MSCA 2024 call to co-fund doctoral and postdoctoral programmes receives 81 proposals
COFUND gives organisations a unique opportunity to attract research and innovation talent through their own doctoral and postdoctoral fellowship programmes.
The fourth call under Horizon Europe of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions-funded COFUND scheme closed on 26 September 2024. The European Research Executive Agency (REA) received 81 proposals.
Through this call, the European Union will fund around 30 projects and up to 1,000 researchers with an indicative budget of €104.8 million. This represents an increase of 8.5% compared to the last call.
In comparison, 106 proposals were submitted in 2023 and 27 were eventually selected for funding, comprising 12 doctoral training programmes and 15 postdoctoral fellowship programmes.
This year’s submitted proposals are distributed as follows
A chart illustrating the type of project proposals received. The Commission has received 81 project proposals, of which 40 are for doctoral programmes, whilst 41 are for postdoctoral programmes.
Under this round, organisations based in 20 countries submitted proposals.
A bar chart showing the type of project proposals received by country of the coordinating organisation. The top countries are France with 19 proposals, Spain with 13, Germany with 7, Czechia and Italy with 5 each, and Austria, Belgium and Poland with 4 each.
Selected projects can include several partners from the EU and worldwide, which will recruit, employ and train researchers.
Funding for excellent doctoral training and postdoctoral fellowship programmes
Under this call, the European Commission will fund training and postdoctoral fellowship programmes.
- COFUND Doctoral Programmes offer doctoral candidates research training activities to develop and broaden their skills and competences, allowing them to obtain a doctoral degree.
- COFUND Postdoctoral Programmes fund individual advanced research training and career development fellowships for postdoctoral researchers.
COFUND allows organisations to attract international talent, increase their research and innovation capacity and contribute to their local, regional and/or national socio-economic ecosystem by training talented researchers.
The EU co-funds a significant part of the programme cost, which organisations need to top up with their own resources.
These schemes spread MSCA best practice by promoting high standards for selection and recruitment as well as excellent working and employment conditions.
They promote sustainable research training and international, interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral mobility to
- engage researchers and innovators in academia and beyond
- provide them with new knowledge, skills, career development perspectives and employability
- allow them to enlarge their networks and carry out cutting-edge, collaborative research
- boost their creativity and entrepreneurship
Seal of Excellence
The European Commission will also award Seal of Excellence certificates to applicants who applied to the MSCA COFUND call in 2024 but whose proposals cannot be funded due to budgetary constraints.
This label recognises the value of these high-quality proposals and helps organisations secure funding from other sources.
Next funding round
The next call for MSCA COFUND will open on 23 January 2025 and will close on 24 June 2025. You will find more information under how to apply.
Indicative timeline
- September 2024 to end of February 2025: evaluation coordinated by REA and undertaken by external independent expert evaluators
- February 2025: notification of call results to applicants
- applicants will be able to access the results of the evaluation on their personal space of the Funding and Tenders Opportunities Portal
- an overview of the evaluation results, cut-off scores and statistics will be published on the page of the call COFUND 2024
- March - May 2025: expected signature of the grant agreement for successful projects with the European Commission
- May 2025: first EU-funded projects start