The European Research Council announced on 3 September 2026 the results of its 2026 Starting Grants competition: 421 early-career researchers will share €705 million. That figure is the competition total, not the grant for each project.

The grants are meant for scientific independence. Recipients can build teams and develop their own programmes at institutions in Europe. The selection covered life sciences, physics and engineering, and the social sciences and humanities.

Some 4,807 proposals were submitted, 22% more than in the previous call. The success rate was 8.8%. The ERC says 21 winners were based outside the EU and Horizon Europe associated countries at the time of application, including 20 from the United States, and will move to Europe for the projects.

Funding is not split evenly among states. The full list of principal investigators and host institutions is in the ERC’s official document. This account does not invent national examples.

The Commission’s Horizon Europe programme page is a hub, not the source article. The source remains the ERC announcement of the 2026 Starting Grants results.

The figures 421 and €705 million should be read together with the success rate. An average grant is not inferred here as an administrative fact, because budgets differ.

The announcement is of a European competition, not of a reform of Romanian research.

Image: Gabriela P., scientist at a scanning electron microscope, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Source consulted: ERC Starting Grants: €705 million to back Europe's next generation of researchers.