appears as item number 47 on the NRF English Call for Proposals index.
Awards reach up to 800 million KRW per year and run for a nine-year period structured in three phases of three years each (3+3+3). Continuation from phase one to phases two and three is contingent on performance evaluation. Eligibility is limited to individual academic principal investigators — university professors and researchers at Korean government or public research institutes. For-profit companies, nonprofits, and non-institutional individuals are ineligible. All application materials and guidelines are in Korean; there is no English application pathway. Specific deadlines, career-stage eligibility requirements, and the detailed scoring rubric are contained in the Korean-language PDF attachments released on November 20, 2025, which were not extracted at ingest.
The NRF evaluation process for Leader Grants runs through four stages: preliminary qualification review by NRF staff, expert review using online or panel assessment, a PM Consultative Group review for field-specific allocation, and final selection confirmation by the MSIT Program Committee. Reviewers assess creativity, spirit of challenge, and researcher capability and prior achievements. Applications opened in the December 2025 to January 2026 window, with submission deadlines running into Q1–Q2 2026. Researchers targeting this award should obtain the full HWP/PDF guidelines from the NRF call index and confirm current-cycle deadlines directly via ernd.nrf.re.kr.
Funds world-class Korean researchers in science and engineering pursuing novel scientific achievements and new technologies, with awards up to 800 million KRW per year over a nine-year period structured in three phases.
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