GRIEG BIS

For each proposal, the project partners shall designate a Project Promoter which has scientific and administrative responsibility for the project, and shall act as Applicant and submit the proposal on their behalf. The Project Promoter has to be a Polish research organisation. For each project, the Project Promoter designates a Principal Investigator – a researcher who provides the scientific lead for the research project on a daily basis. The Principal Investigator must, as a minimum, have a PhD at the time of submission.

The Project Promoter and Principal Investigator act as coordinators of the project and have to communicate to all Project Partners (from Poland and EEA conuntries) all relevant information concerning the preparation and implementation of the collaborative GRIEG BIS project.

The eligible Applicant (Project Promoter) is a research organisation defined by Commission Regulation (EU) No 651/2014 of 17 June 2014 declaring certain categories of aid compatible with the internal market in application of Articles 107 and 108 of the Treaty and established as a legal person in Poland. The Article 27 section 1 of the Act on the National Science Centre of 30 April 2010 indicates the eligible entities’ catalogue, which may apply in the calls launched by NCN. In GRIEG BIS these are: 

1. University
2. Federation of science and HE entities 
3. Research institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences
4. Research institute 
5. International research institute 

5a. Łukasiewicz Centre

5b. Institute operating within the Łukasiewicz Research Network

5c. Centre of Postgraduate Medical Education 

6. Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences
7. Entity involved in research independently on a continuous basis (not listed in sections 1-6)
8. -
9. Scientific and industrial centre
10. Research centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences
11. Scientific library
12. Company operating as R&D centre 
13. Legal entity established with registered office in Poland

13 a. President of the Central Office of Measures

Proposals for collaborative research projects shall be submitted by a Partnership comprising (as a minimum) of at least one Polish and at least one Norwegian or Icelandic or Liechtenstein research organisation called the Lead Donor Project Partner. Lead Donor Project Partner should be research organisation approved by RCN or Rannis, respectively.

In the case of partnership containing more than one Donor Project Partner, only one of them is considered as Lead Donor Project Partner. The academic and research track record of the researcher representing Lead Project Partner will be evaluated by international experts.

There is no limitation on the number of Project Partners: any public or private entity meeting the eligibility criteria of the call can be a partner. Entities established in third countries can participate, but they cannot receive funding from the project grant.

Please note that adding Project Partners during the project is not allowed.

Detailed conditions for eligibility of Project Partners are listed in Section 3.3 of Guide for Applicants and Evaluators.

Basic research proposals may be submitted to the call in any of 26 NCN panels comprising three groups:

• HS –Humanities, Social Sciences and Art Sciences;
• NZ – Life Sciences;
• ST – Physical Sciences and Engineering.

Furthermore, proposals must address challenges within at least one of the three priority areas:

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

Research projects may be planned for a period of 36 months.

The minimum amount of grant is 800 000 EUR and the maximum amount is 1 500 000 EUR (including overhead costs). The currency used for completing the Application form, and payments from the Programme Operator to the Applicant, is Polish zloty (PLN). The exchange rate to be used during the preparation and submission of proposals is: EUR 1 = PLN 4.2426. The total costs planned by all Donor Project Partners from Donor State(s) should normally not exceed 40% of the Partnership’s total budget. The following direct expenditures are eligible:

• costs of staff assigned to the project;
• cost of new or second-hand equipment;
• travel and subsistence allowances for staff and participants in the project;
• costs of consumables and supplies;
• costs entailed by other contracts;
• costs arising directly from requirements imposed by the project contract for each project.

Detailed conditions for eligibility of expenditures are specified in Section 3.5 of Guide for Applicants and Evaluators.

Please note that any expenditures incurred after 30 April 2031 (the final date of cost eligibility under the EEA Financial Mechanism 2021- 2028) shall not be eligible.

Yes, they can. If funding of a research project by NCN constitutes State aid for the Project Promoter and/or Project Partners, State aid will be granted under conditions regulated by the Regulation of the Minister of Science and Higher Education of 9 September 2015 on the terms and mode for granting State aid via the National Science Centre (Journal of Laws of 2015, item 1381). The Regulation is in accordance with the Commission Regulation (EU) No 651/2014 of 17 June 2014 declaring certain categories of aid compatible with the internal market in application of Articles 107 and 108 of the Treaty.

State aid under the Regulation of the Minister of Science and Higher Education from September 9, 2015, regarding the conditions and procedures for granting public aid through the National Science Centre may be available until June 30, 2027. If a project is qualified for funding and the project contract is signed after June 30, 2027, the entity may be required to submit additional annexes and consider changes to the project related to state aid under the new Regulation. 

Detailed information can be found in the State aid section.

The proposals shall be submitted electronically via the OSF submission system available online. To submit an application via OSF the applicant must be registered as a user of the system and follow the instructions given in the OSF system. Only the Project Promoter is authorized to submit a proposal using the username and password. More details can be found in the proposal submission procedure. 

The proposal form template, including the scope of required information, is available here. Please note that in the GRIEG BIS call, the project description is subject to a 20-page limit, excluding the bibliography. Unlike domestic calls announced by NCN, there is no distinction between a short and a detailed project description.

The application deadline is September 30, 2026, at 14:00, UTC+02:00 (CEST).

Any corrections or revisions of proposals after this deadline will not be possible.

Please note that the restrictions on the total number of NCN projects and proposals under evaluation or recommended for funding in which a researcher is named as the Principal Investigator apply to the GRIEG BIS call. These limits must be in line with the regulations described in Chapter III of the Regulations on awarding funding for research tasks funded by the National Science Centre as regards research projects, adopted by the NCN Council on 12 February 2026.

Under GRIEG BIS call, each Principal Investigator may submit a maximum of one grant application. In case more applications are submitted, the first application registered as submitted will be considered. Further ones will be rejected.

Evaluation

Preceding the merit based evaluation, proposals are checked by NCN against the eligibility criteria of the GRIEG BIS call specified in Sections 3 & 4 of Guide for Applicants and Evaluators. Proposals failing any of the eligibility criteria are rejected. 

Eligible proposals are selected for funding based on peer-review evaluation. The proposals are evaluated by panels composed of internationally recognised experts. The experts are invited to evaluate proposals that closely relate to their field of expertise. They must be resident and working outside of Poland, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.

First, each proposal is evaluated independently (online) by three experts. Then, experts who read and evaluated each proposal meet to discuss and prepare consensus reports, representing their common view. A rapporteur is appointed from among the three experts by the NCN Coordinator(s). The task of the rapporteur is to draft the consensus report with the support of the NCN Coordinator, and present it during the Panel meeting. There will be one Panel for each research domain (HS – Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences; NZ – Life Sciences; ST – Physical Sciences and Engineering). The Panel meeting entails a comparison of the consensus reports, checking the consistency of the scores and justifications, resolving cases where the experts could not reach consensus concerning a particular aspect of a proposal and recommending a priority order for proposals with the same score. Based on each Panel recommendation the NCN Coordinators prepare preliminary ranking lists, one for each research domain, with a requested grant amount for each proposal.

Final selection and proposal funding decisions

The evaluation process concludes with a meeting of the Selection Committee, which decides on the final lists of projects recommended for funding and, if applicable, reserve lists. The Selection Committee is a body established by the Programme Operator, composed of at least five persons possessing the relevant expertise, including the Chairs of each Expert Team (HS, ST, and NZ). All members with voting privileges shall be external to the Programme Operator and the Donor Programme Partners.

The decision on the final ranking list of proposals is based on the evaluation of the Expert Teams and the preliminary ranking lists, as well as additional points awarded by the Selection Committee based on criteria aligned with the Programme’s objectives.

While making a recommendation for funding, the Selection Committee additionally takes into consideration the total budget for the call, as well as the principles, key priorities, and ambitions of the EEA Grants and the call itself. In the event that the final ranking list, approved by the Selection Committee, reveals that funding limitations prevent the full inclusion of an additional project, the Programme Operator may, acting on a proposal from the Selection Committee, apply uniform budget reductions across all projects, not exceeding 3% of the requested amount. The Selection Committee may also recommend projects for the reserve lists, which may be funded if an additional budget becomes available.

NCN awards individual grants to projects based on the final ranking lists approved by the Selection Committee. The NCN Director issues decisions concerning project financing.

Detailed information on the evaluation procedure is provided in Section 4 of Guide for Applicants and Evaluators. All applicants and partners are encouraged to read this document.

Merit based evaluation takes into account the criteria specified in the table below. 

To be recommended for funding, the proposal must receive a positive recommendation from the Expert’s Team and pass all the thresholds for each evaluation criterion. The final score, scaled to a 20-point scale, is determined using the weighted average method.

The Selection Committee takes into account following additional criteria aligned with the objectives of the Programme:

More details on evaluation criteria can be found in Sections 4.3.2, 4.3.3 and 4.3.5 of Guide for Applicants and Evaluators.

The GRIEG BIS call results shall be announced on the NCN website in April - May 2027 at the latest.

The call results will be available in the OSF electronic submission system and will also be communicated to the applicants by an electronically delivered decision of the NCN Director. The applicants will have access to the assessments of the individual experts, consensus assessments and results of the Panel review.

The Applicant (Project Promoter/Project Investigator) should get acquainted with the rules for delivering the NCN Director’s decisions.

The decisions of the NCN Director may be appealed against to the Appeal Committee of the Council of the National Science Centre, in the event of a breach of the call procedure or other formal infringements. The appeal shall be lodged by the Applicant within 14 days of the effective delivery of the decision.

More information on appeal procedure can be found here.

A Project Contract is concluded between the Programme Operator (NCN) and the Project Promoter. All project partners will sign Partnership Agreements with the Project Promoter. 

If changes in the proposals and budgets are required, Project Promoters are invited for negotiations with the Programme Operator before signing the contracts.

Research outputs, including joint publications and other results, should be disseminated in accordance with open science and open access principles as described in the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation.

Please note that Open Access costs are direct eligible cost under the Basic Research Programme. All publications must include the following statement to indicate that the results of the project were generated with the assistance of financial support from the EEA Financial Mechanism:

“The research leading to these results has received funding from the EEA Grants 2021-2028 operated by National Science Centre under Project Contract No xxx.”. 

To facilitate the formation of international consortia, NCN has launched a dedicated EEA & Norway Grants Partner Matchmaking Tool, available here. We highly encourage all interested to register in the database to maximize the chances of finding a potential partner for GRIEG BIS and other calls within the Basic Research Programme framework.

NCN will host a webinar on the GRIEG BIS followed by a Q&A session on 8 July 2026 at 10AM CEST. The webinar will be held via the ClickMeeting platform, interested participants can register in advance using the following registration link. Please note that the number of participants is limited to 500.

For any further inquiries or questions regarding the upcoming calls, please feel free to contact us at Norway.Grants@ncn.gov.pl.

In case of specific issues concerning applicants from Norway, the Donor Programme Partner in the Basic Research Programme is the Research Council of Norway (RCN): 

Aleksandra W. Haugstad (e-mail: awh@rcn.no)

Julie Christiansen (e-mail: jc@rcn.no)

In case of specific issues concerning applicants from Iceland, the Donor Programme Partner in the Basic Research Programme is the Icelandic Centre for Research (Rannis):

Elisabet Andrésdóttir (e-mail: elisabet.andresdottir@rannis.is)

Sigurður Óli Sigurðsson (e-mail: sigurdur.o.sigurdsson@rannis.is)