Greater demand, fewer financial resources: project funding to be adjusted

Project funding is the SNSF's most important funding scheme for financing outstanding basic research in Switzerland. The funds provided by the federal government have only increased moderately in recent years, and cuts are expected in the future.

Since October 2021, the number of proposals submitted has increased by 55 percent, and the total amount of requested funding has risen by 69 percent. This trend has accelerated further since October 2024. Success rates have decreased, and researchers are increasingly investing significant time on proposals that ultimately do not receive funding. Already today, the SNSF has to reject numerous outstanding projects.

The evaluation process is also reaching its limits, making it more difficult to ensure the quality of the evaluation.

As a result, there is an urgent need to limit the demand for grants in project funding. In order for the measures to have a lasting effect, both the number of proposals per researcher and the requested funding amount per proposal must be limited. This will enable the SNSF to award at least one grant to a larger number of outstanding researchers.

Limits on the number of proposals and funding amounts

The SNSF introduced the first limits on project funding back in 2024. For the call closing on 1 April 2026, it is now implementing further measures:

• A researcher may only have a maximum of two simultaneous project funding grants. One of these must be a Lead Agency/Weave/ICIS project.

• Researchers may submit only one proposal for project funding within a 12-month period. Exceptions apply to proposals that were rejected in random selection or that were proposed for funding by the SNSF within the framework of Lead Agency/Weave but were not approved by the partner organisation.

• Each applicant can still apply for an average maximum of 250,000 Swiss francs per year for the entire duration of the grant. What's new is that personnel costs may not exceed an average of 200,000 Swiss francs per applicant per year.

• The funding amount per project is limited to a maximum of 3 million Swiss francs.

• Applicants based abroad are only permitted in Lead Agency/Weave/ICIS projects. Cooperation with project partners abroad is still possible.

With these combined measures, the SNSF aims to stabilise success rates and maintain the broad scope of outstanding research that it funds, despite limited resources. “We will continuously review the impact of the measures, particularly with regard to collaborative research projects and the funding of early-career researchers. We will continue to adjust project funding as needed,” says Co-director Thomas Werder Schläpfer. “This is how we will ensure that all researchers have a fair chance in the future as well.”

For the call closing on 1 April 2026

The SNSF is launching the project funding call on 2 February 2026 under the amended regulations. Proposals for the deadline of 1 April 2026 must be submitted via the SNSF Portal.

• The new measures apply to all proposals submitted by 1 April 2026.

• To cushion the impact of the measures, the SNSF is introducing a transition phase for ongoing and approved collaborative projects until the end of their duration. Collaborative grants approved before 1 April 2026 will be treated the same as ongoing Lead Agency/Weave/ICIS grants. This allows grantees of a collaborative project to submit a second proposal even if their current grant is not a Lead Agency/Weave/ICIS grant.

Further information will be provided at the online information event on 10 February 2026 (see box). Detailed information can be found in the Project Funding Regulations and on the project funding website (in particular the FAQs).