Researchers with a promising idea or an innovative and high-risk initiative can now submit applications within the new call of the Open Competition ENW-XS 2026. The call has three deadlines, the first of which is on January 13, 2026, at 14:00.
The Open Competition Exact and Natural Sciences (ENW) XS is specifically intended for promising ideas, innovative and high-risk initiatives within the seven ENW disciplines. Proposed research must be groundbreaking and it does not have to be certain in advance whether the intended objective will be achieved. What matters is that every result advances science, both positively and negatively. The Open Competition ENW-XS grants are a maximum of 20ac 50,000 per application for a research project with a duration of up to one year.
After completion of an ENW-XS project, the researcher can use the results achieved to further develop the research line. This can be done, for example, by submitting an application within the other funding forms of the ENW Open Competition (ENW-M and ENW-XL) or beyond.
Additional budget for women in beta and technology
Women are explicitly invited to submit an application. In each successive job category, the representation and flow of women in science decreases sharply (Monitor Female Professors 2024). To improve the gender balance in ENW research fields, a total additional budget of 20ac 1,200,000 has been made available in ENW-XS 2026. With these additional funds, space is created to allocate 24 extra proposals from female researchers. This amounts to a maximum of 8 extra allocated proposals per package, which could not be financed by the regular budget of the round.
The subsidy ceiling for the entire call is 20ac 8,400,000. This means that the total available budget per package is 20ac 2,800,000, with which we expect to allocate 56 applications per package.
More information
All information about the call can be found on the funding page. There you can also find the latest version of the application forms. For more information, contact Sophie Schmid via enw-xs@nwo.nl.
