// NATURE NEWS — SPAZIO & SCIENZA
Is research funding now a lottery? Elite funder ERC swamped by applications
Search author on:
PubMed
Google Scholar
When grant programmes’ success rates are pushed down below a certain threshold, they essentially become a lottery.Credit: javier rodriguez jimenez/Shutterstock
A 62% growth in applications to one of the world’s most prestigious research-grant programmes could result in an exceptionally low success rate, raising fears that quality scientific ideas will go unfunded. This rise is attributable, in part, to the ease of writing applications with artificial-intelligence tools.
When the best decision is no decision: the rise of randomization in grant funding
“The number is a bit scary,” says Maria Leptin, president of the European Research Council (ERC) in Brussels, noting it’s increasingly difficult for their staff and peer reviewers to tackle so many applications.
The ERC’s Starting Grant programme — which offers base funds of up to €1.5 million (US$1.7 million) over five years to early-career scientists — received 7,710 proposals for 2027 grants before the deadline on 14 October, up from 4,807 last year (see ‘Rising torrent’).
With up to 373 grants available, down from 421 last year because of funding constraints, that will mean a success rate of less than 5%, compared with 8.8% for the 2026 grant call. “It’s almost a lottery,” says Devang Mehta, a systems and synthetic biologist at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium who applied for a Starting Grant this year.
Source: European Research CouncilSource: European Research Council
The ERC is the Europe Union’s elite funder of basic research with an annual budget of nearly €3 billion. It offers three grant categories — Starting, Consolidator and Advanced — for individual researchers at growing stages of seniority. All have seen significant increases in applications in recent years.
Europe as science superpower: what it will take to rival the US and China