Bial Foundation Grants for Scientific Research 2026/2027: Up to €60,000 per Project Over Three Years in Psychophysiology and Parapsychology, Closing 31 August 2026

Bial Foundation Grants for Scientific Research 2026/2027: Up to €60,000 per Project Over Three Years in Psychophysiology and Parapsychology, Closing 31 August 2026

Most research funders ask what disease you are trying to cure. The Bial Foundation asks the opposite question: what is going on inside a healthy person? Its Grants for Scientific Research programme has run since 1994 from Porto, Portugal, backed by the Bial pharmaceutical group, and it funds two fields that sit awkwardly in most national funding systems — psychophysiology and parapsychology. If your project measures how the mind and the body interact in people who are well, rather than modelling how they fail in people who are ill, this is one of the few open international calls written for you.

The 2026/2027 edition is the 17th. Applications opened in April 2026 and close at 23:59 (GMT+1) on 31 August 2026. The maximum award is €60,000 per project, projects may run for up to three years, and funded work must start between 1 January and 31 October 2027.

Key Details

What the Bial Foundation Actually Funds

The Foundation’s framing is consistent across its documents: it supports research into the healthy human being in both physical and spiritual dimensions, and it is explicitly interested in areas that remain largely unexplored. In practice that resolves into two streams.

Psychophysiology covers work that connects mental processes to measurable bodily ones — autonomic and central nervous system responses, interoception, sleep, meditation and contemplative states, emotion, attention, placebo effects, and the physiological signatures of subjective experience. The defining requirement is that the project takes real psychophysiological measurements. A study that is purely computational, purely questionnaire-based, or purely about neural circuitry with no psychophysiological link is a poor match.

Parapsychology covers research into phenomena that fall outside currently accepted explanatory models. The Foundation has funded work in this area for three decades and treats it as a legitimate empirical field, which is precisely why the call matters: very few funders anywhere will take a well-designed, pre-registered parapsychology protocol seriously enough to review it on its scientific merits.

The exclusions are stated plainly and are the fastest way to check whether you are in scope. The Foundation does not fund clinical or experimental models of human disease and therapy. It does not fund fundamental neuroscience projects that lack a direct psychophysiological component. And it does not fund projects whose primary focus is eating behaviour, sexual behaviour, or physical exercise. Those three behavioural exclusions catch a surprising number of otherwise plausible proposals, so read them against your own specific aims before you invest weeks in a submission.

The programme’s track record gives a sense of scale. Across the 16 editions held to date, the Foundation has approved 946 projects involving roughly 1,900 researchers from 31 countries. Work funded between 1994 and February 2026 has produced 2,320 articles in indexed journals, 2,063 of them in journals with an average impact factor of 4.1, and 394 in journals with an impact factor of 5 or higher. Half the articles appeared in first-quartile journals, and the body of work has attracted 63,927 citations, with 806 publications cited 20 or more times. This is a small-grant programme with a serious publication record behind it.

What the Grant Pays For — and What It Will Not Cover

The €60,000 ceiling is a maximum, not a default. The Foundation decides the final figure itself, so a budget that is padded or loosely justified invites a cut rather than a negotiation.

Eligible costs include human resources and researcher salaries, consultants and external expertise, compensation for study participants, and publication fees. Two categories carry hard caps: missions (travel) may not exceed 10% of the total budget, and rental of equipment and software may not exceed 50% of the budget.

Three categories are ineligible and catch people out. Hardware purchase is not covered — note the distinction from equipment rental, which is allowed up to the 50% cap. Overhead and indirect costs are not covered, which is worth flagging to your finance office early, because many institutions apply overheads automatically. Tuition fees are not covered, so this is not a route to funding your own or a student’s degree.

The budget must include a suggested payment plan with a minimum of three instalments, and the final instalment must be at least 10% of the total. Payments go annually or biannually and are made exclusively to the Host Entity. Only one Host Entity receives funds; if your project spans several institutions, the money is not split among them, so decide early which institution administers the grant and how it will pass resources onward.

Who Can Apply, and Why the Host Entity Matters

Any scientific researcher may apply, alone or as part of a team, from anywhere in the world. The only outright exclusion is people working for the Bial Foundation or for companies within the Bial Group. Each application names a Principal Investigator, and may optionally name a co-Principal Investigator.

The Host Entity is the piece applicants most often underestimate. It is mandatory. It must commit to providing the technical and logistical resources needed to carry out the project. It signs the Research Funding Agreement and receives all payments. The PI does not need to be employed there, which gives independent researchers and people between posts a genuine route in — but the entity has to actively agree to host the work, and that agreement is evidenced by a signed declaration of support submitted with the application. Chasing an institutional signature in the last week of August is a common and avoidable failure mode.

Applicants who already hold a Bial Foundation grant, or a project under the Foundation’s Maria de Sousa Award, are not barred from applying. New funding is conditional on the earlier project being successfully completed before 31 October 2027. The Foundation also reserves the right to reject applications from previous grant holders who have repeatedly breached their legal and contractual obligations.

What Goes Into the Application

Everything is submitted in English through the Bial Foundation Grants Management System. You register in BF-GMS, complete your profile, build the application, and submit before the deadline. An application can be reset to draft status for corrections before you submit, but nothing can be modified once the deadline passes. The Foundation accepts applications through BF-GMS only — no email submissions.

The core components are:

• Project title and description, setting out the specific aims. The aims matter beyond the review stage: the funding agreement allows the Foundation to terminate for failure to address the specific aims set out in the application, so write aims you can actually deliver.
• A curriculum vitae for each team member, maximum four pages, in English. There is no prescribed template, which means the burden is on you to make four pages do real work rather than list everything you have ever done.
• Expected output indicators — the publications and dissemination activities you commit to producing.
• A budget with a suggested payment plan, minimum three instalments, final instalment at least 10%.
• A Host Entity declaration of support (submitted as Attachment 3).
• Proof of submission to an Ethics Committee, where applicable. Note the wording: proof of submission, not final approval, which is a more forgiving standard than many funders apply and removes a common scheduling problem.
• Optional figures, images or graphs, up to 5MB per file.

Deadline, Decision Timeline and Project Start Window

The deadline is 31 August 2026 at 23:59 GMT+1. Applications are assessed by the Foundation’s Scientific Board, and the decision is communicated to all applicants by email within four months of the deadline closing — so expect an answer by around the end of December 2026. A decision not to fund a project is final and cannot be appealed.

Funded projects must begin between 1 January 2027 and 31 October 2027 and may run for a maximum of three years. Plan the start date against that window rather than against your own preferred timetable: if your protocol depends on a cohort, a season, or a piece of shared equipment, check that a start inside 2027 is realistic before you build the schedule into the application.

How to Position a Competitive Proposal

Three things separate proposals that fit this programme from proposals that merely mention it.

Lead with the measurement. Because the Foundation excludes neuroscience without a direct psychophysiological component, the fastest way to establish fit is to make the physiological measures concrete and early: what is recorded, from whom, under what conditions, with what instruments. Vagueness here reads as a project that has not been designed yet.

Study the healthy human. The programme’s stated purpose is the healthy person. If your design recruits a patient population, be explicit about why the work is not a clinical or experimental disease model — or reconsider whether this is the right call.

Size the budget to the €60,000 ceiling honestly. With overheads and hardware purchase ineligible, and travel capped at 10%, the money realistically funds people, participants, rented equipment and publication. A budget built on those lines and justified line by line is more persuasive than one that reaches the ceiling for its own sake.

It is also worth reading the Foundation’s published outputs before writing. The site provides a list of funded principal investigators, a list of research centres, a publications list, and a numbers-and-statistics document. Together they show what has already been supported — useful both for framing your novelty claim and for identifying collaborators. The Foundation also runs the Bial Foundation Symposium, whose 15th edition took place in Porto from 8 to 11 April 2026, where funded researchers present findings.

Common Mistakes That Cost Applications

• Missing the Host Entity signature. It is mandatory, it comes from an institution on its own timetable, and it cannot be added after submission. Start it in July, not late August.
• Budgeting overheads. Many institutions add them automatically. They are not eligible here, and an application that includes them is proposing a budget the Foundation will not pay.
• Confusing equipment rental with equipment purchase. Rental is eligible up to 50% of the budget; hardware purchase is not eligible at all.
• Blowing the travel cap. Conference and fieldwork travel above 10% of total budget will not stand.
• A CV that overruns four pages. The limit is stated. Treat it as a limit.
• Falling into an exclusion without noticing. Eating behaviour, sexual behaviour and physical exercise are excluded as primary focuses. A project on interoception that drifts into appetite regulation may read as excluded even if you did not intend it to.
• Writing aims you cannot deliver. The funding agreement treats failure to address the specific aims as grounds for termination.

After an Award: Reporting, Data and AI Obligations

Grant holders submit scientific and financial progress reports annually or biannually, plus a final report, and must document expenses for reimbursement. At least 10% of the funding is withheld until the final report is approved, so budget your institution’s cash flow accordingly.

The Research Funding Agreement also carries obligations that are easy to skim past and expensive to breach. Grant holders are responsible for ensuring all personal data — including health, genetic, biometric, racial or ethnic data, and images, video or audio recordings — is processed lawfully and transparently with a valid legal basis, including documented consent where required. Before any report or deliverable is submitted, directly or indirectly identifiable personal data must be removed unless consent was lawfully obtained and documented; otherwise the data must be fully anonymised.

The agreement addresses artificial intelligence directly: if AI is used at any stage of the research project, its use must be lawful, transparent, explainable and subject to appropriate human oversight, AI-generated content must maintain factual accuracy and scientific integrity, and its use must be justified within the scope of the project. Non-compliance may result in disqualification or other sanctions. If your methods involve AI-assisted analysis, describe it in the application rather than leaving it to be discovered later.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to be based in Portugal? No. The programme is open to researchers from any country, and funded work has come from 31 countries to date.

Can I apply without a permanent academic position? Yes. The Principal Investigator does not need to be employed by the Host Entity — but you do need a Host Entity willing to sign the declaration of support and administer the funds.

How many grants are awarded each round? The Foundation does not publish a fixed number of awards for the 2026/2027 call. The historical figure — 946 projects across 16 editions — is the best available guide.

Will I get the full €60,000? Not necessarily. €60,000 is the maximum, and the Foundation determines the exact amount at its sole discretion.

Do I need ethics approval before applying? You need proof of submission to an Ethics Committee where applicable, not final approval.

Can I appeal a rejection? No. A decision not to fund is final.

Can I apply if I already hold a Bial grant? Yes, but new funding depends on your existing project being successfully completed before 31 October 2027.

In what language must I apply? English, throughout, including CVs.

Official Links and Contacts

The programme page — with the announcement, the Regulation of Grants for Scientific Research 2026/2027, the Research Funding Agreement template, a guide to the application process, the FAQs, and the lists of funded principal investigators, research centres and publications — is at fundacaobial.com/en-GB/grants/grants-programme-scientific-research.

Applications are submitted through the Bial Foundation Grants Management System, linked from that page at grantsbialfoundation.my.salesforce-sites.com.

For questions about the call, the Foundation lists [email protected] and +351 229 866 150.

Read the Regulation before you start drafting rather than after. It is the document that governs eligibility, budget rules and obligations, and almost every avoidable rejection in a programme like this comes from an applicant who read the summary and skipped the rules.