FCT PhD Studentships

FCT PhD Studentships — Specific Line of in a Non-Academic Environment

Supports Portugal researchers with structured pathways in industry-linked PhD development in public hosts, from planning to deployment.

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

The 2026 FCT Specific Line for PhD Studentships in a Non-Academic Environment is an annual call by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) that funds doctoral research carried out in close articulation with non-academic institutions. The line specifically requires at least 12 months — consecutive or interpolated — of the studentship to be spent at the same non-academic host institution operating in Portugal. Non-academic hosts can be business companies, hospitals, museums, libraries, regulatory bodies, public administration bodies, collaborative labs, technology and innovation centres, or third-sector entities; private R&D units with a primary research mission are classified as academic. The call covers all scientific fields with no thematic restriction.

Applicants must be enrolled in, or meet the requirements to enrol in, a PhD programme to obtain a doctoral degree. They must not hold a prior FCT PhD studentship and must not already hold a doctoral degree. Two host institutions are mandatory: a non-academic host where the qualifying 12-month residency occurs and an academic host institution providing a supervisor from each side. A publicly maintained list of non-academic institutions that expressed interest in hosting students is available from FCT, though use of that list is optional and applications with other eligible hosts are accepted. Studentships under FCT-Tenure Non-Academic Chairs are a subset of this line; eligible candidates under those chairs whose application scores 3.000 or above receive funding and continue to be contracted directly by FCT rather than by the contracting institution.

Applications opened 2 March 2026 at 12:00 Lisbon time and closed 31 March 2026 at 17:00. Contracting institutions had until 17 April 2026 to validate applications. Evaluation is carried out by five thematic panels across Engineering and Exact Sciences, Natural and Agricultural Sciences, Health and Life Sciences, and Social Sciences and Humanities. Criteria weights are 30% applicant merit, 40% work plan merit, and 30% hosting conditions merit; within hosting conditions, sub-criterion C3 — non-academic institution framing within the work plan — carries a 50% internal weight, making the quality and relevance of the non-academic placement the single most important scoring factor. Provisional results are expected in the first week of August 2026; final results at the beginning of November 2026.