RECRUIT — Grants for International Recruitment

RECRUIT — Grants for International Recruitment

Supports Danish institutions recruiting international academic talent across major career stages.

The Novo Nordisk Foundation's RECRUIT programme is a mobility grant scheme designed to help Danish universities compete internationally for top academic talent by providing substantial, long-duration financial packages to support the recruitment of outstanding researchers at assistant-professor, associate-professor, and full-professor career levels. The Autumn 2026 call opened on 5 May 2026 and closes at 2:00 pm Copenhagen time on 12 August 2026, with funding decisions announced in late November 2026. The scheme supports recruitment in natural and technical sciences and interdisciplinarity, as well as in biotechnology and sustainability, reflecting Novo Nordisk Foundation's strategic focus areas for strengthening the Danish academic research ecosystem.

RECRUIT grants range from DKK 22 million to DKK 55 million over up to seven years, calibrated to career level and research scope. In the same call, RECRUIT Sabbatical grants of up to DKK 1 million covering up to one year are available for both Danish-to-abroad and abroad-to-Danish mobility arrangements. A separate RECRUIT Extension call provides up to DKK 10 million over up to five years. Critically, individual researchers cannot apply directly to this programme — all candidates must be formally nominated by a Danish university, and each Danish university operates under a nomination quota that limits the number of candidates it can put forward in any given cycle.

The process runs in two phases. In Phase 1, the Danish university evaluates and nominates candidates internally, without being required to prioritise among nominees. In Phase 2, nominated candidates submit their applications directly through the Foundation's NORMA online system. This nomination-first model concentrates the programme's benefit on institutions actively seeking to build research capacity and means that prospective applicants must engage with their target Danish host institution before any application activity begins. Programme contacts at the Foundation are Pål Fernvall (pfe@novo.dk), Thomas Bentin for Natural Sciences (tbe@novo.dk), and Anastassia Khrouchtchova for Biotechnology (akh@novo.dk).