Novo Nordisk Foundation Project Grants in the Natural and Technical Sciences 2026: Historical Reference

Novo Nordisk Foundation Project Grants in the Natural and Technical Sciences 2026: Historical Reference

Status of the 2026 call

The Novo Nordisk Foundation’s Project Grants in the Natural and Technical Sciences 2026 call is closed. The Foundation’s official programme page lists the call as opening on 19 June 2026 and closing on 3 September 2026 at 2:00 PM Copenhagen time. The application window has passed, so this page is an archive of the rules and funding scope for that round. It is not an invitation to submit an application now.

The Foundation says results will be announced in December 2026. It also lists recurring calls as expected in June 2027. That is an indication of when a future call may be expected, not a published 2027 application page, confirmed opening date, deadline, amount, or set of final terms. The 2026 call remains the latest detailed programme information on the official page. Check the Foundation’s grant listings for a new call before preparing an application. Do not treat the 2026 deadline or terms as automatically carrying over.

This distinction matters for researchers who find old funding pages through search. A recurring programme can be useful to monitor even when its current round is closed. The archive below preserves the documented 2026 conditions to help prospective applicants judge whether the programme’s research scope and host requirements may fit their plans. It does not establish that the future cycle will use identical eligibility rules, funding limits, review arrangements or application materials.

The 2026 round at a glance

The dates and figures in this table describe the 2026 call only. The total capital is the Foundation’s stated amount for the round, not a guarantee that the full pool would be spent or that any particular number of projects would be funded. The per-grant maximum is a ceiling. An applicant’s request was expected to be appropriate to a clearly defined project and proportionate to its duration, rather than set at the maximum by default.

Research the call was designed to support

The Foundation described the objective as promoting fundamental research in the natural and technical sciences with potential applications in life science, health science or sustainability. Named examples of fields included physics, chemistry, mathematics, computer science and technical sciences. The examples indicate the scientific territory the call covered; they should not be read as a closed list of department names. Fit depended on the research question and the call’s fundamental-research purpose.

The application had to explain how the project’s outcome might have potential future applications in one or more of the named domains. That requirement is about a plausible future horizon. The programme description does not say that the project had to deliver a clinical intervention, commercial product or immediate application. At the same time, a proposal needed to make the connection intelligible rather than simply attach a broad claim about health or sustainability to unrelated work.

For a prospective applicant considering a future round, the useful test is whether the work is genuinely fundamental and whether its possible relevance can be explained accurately. A mathematical result, physical measurement method, chemical mechanism, computing advance or engineering principle may have a longer path to use than an applied development project. The explanation should describe the credible connection and its limits. Since this is a historical page, applicants must check whether a future call preserves this framing before relying on it.

Eligibility recorded for the 2026 call

The Foundation’s 2026 programme page described the eligible applicant as a principal investigator with a minimum 80% affiliation to the Danish research institution administering the grant. This was a specific institutional affiliation condition. A researcher considering a future call should confirm the relevant appointment with their institution and check the next call’s language; the archived requirement does not settle how a future round will interpret affiliation.

The applicant also had to be guaranteed their own salary for the entire project period from other sources. The Foundation explicitly said that the grant could not cover the applicant’s salary. This separates the project costs from the principal investigator’s personal salary support. The applicant and research support office would need to identify a reliable salary source covering the period requested, rather than include that salary in the grant budget.

The research activities had to be anchored at a university or another non-profit research institution in Denmark. The official page framed this as a location and host-institution requirement. It did not state nationality as an eligibility condition. Prospective applicants should therefore confirm the administrating institution and project location requirements in the future guidelines, rather than infer eligibility from citizenship or an informal collaboration with a Danish group.

Applications from PhD students would not be taken into consideration. A PhD student could potentially be part of a project team or be supported through a project budget where permitted by the detailed rules, but the PhD student could not be the applicant under the published 2026 terms. The programme allowed a project to extend to four years when the grant covered a four-year PhD fellowship. That extension did not increase the maximum total budget beyond DKK 4 million.

The application also had to describe a clearly defined research project and include an appropriate budget. These are not substitute eligibility checks: a strong research idea would still need to satisfy the institutional, affiliation and salary conditions. The Foundation’s Application Guidelines and its general rules for grants supplied the detailed requirements that could not be inferred from the programme summary.

Amount, duration and budget planning

For the 2026 round, applicants could request up to DKK 4 million for a project lasting from one to three years. A four-year project was possible when used to cover a four-year PhD fellowship, but the total request remained capped at DKK 4 million. A longer period therefore meant distributing the same ceiling across more time. It did not create a larger award category.

The Foundation stated that the budget should be appropriate to the project and proportionate to its length. In practical terms, the budget narrative should connect requested resources to the work plan: who will carry out each task, what equipment or materials are needed, and when the costs arise. A request below the cap can be more coherent than a maximum request if it matches the project’s scale. Conversely, a low budget is not persuasive by itself if it leaves essential activities unsupported.

The short programme description does not enumerate every allowable cost, overhead treatment or attachment. Those details belonged to the call’s Application Guidelines and general grant rules. An applicant should not use this archive to infer that a particular salary category, instrument, fee or institutional charge would be accepted. The host institution’s research office is a practical source of budget assistance, but the current Foundation documents govern the final application.

How the 2026 application was submitted

The Foundation required applicants to complete and submit through NORMA, its electronic application system. The programme page directed applicants to the system through its “Send application” link and advised them to read the Application Guidelines before starting. Because this call is closed, NORMA should not be assumed to accept submissions for the 2026 round. The system and link may instead point to an active opportunity or general portal.

For a future round, the safe process is to begin with the new official call page, open the specific guidelines linked there, and use the application route provided for that call. The guidelines are where an applicant should confirm the current form structure, required fields, attachment specifications, character limits and administrative instructions. None of those details should be copied forward from the 2026 round without checking the new documents.

The archived page does not state a universal list of required attachments, and it does not establish an institutional internal deadline. It is still sensible for a research group to contact its grants office early: an institution may need time to review a budget, check eligibility, or complete its own approval process. That is general planning advice, not a Foundation-published extension or an alternative deadline. Only a date shown on the official future call page would define the external submission cutoff.

Preparing a future proposal if a call is published

Applicants can use the archived scope to start thinking about fit, while treating every rule as provisional until a new call is issued. First, state the research question plainly and show why the work belongs within fundamental natural or technical science. Then explain the possible future relevance to life science, health science or sustainability at a level supported by the research. A measured account of the connection is more credible than claiming an impact the project cannot promise.

The work plan should make the research tractable. Break the project into linked tasks, explain how the proposed methods answer the central question and identify what evidence would count as progress. Where a technical dependency or scientific uncertainty could affect delivery, explain how the team would respond. This helps readers judge feasibility without requiring them to supply missing reasoning themselves.

The budget should follow the work plan. For each major cost, applicants should be able to explain which activity requires it and when it will be used. The project duration should also match the proposed work. If a future call retains the PhD fellowship extension, the longer project period would still need to fit under the stated grant ceiling in that call’s own rules.

Finally, the application should make the host environment concrete. Relevant facilities, collaborators, institutional support and existing equipment can help establish that the plan is deliverable. These points are practical proposal-writing guidance rather than additional formal eligibility conditions stated in the 2026 programme summary. Applicants should distinguish advice from actual call rules and follow the published guidelines where they specify a format or required information.

What to check before relying on this archive

The official programme page is the authority for the 2026 call details summarized here. It reports the opening date, deadline, result announcement timing, expected recurring-call timing, amount, total available capital, project duration, eligibility conditions and NORMA submission route. The page also links to Application Guidelines and to rules, grant administration information and FAQs. Consult those primary materials for detail that the summary page does not provide.

The Foundation lists recurring calls as expected in June 2027. A projected month should help researchers decide when to monitor the Foundation’s listings, but it is not a guarantee that the new call will open on a particular day or retain the earlier terms. Until the Foundation publishes a new call, there is no confirmed new deadline, updated award amount or current application process to report here.

If the next programme page appears, compare it directly against this reference. Recheck the research scope, eligible host and applicant, affiliation percentage, salary restriction, maximum award, project duration, budget rules, submission portal, documents and dates. Use the new official materials for every decision about eligibility or submission. In particular, do not submit against the expired 2026 deadline, and do not rely on the 2026 guidelines simply because the programme name is similar.

Official source and contacts

• Official 2026 programme page: Project Grants in the Natural and Technical Sciences
• The Foundation links the Application Guidelines and the Rules, grant administration and FAQ from the programme page.
• Applications for the 2026 round were submitted through NORMA, the Novo Nordisk Foundation electronic application system.
• The programme page lists Rikke Stefansen as Grant Manager for grant inquiries and Anne Boutrup Stephansen as Senior Scientific Manager, Natural Sciences, for scientific inquiries.
• The Foundation’s telephone number shown on the programme page is +45 35 27 66 00.

The 2026 round offered up to DKK 4 million per grant from DKK 77 million available in that year, for fundamental research in the natural and technical sciences based at a Danish university or other non-profit research institution. Those details are retained here for reference. The cycle is closed, and the Foundation’s stated expectation of recurring calls in June 2027 is not a confirmed new deadline. Verify all conditions on the official call page and in its linked guidelines before acting on a future opportunity.