Lantmännen Research Foundation Call 2026: SEK 25 Million for Farming, Food and Bio-Based Materials Research, Open to International Applicants and Closing 30 September 2026 at 14:00

Lantmännen Research Foundation Call 2026: SEK 25 Million for Farming, Food and Bio-Based Materials Research, Open to International Applicants and Closing 30 September 2026 at 14:00

Most agricultural research money in the Nordics comes from public agencies with broad remits and long review cycles. The Lantmännen Research Foundation is a different animal. It is the research arm of Lantmännen, an agricultural cooperative owned by 17,000 Swedish farmers, and it distributes roughly SEK 25 million a year to universities, colleges, institutes and research-active companies. The 2026 call opened on 17 June and closes at 14:00 on 30 September 2026, with funding decisions communicated in early December.

The distinguishing feature is not the size of the pot — SEK 25 million is a modest annual budget by national-agency standards — but who is on the other side of the table. The people reading your application work for a company that grows, mills, processes and sells the things you are proposing to study. That shapes what gets funded and how you should write.

Key details

What the foundation is actually buying

The foundation describes what it wants in a single, useful phrase: projects should provide knowledge that can be applied directly in Lantmännen’s operations or at farm level. That sentence is the whole review philosophy compressed into one line, and it is worth reading twice before you decide whether to apply.

This is demand-driven research funding. The foundation is not neutral about outcomes — it exists because a cooperative of farmers concluded, in the words of Lantmännen board chairman Jan-Erik Hansson, that “there was a lack of both funding and initiative for research and innovation in our industry.” The money is there to close that gap, not to fund excellent science in the abstract.

The foundation also positions itself as an active partner rather than a cheque-writer. That matters practically: it means you can expect engagement, questions, and interest in results during the project, and it means a proposal that treats the funder as a passive donor reads as a poor fit.

Lantmännen recently committed SEK 300 million to strengthen the foundation’s capacity, which signals that the annual SEK 25 million call is a durable programme rather than a one-off. If you miss the 2026 window, the call has historically opened in mid-June with a 30 September deadline, so the cycle is predictable enough to plan a year ahead.

The three focus areas and what each is asking for

The 2026 call is organised into three areas, each with its own downloadable call text on the foundation’s page. Read the call text for your area — the summaries below give you the shape, but the PDFs carry the specific research priorities that reviewers will match your proposal against.

Agriculture and Machinery. Research that strengthens profitable, sustainable and robust crop production and livestock production. The 2026 priorities announced with the call include climate adaptation and food preparedness, precision farming and sustainable inputs, grain quality, and animal health. “Robust” is doing real work in that sentence: the interest is in production systems that hold up under variable weather and input disruption, not only in yield maximisation under ideal conditions.

Food and Health. Research into foods and ingredients of the future based on grains, legumes and meat. Stated priorities include nutrition, whole grains, and precision nutrition. Note the raw-material framing — this is not an open call for food science generally, but for work anchored in the crops and products a Swedish agricultural cooperative actually handles.

Bioenergy and Green Materials. Research that uses agricultural raw materials and side streams for bioenergy, green materials and other bio-based products. Priorities named for 2026 include future biorefineries, bio-based fuels, green materials, and biochemical products. Side streams are a recurring theme: material that currently has low value moving up the value chain is exactly the kind of result a processing cooperative can act on.

Who this fits, and who it does not

The eligibility statement is broad — researchers at colleges and universities, at institutes, and at companies with research activities, both nationally and internationally. A group in Wageningen, Copenhagen, Edinburgh or further afield is eligible on paper.

But eligibility and fit are different questions. This call fits you if your work has a clear line to Swedish or Northern European agricultural practice, if you can name the crop, the process step, or the product your findings would change, and if you can accept that “interesting” is not sufficient — the review asks what a farmer or a mill does differently because of your results.

It fits less well if your research is basic-mechanism work with no articulable application path, if your system is a crop or climate with no relevance to the cooperative’s operations, or if you need a funder who is indifferent to commercial outcomes. There are better sources for that work, and a mismatched application consumes the same effort as a well-targeted one.

The foundation names collaboration as a key factor in succeeding with the challenges raised in the call texts. Read that as a hint rather than a formal requirement: proposals that bring together complementary groups, or that pair academic capability with industrial context, are being invited.

How to apply through the ResearchWeb portal

Applications go through the foundation’s portal at researchweb.org/en/lantmannen, using the 2026 research call application form. A personal account is required and is created at first login.

Create that account early. Portal registration is a trivial task that becomes a catastrophic one at 13:45 on 30 September. The 14:00 cut-off is a hard clock time, not end of day, and a deadline stated to the minute is a deadline the funder intends to enforce.

Two documents on the call page should be downloaded before you start drafting rather than after: the Foundation Handbook (2026 edition), which sets out what an application must contain and what is required for status and final reporting, and the Assessment Criteria document, which the foundation explicitly tells applicants to use when designing the application. Writing first and checking the criteria afterwards is the most common way to produce a proposal that is strong in the wrong dimensions.

What reviewers weigh

Beyond the foundation’s own assessment criteria document, applications are assessed on three named dimensions: agricultural benefit, scientific quality, and business potential.

That triad is unusual and it deserves attention, because it is not the standard research-council rubric with an impact section bolted on. Agricultural benefit and business potential are co-equal with scientific quality here, and a proposal that scores brilliantly on one while gesturing vaguely at the other two is a plausible rejection.

Practically, this means three distinct arguments need to be made explicitly rather than left to inference. For agricultural benefit: which production problem does this address, for whom, at what scale, and what changes on the farm if it works? For scientific quality: the usual standards — a defensible design, appropriate methods, realistic sample sizes, and a team with the demonstrated capability to deliver. For business potential: what part of the value chain can use this, in what form, and on what timescale? Vague claims that results “could inform industry” are weaker than a specific statement about which process step or product a finding would change.

The strongest applications treat these as one coherent argument rather than three sections written by different people. The scientific design should be recognisably shaped by the applied question, and the applied claims should be sized to what the design can actually support.

Preparation strategy: take the pre-submission conversation

The single highest-value piece of guidance the foundation gives is easy to skim past. Head of Research Helena Fredriksson has said plainly that applicants are welcome to contact the foundation before submitting to discuss project ideas. Each focus area has a named contact.

Take this up. A twenty-minute conversation with the research manager who owns your area will tell you things no call text can: whether your idea overlaps with something already funded, whether the framing matches what the area is prioritising this year, and whether the applied claim you are planning to make lands as credible or as wishful. For a demand-driven funder, that early signal is worth more than another week of polish.

Do it early enough to act on what you learn. A conversation in late August that reveals a framing problem leaves you room to fix it; the same conversation on 25 September does not.

Before you write, do three things. Read the call text for your specific focus area rather than relying on the summary. Identify the concrete decision or practice your results would change and write that sentence first. Confirm with your host organisation’s grants office that they can handle the administrative side within the timeline, particularly if you are applying from outside Sweden.

Common mistakes

Treating the 14:00 deadline as a formality. It is a stated clock time on a working day in Sweden. Submit the day before.

Writing a generic agricultural proposal. The three focus areas have distinct call texts with named priorities. A proposal that could have been sent to any agri-food funder reads exactly like one.

Leaving business potential to the last paragraph. It is a named assessment dimension, not a courtesy section.

Ignoring the reporting obligations. The Handbook specifies what is required for status and final reporting. Those obligations are part of what you are agreeing to, and building the effort into your plan is more honest than discovering it later.

Skipping the pre-submission contact. The funder invited it. Declining a free calibration signal on a competitive application is a hard choice to defend.

Assuming international eligibility means international indifference. You are eligible from anywhere, but the relevance test still runs through Swedish and Northern European agriculture.

What the call page does not confirm

Several details that applicants reasonably want are not stated on the public call page, and this guide will not invent them:

• There is no published maximum per-project budget. Funding depends on quality, relevance and available resources.
• Permitted project duration is not specified on the call page.
• The foundation’s policy on indirect costs and overhead is not stated publicly; the Handbook is the place to check.
• The number of projects funded per year is not published.
• Publication and intellectual property terms are not set out on the call page.

For all of these, the Foundation Handbook and a direct question to the relevant research manager are the reliable sources. Do not budget on assumption.

Frequently asked questions

Can I apply from outside Sweden? Yes. The call is explicitly aimed at researchers nationally and internationally.

Can a company apply? Yes — companies with research activities are named as eligible alongside universities, colleges and institutes.

Is there a maximum I can request? None is published. Ask your focus-area contact what a realistic request looks like for the kind of project you have in mind.

Can I apply to more than one focus area? The call does not state a restriction, but a project belongs in one area. If yours genuinely spans two, ask which one it should be filed under rather than guessing.

When will I hear? Decisions on received applications are announced in early December 2026.

What if I miss the deadline? The call has run on a mid-June to 30 September cycle. With SEK 300 million recently committed to the foundation, planning for the 2027 round is reasonable.

Official links and contacts

• Open call and downloadable call texts, Handbook and assessment criteria: https://www.lantmannen.com/research-and-innovation/research-foundation/open-call/
• Foundation overview: https://www.lantmannen.com/research-and-innovation/research-foundation/
• Application portal: researchweb.org/en/lantmannen

Named contacts published by the foundation:

• Helena Fredriksson, Head of Research — [email protected]
• Pär-Johan Lööf, Agriculture and Machinery — [email protected]
• Annelie Moldin, Food and Health — [email protected]
• Sophia Wassén, Bioenergy and Green Materials — [email protected]

Always confirm dates, budgets and requirements against the official call page and the current Foundation Handbook before submitting. Details in this guide reflect the 2026 call as published by Lantmännen and were checked on 6 August 2026.