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30 years of MSCA

Curiosity that changes the world

Part of Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

The first 30 years of MSCA

From small scheme to flagship programme

More than 150,000 researchers supported

Since 1996, the MSCA has grown into the European Union’s flagship programme for researcher training, mobility and career development - open to all disciplines and sectors.

Over three decades, the programme has supported over 150,000 researchers at all career stages, from early-stage doctoral candidates to experienced postdoctoral researchers and research managers and has involved 23 Nobel Prize laureates as fellows, supervisors or project coordinators. 

What began as a small fellowship scheme enabling a few hundred researchers per year to work abroad has evolved into a comprehensive set of actions supporting around 8,000 researchers annually, through doctoral programmes, postdoctoral fellowships and staff exchanges.

Excellence through mobility and openness

From the outset, the MSCA was designed around a simple but powerful idea: excellence through mobility and openness. 

Researchers are free to define their research topics through a bottom-up approach, while gaining international, interdisciplinary and intersectoral experience. 

Over time, this model has helped build long-lasting research networks across universities, research organisations, companies and public bodies - many of which continue well beyond the lifetime of individual projects.

From individual funding to structural impact

As the programme developed, its ambition expanded. Beyond supporting individual researchers, the MSCA increasingly focused on structural impact: improving the quality of doctoral and postdoctoral training, promoting attractive working conditions, supporting gender equality, and spreading best practices in recruitment and supervision across Europe’s research institutions. 

The programme has also played a key role in encouraging open science, public engagement and science communication, bringing research closer to society, in particular through the European Researchers’ Night, which takes place across Europe at the end of September each year.

Thousands of organisations involved

The MSCA has consistently evolved alongside Europe’s research priorities. 

From the early focus on mobility in the 1990s, the programme opened progressively to global talent, strengthened cooperation with industry and other non-academic actors, and aligned with efforts to build a truly integrated European Research Area (ERA). 

Today, companies account for almost 50% of organisations taking part in the programme, including a growing number of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), benefiting from access to highly skilled international research talent.

The MSCA is the most gender-balanced part of the EU’s Framework Programme for Research, with women currently representing close to 45% of supported researchers.

More than 150 nationalities

International openness remains a defining feature. Around 40% of MSCA-supported researchers come from outside the EU, and the vast majority remain in Europe after their fellowship, contributing directly to Europe’s competitiveness and knowledge base. 

The global MSCA alumni community (the Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA)) - spanning more than 150 nationalities - has become a powerful ambassador network for European science worldwide.

Thirty years on, the MSCA is widely recognised as much more than a mobility programme. It is a long-term investment in people, in skills and in cooperation - supporting researchers, organisations and businesses, while helping Europe respond to today and tomorrow’s challenges through excellence, openness and collaboration.