Horizon Europe - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)

The MSCA offer fellowships for researchers from all scientific disciplines. These are grants for both individual researchers and for partnerships of knowledge institutions and companies.

In this way, the European Commission (EC) wants to develop the research skills of researchers and offer them better career prospects. These grants should make it more attractive for researchers to come and stay in Europe.

Different types of MSCA

MSCA offer several opportunities to conduct research abroad for a certain period of time. They also offer opportunities to employ foreign researchers temporarily. The different MSCA are:

• Doctoral Networks (DN)
  The objective of DNs is to implement doctoral programmes by partnerships of organisations from different sectors across Europe and beyond to train highly skilled doctoral candidates, stimulate their creativity, enhance their innovation capacities and boost their employability in the long-term.
• Postdoctoral Fellowships (PF)
  PFs are individual grants to support post-doctoral researcher' careers and foster excellence in research. The Postdoctoral Fellowships actions target researchers holding a PhD, who wish to carry out their research activities abroad, acquire new skills and develop their careers. PFs help researchers gain experience in other countries, disciplines and non-academic sectors.
• Staff Exchange
  The Staff Exchanges action funds short-term international and inter-sectoral exchanges of staff members involved in research and innovation activities of participating organisations. The aim is to develop sustainable collaborative projects between different organisations from the academic and non-academic sectors (in particular SMEs), based in Europe and beyond.
• COFUND
  The COFUND action provides funding for regional, national and international programmes for training and career development, through co-funding mechanisms. It spreads the MSCA’s best practices by promoting high standards and excellent working conditions. COFUND promotes sustainable training and international, interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral mobility.
• MSCA and Citizens
  Every year on the last Friday of September, the European Researchers’ Night makes science accessible to all through activities which combine education with entertainment, such as exhibitions, hands-on experiments, science shows, games, competitions, quizzes and more. The objective of the MSCA & Citizens actions is to bring research and researchers closer to the public at large, with a focus notably on families, pupils and students. 

Budget

The budget for MSCA is € 6.64 billion for the period 2021-2027.

In most actions, the grant consists of:

• an allowance for the researcher's salary: the so-called living, travel and family allowance; and
• a budget for the researcher's training, networking and research costs and an allowance for management costs.

The total budget per fellowship or action therefore depends on the number of researchers to be recruited and the number of months.

Conditions

MSCA publishes several calls for proposal for the various MSCA. Each type of subsidy has a deadline once a year. Each promotion has different conditions for who can submit and for which researchers the grant is suitable.

Read more on the MSCA website

Find a suitable call

In the Funding & Tenders portal of the European Commission you can find which calls are currently open and you will find all important documents with the conditions for participation. You can submit your proposal in this online portal.

Frequently asked questions

In the document below (pdf) you can find answers to the most common financial questions from researchers participating in a MSCA project.

Stay informed

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