- Funding landscapeThe Netherlands offers a broad range of funding opportunities for research and innovation. Public research funding is mainly organised through national research councils, ministries, innovation programmes, charities, and European partnerships. The Dutch funding landscape strongly promotes collaboration between academia, industry, government, and societal organisations Dutch Research Council (NWO) The main public research funder in the Netherlands is the Dutch Research Council (NWO – Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek). NWO is funded primarily by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW) and annually allocates more than €1.5 billion to research, talent development, infrastructure, and knowledge utilisation. NWO supports fundamental, applied, and interdisciplinary research across all scientific domains. A closely connected organisation is ZonMw, the Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development, which is funded mainly by the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport (VWS
- NWO Collaboration with knowledge users and societyUnder this funding line NWO funds projects or programmes for thematic research and valorisation in partnership with external public and/or private parties. These projects or programmes are designed to increase and accelerate the economic or social impact of the research. Knowledge and Innovation Covenant | NWO Funder: NWO (NL) Aim: These calls support interdisciplinary consortia to tackle mission-oriented challenges as defined in the Dutch government’s mission-driven top sectors and innovation policy. They explicitly require the involvement of societal and private partners. General eligibility criteria: NWO KIC proposal must be submitted by at least one tenured or tenure-track main applicant and one co-applicant from an approved Dutch knowledge institution and requires a minimum consortium of two co-funders. Resources: Budget modules: personnel, material (max 25 %), investments (max €500k), knowledge utilization (mandatory 5–20 %), project management (max 5 %). Website NWO KIC NWA Thematic Programming Funder:
- NWO Open Competition grantsNWO facilitates non-thematic project applications in all domains; the so-called Open Competition. These grants can require large consortia or can be aimed at small collaborations. Open Technology Program (OTP) in Applied and Engineering Sciences The Open Competition AES consists of two programmes. Open Mind is a grant for technology ideas that can be used to solve major societal issues. In this grant, you can try out-of-the-box research ideas and work on them for a year. The application is open once a year, and you must also record a movie with the application. The maximum amount you can ask for your idea is 50.000 euros. Links NWO Open Mind links to https://www.nwo.nl/en/researchprogrammes/open-technology-programme Open Technology Program (OTP) is open to innovative research in the technical domain with a clear focus on the application of the results in the industry. It is a collaborative proposal, containing a group of researchers with a minimal 2, up to 4 (ideally) non-academic partners who are the next users
- NWO Talent ProgrammeSupport NWO Talent Programme applications
- Research infrastructure GrantsNWO, RVO, and the European Commission offer opportunities to fund research infrastructure. This section discusses the Research Infrastructure opportunities in the Netherlands. NWO instruments pay for the acquisition and development of equipment, RVO allows you to account for the development and depreciation costs, while EU instruments pay for sharing of facilities and instruments with researchers internationally. Most common NWO and RVO funding instruments offer the opportunity to fund smaller types of research equipment either by direct compensation (NWO) or by covering the costs of depreciation (RVO). This is applicable for both personal grants as well as open instruments and thematic grants. The budget modules of NWO allow for limited research infrastructure investments (up to €250.000,- for some instruments). Larger investments in research infrastructure can be financed by two NWO instruments called: the Research Infrastructure (RI): national consortia the national roadmap for large-scale research infrastructure