This call is based on an agreement signed by both organisations, which was confirmed by the DFG’s Joint Committee (“Hauptausschuss”), establishing joint French-German projects as a standard offering within the DFG’s research grants programme.

For the 2026 edition of this call, the DFG will act as the lead agency, i. e., joint (full) proposals describing the bilateral projects as a whole have to be submitted in a first step to the DFG, which will be responsible for processing them and conducting the review process. The ANR will require a copy of the documents to be submitted on its dedicated web portal. Note that there is no pre-proposal stage on either side.

Submission of full proposals for joint bilateral research projects is possible electronically via DFG’s elan portal starting 17 November 2025 and at latest on 14 January 2026 (until midnight). The corresponding submission to the ANR, using the exact same acronym and identical proposal documents, is required before 15 January 2026 at 5 p.m. on the ANR’s submission website.

Decisions can be expected in October 2026. Funding will start with the beginning of 2027.