Another 78 researchers have joined the group of MINIATURA 10 grantees, who will carry out preliminary studies, conduct library and archive searches, or go on research visits. We present the results for proposals submitted in March.

The small grants can be used to fund research activity that does not yet amount to a full-scale research project but helps researchers plan, test and develop research ideas in preparation for applying to regular national or international grant calls.

The call is open to researchers who obtained their PhD between 1 January 2014 and the proposal submission date. They must have at least one published or accepted-for-publication work to their name, or at least one artistic or artistic-and-scholarly work or achievement.

A single grant has a budget of up to PLN 50,000 and may run for no longer than one year. There are no thematic restrictions: the activities may concern any discipline, but they must fall within basic research. They may take the form of preliminary studies, research visits or library and archive searches and, in justified cases, more than one of these.

MINIATURA includes a mentoring programme through which those carrying out an activity can receive expert support from an experienced mentor in preparing a full-scale research project. NCN mentor database

The grantees and their research

The second ranking list covers proposals submitted to NCN in March. Of 190 proposals, the experts selected 78 research activities for funding, worth a total of over PLN 2.9 million. The vast majority of the funded activities are preliminary studies (66). Twelve people will go on research visits thanks to a MINIATURA grant, and eight will conduct library and archive searches.

In the Humanities, Social Sciences and Art Sciences (HS) group, the recipients include Dr Rafał Młyński, a linguist from the Jagiellonian University. During his research visit, he will analyse the macrostructure and microstructure of narratives produced by Polish-English bilingual teenagers. Dr Anna Kowalik from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, an art conservator and restorer, will carry out preliminary studies on digital and hybrid methods of preserving the dispersed “Kosmobajki” collection (Se-ma-for, 1966). The main focus of her research will be animation puppets in the role of boundary objects. Dr inż. Piotr Smolnicki from the Gdańsk University of Technology, an architect and urban planner, will diagnose and assess the scope for reintegrating fragmented urban fabric by analysing the opportunities for, and constraints on, implementing pro-urban remedial measures that mitigate the effects of large-scale transport infrastructure in city centres.

In the Life Sciences (NZ) group, the MINIATURA grant recipients include Dr Marta Tkacz from the Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin, who will carry out preliminary studies under an activity entitled “The kinetics of endothelial progenitor cell mobilisation and the proangiogenic potential of circulating cells in response to maximal physical exertion in athletes”. Dr Katarzyna Zdanowicz from the Medical University of Białystok will study changes in the fatty acid profile of erythrocyte membrane phospholipids in the course of inflammatory bowel disease in children. Dr Magdalena Żegleń from the Bronisław Czech Academy of Physical Education in Kraków will examine problems related to excess body weight and latent obesity and their significance for body-image self-perception.

Among the grantees in the Physical Sciences and Engineering group is Dr inż. Michał Piłat from the Gdańsk University of Technology. He will go on a research visit during which he will develop the multiconfiguration Dirac-Fock method – one of the most advanced computational methods in quantum mechanics – to determine the parameters of inelastic electron-atom collisions. Dr inż. Stanisław Hożyń from the Polish Naval Academy of the Heroes of Westerplatte in Gdynia will conduct research on the resilience of methods for detecting and tracking divers, and for recognising the divers’ gestures, to changing optical conditions across different bodies of water. In the course of the research, he will create a pilot database from a lake, the Baltic Sea and the Adriatic Sea. Dr inż. Justyna Dzięcioł from the Warsaw University of Life Sciences will use her MINIATURA grant to develop a standardised, multimodal characterisation of hybrid cement binders containing bio-based and recycled components.

The topics of all the activities selected for funding under MINIATURA 10 are available in the ranking lists.

Ranking list No 2 in the MINIATURA 10 call (pdf)

Funding by science group:

• Humanities, Social Sciences and Art Sciences – 24 activities worth a total of PLN 571,991
• Life Sciences – 31 activities worth a total of PLN 1,389,933
• Physical Sciences and Engineering – 23 activities worth a total of PLN 957,370

Total value of the funded activities: PLN 2,919,294.

MINIATURA Still Open

The MINIATURA 10 call is open until the end of July. Proposals are accepted on an ongoing basis and reviewed by a panel of experts, with the results published once a month.

More than 200 representatives of the Norwegian scientific community took part in an information meeting organised at the RCN. The webinar focused on the calls launched under the 4th edition of the EEA and Norway Grants.

On 22 June 2026, representatives of the National Science Centre (NCN) and the National Centre for Research and Development (NCBR) took part in an information meeting addressed to potential Norwegian partners interested in the calls launched by the two agencies on 17 June.

The meeting was organised by the Research Council of Norway (RCN), the Norwegian research programme partner. More than 200 representatives of the Norwegian scientific community participated in the event.

The webinar highlighted the complementary nature of the two research programmes, enabling Norwegian institutions to participate in both basic and applied research calls. It was also emphasised that bilateral research projects must address at least one of the priority areas of the 4th edition of the EEA and Norway Grants.

The event also included discussions on the knowledge valorisation, understood as the use of research results beyond academia, including their application in social and environmental policies, as well as in patents, technological solutions and business innovations.

Scientific cooperation between Poland and Norway

The webinar was opened by the Ambassador of the Republic of Poland to Norway, Małgorzata Kosiura-Kaźmierska, who highlighted the results of scientific cooperation between Poland and Norway and expressed hope for future cooperation under the 2021–2028 EEA and Norway Grants.

Furthermore, she emphasised the importance of polar research and its relevance in the context of preparations for the International Polar Year 2031–2032.

Presentation of the new calls

Representatives of NCN and NCBR presented the objectives of the research programmes implemented by the two agencies and discussed the GRIEG BIS and POLNORIS calls aimed to support international research projects carried out in cooperation with partners from Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

The meeting concluded with a question-and-answer session, during which the attendees could find out more about participation in the calls. It was announced that a follow-up meeting to discuss the financial aspects will be held at RCN at the end of August / beginning of September.

Webinar for Polish applicants

Please note that an information webinar for the Polish scientific community will be held on 8 July 2026at 10:00 CEST to discuss the calls under the Basic Research Programme.

Prof. Agnieszka Chacińska has received the first Polish Academy of Sciences (PAS) Award. The award was presented during a session of the PAS General Assembly marking the Academy's 75th anniversary.

Dr Marcin Kulasek, Prof. Agnieszka Chacińska, Prof. Marek Konarzewski The PAS Award recognises research conducted in Poland that stands out for its high quality, its development potential and its prospects of winning the world's most prestigious accolades. It has now been presented for the first time and is worth PLN 400,000.

The winner of the PAS Award, Prof. Agnieszka Chacińska, is a molecular biologist and director of the International Institute of Molecular Mechanisms and Machines of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Her research interests lie in cell biochemistry and the molecular aspects of cell biology, in particular the biogenesis, transport and degradation of mitochondrial proteins and their malfunction leading to pathology. Her research focuses on the links between the transport of mitochondrial proteins and cellular protein homeostasis. The work of Prof. Chacińska and her team is important for understanding many diseases, such as mitochondrial diseases – rare, genetically based conditions with a severe course – as well as common lifestyle diseases, metabolic disorders, neurodegeneration, age-related dementia and cancers.

Prof. Agnieszka Chacińska has won numerous research awards as well as international and national grant competitions; her team's work is funded, among other sources, by the National Science Centre through five OPUS grants and a MAESTRO grant.

Our warmest congratulations to the laureate!

Dr hab. Karolina Kremens, a professor at the University of Wrocław, has been awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant for the most ambitious and groundbreaking projects.

Dr hab. Karolina Kremens, prof. UWr, photo by Dominika Hull The call is aimed at established, experienced researchers with an outstanding scientific track record and experience in leading a team. Successful applicants can receive funding of up to EUR 2.5 million over five years to carry out the most ambitious and groundbreaking research projects. The call has no thematic restrictions: projects may address any field of knowledge, but they must be carried out at an institution located in a European Union Member State or a country associated with the Horizon Europe programme.

The grant awarded to Dr hab. Karolina Kremens is the first ERC grant in the history of the University of Wrocław and the only grant for Poland in this year's Advanced Grants round.

Dr hab. Karolina Kremens heads the Scientific Excellence Incubator – Digital Justice at the Faculty of Law, Administration and Economics of the University of Wrocław, which studies the impact of new technologies on criminal proceedings. Her research interests focus on comparative and international criminal procedure, the organisation and functioning of the public prosecution service, the role of gender in the criminal process, and the impact of new technologies on criminal proceedings. She has won several NCN calls: she has led SONATA, SONATA BIS and PRELUDIUM BIS grants and currently runs two OPUS projects. She has also served as the research mentor for two PRELUDIUM grants.

Through the Advanced Grant, she will carry out a project entitled “crimPROfem: Reimagining the Criminal Process from a Feminist Perspective in the Digital Era”, which aims to rethink the principles of the criminal process from a feminist perspective. For decades, feminist legal theory has pointed out that the law, like all social structures, was historically built solely on male experience. The project asks what the criminal process would look like if it were rethought using the tools of feminist legal theory from an intersectional perspective, taking the experiences of marginalised people as its starting point. Reaching beyond traditional forms of feminist engagement with criminal law and seizing the opportunity offered by technological transformation, crimPROfem sets out to reconstruct the criminal process and develop a concept of feminist proceduralism that incorporates previously overlooked perspectives.

2025 ERC Advanced Grant Call Statistics

In the recently concluded edition of the Advanced Grant call, the ERC received a record 3,329 proposals – over 30% more than the previous year. Funding went to 319 projects worth a total of EUR 838 million. The grantees come from 24 countries. The success rate in the call was 9.6%.

The NCN Generation series brings together researchers whose work broadens our knowledge and shapes our lives – serving our health, the environment, technological progress and a better understanding of the world. The sixth episode features Dr hab. Agata Starosta, a molecular biologist and professor at the Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

After spending well over a decade conducting research in Germany and the United Kingdom, she now leads a team studying the fundamental life processes of bacteria at the IBB PAS.

The weak points of bacteria

We tend to associate bacteria mainly with disease, yet most are harmless and many are positively indispensable. Bacteria build soil, clean up the environment and help produce food, while those living in our gut shape how we function. Science came to appreciate their beneficial role only relatively recently – through the discovery of probiotics in the 1960s and 1970s and, later, through microbiome sequencing.

Agata Starosta studies protein biosynthesis – a process fundamental to every living cell. She works with the hay bacillus (Bacillus subtilis) and looks for points at which bacteria differ from human cells. She describes these differences as ‘skeleton keys’: individual proteins that behave differently from their human counterparts can be used to design antibiotics that eliminate pathogens precisely when needed, while leaving beneficial bacteria untouched.

Her team is looking for similar mechanisms in Antarctic bacteria collected at the Arctowski Station, which is run by the IBB PAS. The station has been operating for almost fifty years, and the collection assembled there includes strains from places that no longer exist – melted glaciers, for example. They remain largely unstudied, and some of them could no longer be obtained today.

How her team rewrote the textbooks

At school we are taught that in bacteria transcription and translation are coupled – the ribosome reads the information from RNA immediately behind the polymerase transcribing it from DNA. This was regarded as a hallmark of bacteria, one that was meant to ensure fast and efficient protein production. Agata Starosta’s team has shown, however, that in the hay bacillus the two processes are not always coupled and can take place in different parts of the cell, much as they do in higher organisms. This allows the bacterium to regulate more precisely which proteins it makes and where – for instance, when it runs short of food or when stressors appear in its environment. One of the team’s hypotheses is that the hay bacillus may be a distant relative of eukaryotic cells.

From a weak point to a drug

Once a weak point has been identified, the team tests whether molecules from chemical libraries can bind to it and block the process in question – the starting point for work on a new drug. In one project, carried out in collaboration with a pharmaceutical company, the team’s basic research made it possible to identify molecules that went on to further development. The resulting drug is now on the market.

The search for further weak points has a practical purpose. The more antibiotics we use – in medicine, but also in agriculture, from where they find their way into water and soil – the stronger the pressure favouring resistant bacteria becomes. Today antibiotic resistance is responsible for more deaths each year than malaria and AIDS combined, and developing a new antibiotic takes around ten years – long enough for bacteria, in some cases, to learn how to cope with it. That is why new points of attack are constantly needed.

Selected statements

Bacteria rule us

When people talk about a ‘gut feeling’, the gut really does send us signals. Many of the signals that steer our lives and the way we function come precisely from bacteria.

An encounter with biology

My first encounter with biology came when, as a child, I developed tonsillitis that no antibiotic could clear. I was then given an antibiotic that was still in the clinical-trial phase. It was azithromycin, which I later worked on, among other things, during my doctorate. Somehow, things had come full circle.

What fascinates her

Translation itself is an absolutely fantastic and fascinating process. It is a mystery to me why it is so often overlooked, even though it is a fundamental process and one of the most important processes targeted by antibiotics.

What the NCN means to her

An NCN grant allowed my team to move to the Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, where we could pursue every idea we had. NCN gives us that measure of stability. It lets us do what gives us enormous pleasure and, at the same time, change the way this biology is understood.

The National Science Centre (NCN) has announced the launch of the GRIEG BIS and Coordination & Capacity Kick-off calls, which are a part of the Basic Research programme operated by NCN within the framework of the 4th edition of the EEA and Norway Grants.

The funding supports projects conducted in bilateral partnerships between Poland and the EEA countries (Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein). The current edition of the Grants will focus on research that may have potentially significant socio-economic implications in three priority areas:

• European green transition,
• democracy, rule of law, and human rights,
• social inclusion and resilience.

GRIEG BIS

Under GRIEG BIS, research projects may be planned for a period of 36 months. Funding is available for international partnerships led by Polish research organisations, involving at least one partner from Norway, Iceland, or Liechtenstein. The combined costs of partners from the Donor States must not exceed 40% of the total project budget. A joint proposal drafted by a partner is submitted electronically to the OSF submission system by the Polish leader. The principal investigator must be at least a PhD holder at the time of submission. While proposals submitted to the call may cover all research fields and topics, they must address challenges within the three priority areas. 

Proposals may be submitted until 30 September 2026. With a total budget of EUR 50,000,000, individual project grants will range from EUR 800,000 to EUR 1,500,000.

GRIEG Bis application form will be available in the OSF online submission system no late than 25th June, 2026

COORDINATION & CAPACITY KICK-OFF

The Coordination & Capacity Kick-off call supports Polish research teams, particularly those led by early-career researchers, in forming international partnerships with partners from the Donor State and developing interdisciplinary project concepts.

This will be achieved through bilateral working visits for face-to-face cooperation, alongside tailored capacity building activities, through which NCN will provide beneficiaries with targeted support based on the needs identified during the application process.

The submission deadline is 1 September 2026. The call has a total budget of EUR 150,000 and provides simplified funding in the form of a lump sum of EUR 2,800 per grant to cover travel and networking costs.

The Coordination & Capacity Kick-off call is a preparatory phase for the upcoming LANGSPIL call, scheduled for launch in November 2026. LANGSPIL will be a major funding opportunity with a total budget of EUR 12,000,000, supporting 3-year interdisciplinary basic research projects integrating multiple disciplines, with a particular emphasis on the social sciences and humanities. Participation in the C&C Kick-off call does not create any obligation to submit a full proposal under the LANGSPIL call.

Matchmaking Tool

To facilitate the formation of international consortia, NCN has launched a dedicated EEA & Norway Grants Partner Matchmaking Tool which allows Polish research organisations and potential partners from Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein to showcase their expertise and connect directly with one another. Researchers are strongly encouraged to register and create their profiles to maximise their chances of finding suitable partners for the GRIEG BIS and Coordination & Capacity Kick-off calls. Matchmaking Tool

Potential applicants should carefully review the official call documents before preparing and submitting their proposals. To provide further guidance, NCN will host a webinar on the GRIEG BIS and Kick-off calls, followed by a Q&A session on 8 July 2026 at 10AM CEST. The webinar will be held via the ClickMeeting platform and anyone interested in the webinar may register in advance through the registration link available here. The number of participants is limited to 500.

In the latest episode, Prof. Leszek Kaczmarek, a member of the ERC Scientific Council, and Katarzyna Kubica-Oro, from the National Contact Point for EU Research Programmes at NCBR, discuss how ERC proposals are assessed, why countries in our region win so few grants, and what researchers considering an application can actually do.

Leszek Kaczmarek is a molecular biologist at the Marceli Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He sits on the ERC Scientific Council and has served on the agency’s panels almost from the outset, since 2007. Katarzyna Kubica-Oro is an ERC specialist at the National Contact Point for EU Research Programmes and an experienced research project manager. The conversation is hosted by Anna Korzekwa-Jzefowicz.

How the ERC identifies a breakthrough

The ERC assesses proposals against a single criterion: scientific excellence. What counts as a breakthrough is for the panel to decide. “None of us on the Scientific Council defines it. We have a system that allows us to identify it. It is our collective wisdom that decides what counts as a breakthrough,” says Prof. Leszek Kaczmarek.

Katarzyna Kubica-Oro adds that a breakthrough looks different in every field. “A project has to be robust, but above all it has to surprise you,” she says.

An idea is only the beginning. At interview, the panel checks whether the researcher genuinely masters the methods the project will require. “Sometimes people come in with an interesting idea and stand before the panel like a manager: I will hire this person and that person, all of them specialists. And it is clear that they do not know the field themselves. Someone like that stands no chance of winning a grant,” notes Prof. Kaczmarek.

The Contact Point specialist highlights the simplest condition of all, one that researchers sometimes overlook. “The ERC wants to fund science, not science fiction. When preparing a proposal, researchers often do not even open the documentation or look at the assessment criteria. Yet the very first thing I would do is check whether my project is actually what the ERC is looking for,” she stresses.

25 per cent of the population, 5 per cent of the grants

The ERC Scientific Council, whose working group was chaired by Prof. Kaczmarek, published the White Paper on the low share of widening countries in ERC grants on 26 March 2026. The category of widening countries covers the states that joined the Union from 2004 onwards, together with Greece and Portugal. They account for about 25 per cent of the EU population, yet together they win fewer than 5 per cent of ERC grants. Fewer than 10 per cent of panel members come from these countries as well.

The White Paper sets out several reasons for the gap:

• low national spending on research,
• weak institutional support,
• limited access to international research networks,
• language and psychological barriers.

Prof. Kaczmarek traces the gap to a mechanism that, in his view, weakens science at its very roots. “The worst thing that can happen to Polish science is metric-based assessment. It pulls in exactly the opposite direction to what the ERC wants. There you have to focus on great achievements, whereas we are forced to do the opposite,” he says.

For him, the shortage of grants has a civilisational dimension. The untapped intellectual potential of a quarter of Europe’s population means fewer discoveries, fewer technologies and fewer therapies for everyone. Individual grants help reverse this: they build local centres of outstanding science that attract and train the next generation of researchers.

“Even single ERC grants create what I would call islands of good fortune here: pockets of outstanding science that draw in young researchers. And there they learn how to do good science. If we fail to harness scientific excellence, we do not move forward as a civilisation, as humankind,” says Prof. Kaczmarek. Western Europe’s leading centres lose out too, deprived of researchers who would otherwise have been trained in such places. Building islands of outstanding science in widening countries is in the shared interest of the whole continent.

What a researcher can do

What matters most is to build the right body of work from the doctorate onwards: a small number of genuinely significant papers in which the researcher is first author and makes the decisive contribution.

Environment and networking are just as crucial. Czechia is the prime example: in one Consolidator Grant call, it achieved a 25.5 per cent success rate, the highest of any country. Its success came from a grassroots initiative by ERC grant winners and panel members, who built a system of mentoring and support for prospective candidates.

In Poland, support is available from the National Contact Point, from horizontal contact points across six macroregions, and from the PAS Scientific Excellence Office, which runs workshops, training sessions and mock interviews. A further tool is the ERC Mentoring Initiative. “You have to surround yourself with people who have won these grants and who assess them,” Katarzyna Kubica-Oro stresses. “Without building a network, it will simply be harder.”

Finally, the host asks whether the conversation makes applying more or less tempting. “We do not encourage people to submit proposals. We move exceptional people to submit exceptional proposals,” replies Prof. Kaczmarek.

Selected remarks

Leszek Kaczmarek

The aim is not to win ERC grants. The aim is outstanding science; ERC grants are merely a measure of it, because Europe has no better yardstick for the highest scientific quality. The Nobel Prize may be a better one, but it is already extremely selective.

In 2012, I chaired a panel that awarded an ERC grant to a young researcher from Austria. After seven years as a postdoc in California, he returned with a single first-author paper, but a hugely significant one. He received the grant and a laboratory in Vienna. It shows very clearly what really counts in a track record.

Katarzyna Kubica-Oroń

The ERC is open to everyone, regardless of age, gender or background. The evaluation is not about your institution. I have often encountered the view that ERC grants are reserved for researchers at Europe’s top research centres. That is not true, and it is important that we do not keep the myth alive.

At the “ERC Stages” event during the Copernicus Festival, I invited many ERC grant winners who are currently running projects in Poland. The great majority of them did not win grants on their first attempt, but on a later one. It is a fiercely competitive call, so there is no point in giving up early. If it does not come off, you revise the application and learn how to do it better.

National Science Centre together with Biodiversa+ is pleased to pre-announce its upcoming 2026-2027 Joint Call, Novel ecosystems: biodiversity, socio-ecological consequences and future trajectories. The call will support transnational research and innovation projects addressing novel ecosystems, their biodiversity, socio-ecological dynamics and future trajectories.

As ecosystems become ever more shaped by human influence and global change, BiodivFuture will fund research to better understand ongoing transformations, the risks, opportunities and trade-offs they entail, and how knowledge can help foster resilient, interconnected, diverse and well-functioning ecosystems.

The call will focus on three broad themes:

• Theme A – Novel ecosystem functioning
  Understanding the functioning of novel ecosystems and their links to socio-cultural and socio-economic dynamics.
• Theme B – Pathways to novel ecosystems
  Studying pathways to novel ecosystems and associated socio-ecological dynamics under uncertainty and changing conditions.
• Theme C – Biodiversity benefits and equity in the context of novel ecosystems
  Exploring how biodiversity benefits, costs and trade-offs are shared across contexts, communities and generations.

Eligible participants

To be eligible, research consortia will have to include teams from a minimum of 3 countries financially participating in the Call, including at least two different EU Member States or Horizon Europe Associated Countries.

At this stage, a total budget of approximately €40 million has been provisionally reserved by participating countries, together with the European Commission.

Call timeline:

• Launch of the call: Wednesday 9 September 2026
• Deadline for pre-proposals submission (mandatory): Early November 2026
• Deadline for full-proposals submission: Early April 2027

Further details, including national and regional eligibility rules, will be published at the official launch. 

The largest editions to date of the OPUS and SONATA calls for research projects in NCN's history have now been concluded. More than five hundred basic research grants, with a total value of almost PLN 912 million, will go to Polish research institutions.

1. Record number of proposals. More than 3,700 proposals were submitted to the OPUS 30+LAP/Weave and SONATA 21 calls – almost 15 per cent more than a year earlier.
2. Record budget. We are allocating a total of nearly PLN 912 for project funding– the highest amount in the history of these calls.
3. More funded projects. A total of 522 projects will receive funding (this figure does not include LAP proposals). A year earlier, at the same stage, we had funded 441 projects, and 485 in 2024.
4. The growing scale of NCN calls. Researchers are submitting more and more proposals to NCN, which are processed by the same number of staff as several years ago.

The calls were announced in mid-September last year. OPUS has a broad formula and is open to all researchers, regardless of age, academic degree or career stage. Grants are available for projects carried out at Polish research institutions and lasting 12, 24, 36 or 48 months. The autumn edition of the call also includes the LAP track, through which applicants may seek funding for research carried out in cooperation with partners from Austria, Czechia, Slovenia, Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg or Belgium-Flanders under the Weave programme; the maximum duration of these projects depends on the partner country. There are no budget limits for individual projects in this call. The budget may cover, among other things, salaries, scholarships and the cost of research, including the purchase of apparatus, equipment, software and materials, outsourced services, travel, and access to international research facilities. The principal investigator may be a researcher with at least one research paper published or accepted for publication or, for research in art, at least one artistic achievement or achievement in research in art.

SONATA is a call aimed at a specific group of researchers at an early stage of their careers. In the edition just concluded, proposals could be submitted by researchers who had been awarded their PhD degree between 1 January 2018 and 31 December 2023. As in OPUS, principal investigators are required to have published research papers or have had artistic achievements or achievements in research in art. SONATA projects may last 12, 24 or 36 months. The budget may include salaries for the principal investigator and co-investigators, research costs (equipment, services, materials, travel and so on) and costs related to reducing the obligatory teaching load.

Funded projects

More than 3,700 proposals were submitted to NCN under the OPUS 30+LAP/Weave and SONATA 21 calls. This is an unprecedentedly high number: in 2025 we received five hundred fewer proposals, and in 2022-2024 we received around three thousand proposals each time for this configuration of calls.

Proposals are subject to an eligibility check at NCN premises, performed by the coordinators. Merit-based evaluation is carried out by Expert Teams made up of researchers appointed by the NCN Council separately for each NCN review panel; because of the large number of proposals, two separate teams are appointed for some panels. In the first stage of merit-based evaluation, each proposal is reviewed individually by the team members, and the decision to shortlist it for the next stage is taken collectively by the team at its first panel meeting. The second stage of merit-based evaluation involves obtaining at least two individual reviews from external reviewers. Final decisions on whether or not to recommend a proposal for funding are taken by the Expert Team after a discussion at the second panel meeting, taking the individual reviews into account. The record number of proposals in the calls just concluded has affected the organisation of NCN's evaluation process and extended its duration.

A total of 279 OPUS projects and 243 SONATA projects have been recommended for funding, for a total of nearly PLN 912 million. The success rate by number of proposals was 13.34% in the OPUS call (excluding LAP proposals) and 18.02% in the SONATA call.

The number of OPUS 30 grant winners will increase further: today's results do not include the results for OPUS LAP proposals, that is, projects carried out by Polish research teams in international cooperation with partners from Austria, Czechia, Slovenia, Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg or Belgium-Flanders. NCN evaluated these proposals as the lead agency; now, in line with the principles of the Weave programme, the partner institutions must approve the results. We will publish information on the winning projects as approvals come in, in line with the timeline set out in the call announcement.

Full lists of projects recommended for funding, together with popular-science summaries:

• OPUS 30 AND SONATA 21 RANKING LISTS
• Ranking lists for download (PDF): OPUS 30 (without LAP), SONATA 21

Decisions and resubmitting a proposal to subsequent NCN calls

Decisions will be sent out on 11 June (rules on the service of decisions). Applicants who did not receive funding under OPUS 30+LAP/Weave and SONATA 21 and wish to apply again in subsequent calls should remember that, where the research tasks overlap with those in a previous proposal, a new proposal may be submitted only once the NCN Director's decision refusing funding has become final. This occurs once the 14-day appeal period has expired. In order to submit a new proposal in time for the calls open until 16 June, an applicant must waive the right to appeal before that deadline expires. Once such a declaration has been delivered to NCN, the decision becomes final, making it possible to resubmit the proposal in the new calls.

Applicants should submit a written declaration to NCN at ul. Twardowskiego 16, 30-312 Kraków, or electronically (signed with an advanced or qualified electronic signature in PAdES format) to the ESP: /ncn/SkrytkaESP or to the electronic delivery address: AE:PL-30168-16398-EHSIE-12.

Should you have any questions or queries, please contact the officer responsible for your proposal, as indicated in the OSF system.