SONATA

SONATA 22

Supports early-career Polish researchers through fundamental science grants with team-scale opportunities.

SONATA 22 is the autumn 2026 edition of the National Science Centre (NCN) early-career basic-research competition, targeting researchers who obtained their doctoral degree between 2 and 7 years before the submission deadline. The programme spans all three NCN discipline clusters — humanities and social sciences, sciences and technology, and life sciences — and funds independent projects running 12, 24, or 36 months. Equipment purchases in life and physical sciences are capped at 500,000 PLN per project. The prior call, SONATA 21, carried a budget of 170,000,000 PLN, providing a benchmark for the scale of SONATA 22.

Eligibility requires that the principal investigator fall within the strict 2–7 year post-PhD window at the time of submission; researchers outside this window are ineligible, with no exceptions. Applications must be submitted through the applicant's Polish host institution via the NCN OSF portal. Individual applications are not accepted. For-profit companies and non-profit organisations without recognised research status are excluded; only universities and accredited research organisations registered and operating in Poland may serve as host institutions.

SONATA is specifically designed to enable early-career researchers to establish their independent research profile by leading their own project rather than working within a more senior colleague's grant. Proposals are evaluated on scientific quality, the originality of the research question, and the PI's demonstrated capacity to lead an independent project. Applicants should monitor the NCN competition schedule for the exact SONATA 22 opening date, as the programme page for this call was not yet live at the time of the source data collection.