Competence-building Project for Industry

Only approved Norwegian research organisations are eligible to apply. See the list of approved research organisations.

Requirements relating to the Project Owner 

The organisation listed as the Project Owner in the application form must have approved the submission of the application to the Research Council. The application must be strategically anchored with the Project Owner. 

Requirements relating to the project manager 

We will shortly publish several calls for proposals where research organisations will be the Project Owner. These will have a deadline at the end of April, end of May or mid-June 2026. You can only be the project manager for one application for this application or the calls mentioned above. This means that if you are the project manager for an application under this call, you cannot be the project manager for applications for any of the other calls for proposals aimed at research organisations with a deadline in April, May or June. 

The project manager's professional competence and suitability to carry out the project will be assessed by peers. There are no formal requirements for the project manager's qualifications. 

Requirements for collaboration and roles in the project 

• The project must have at least two Norwegian collaborating partners from the industrial sector (see the guidelines for definition) who provide cash funding for the project. The cash funding must be confirmed in a letter of intent. 
• The application must be strategically supported by all collaborating partners. They must also confirm this in the letters of intent. 
• The Project Owner and the collaborating partners must carry out the project in effective collaboration. See definition in the guide. 
• The Project Owner and collaborating partners must be independent of each other. This means that one cannot have a controlling influence over the other. This applies both between the Project Owner and the collaborating partner, and between all the collaborating partners, and the subcontractors and the Project Owner(s) must also be independent of each other. By controlling influence, we mean majority ownership or other specific legal or factual circumstances that allow one actor to control the other. Read more about such dependencies here.
• One actor cannot have several roles in the project, for example as a collaborating partner and subcontractor. 
• collaborating partners who are not research organisations cannot lead the project or major tasks. 
• The project must have a steering group or reference group in which the collaborating partners are represented. 
• The project must not be commissioned research. 
• In the application, you must describe how the expertise built up in the project can benefit larger user groups. 

You can apply for funding to cover actual costs necessary to carry out the project. The Project Owner must obtain information on costs from the partners in the project. These costs must be entered in the cost plan under the cost type to which they belong. 

The following cost types should be used: 

• Payroll and indirect expenses, which are costs related to researcher time (including research fellowship positions and the project manager's position) at the research organisations participating in the project. For doctoral scholarships, funding is limited to three full-time equivalents. For postdoctoral fellowships, funding is limited to a minimum of three years and a maximum of four years. See our website about post-doctoral research fellowship positions and doctoral research fellowship positions.  
• Other operating expenses, which are costs for other activities necessary to carry out the project's R&D activities. Any purchases from subcontractors must be entered here. All expenses you enter as "other operating expenses" must be specified in the application.    
• Equipment, which are costs that include operating and depreciation costs for scientific equipment and research infrastructure necessary to carry out the project  

The cost type Procurement of R&D services cannot be used.  

If doctoral and postdoctoral research fellows are included in the project and there are specific plans for them to stay abroad, this may be included in the application. The Research Council also has a separate call for proposals for research stays abroad for doctoral and post-doctoral research fellows. Here, the project manager can apply for funding for research stays abroad for research fellows who are part of the project during the project period. Please note that the separate call for proposals has a number of requirements for who can receive support for the stay abroad. 

If there are specific plans for visiting researchers or stays abroad for researchers in the project, you may include these in the application. The rules for such stays and information about rates can be found on the budget information page (see link below). 

You will find detailed and important information on the website about what to enter in the project budget.  

Scope of funding 

• The Research Council's funding for the project can be up to four times the Norwegian industry partners' cash contributions, both in total and on an annual basis. 
• The minimum amount is stated at the top of this call. A possible maximum amount is described under the individual topics. 
• Cash financing from foreign industry partners (including Norwegian-registered foreign enterprises) or public administration will not count as part of the cash financing requirement. 

The Research Council does not award state aid under this call. This means that funding from the Research Council can only finance the research organisations' project costs. 

We do not cover the costs of collaborating partners that are not research organisations, whether they are Norwegian or foreign. You must therefore keep these costs out of the budget tables. However, the activities that they will carry out, with associated costs, must be described in the project description, under section 3.2. 

Costs of foreign partners 

The Research Council's allocation may cover the costs of foreign research organisations. See Collaboration with organisations abroad.

Ethics 

Give a brief description on how ethical issues will be dealt with, to ensure the panel that there is an appropriate plan for management of ethical issues. The responsibility for ensuring that the research ethics standard is followed lies with the individual researcher and research organisation.  

The responsibility for ensuring that the research ethics standard is followed lies with the individual researcher and research institution (cf. Research Ethics Act). The panel's assessment and the Research Council's funding decision do not entail any research ethics approval. 

See more information and guidance on the following website: Ethical standards in research. 

Conditions for funding 

• The funding to the research organisations goes to their non-economic activity in the form of independent research, and therefore does not constitute state aid. The Research Council assumes that the necessary accounting separation between the organisation's economic and non-economic activities is in place 
• We require annual project accounting reports documenting incurred project costs and how they are financed. The Research Council's conditions for awarding and disbursing funding are set out in the General Terms and Conditions for R&D Projects.  

If the project is approved, the following must be in place when you revise the application: 

• The Project Owner must establish collaboration agreements with the partners in the project, both Norwegian and foreign. The collaboration agreements are intended to regulate mutual rights and obligations and ensure the integrity and independence of research. The collaboration agreements must also ensure that no collaborating undertaking receives indirect support from the Project Owner or partners. The cooperation agreement must therefore contain conditions that ensure that ESA's guidelines on state aid for R&D&I, section 28, are complied with.  
• If the project has PhD and postdoctoral research fellows where the responsible higher education institution does not participate in the application, you must also have a collaboration agreement with the responsible/degree-conferring institution. 
• The project manager and the Project Owner must have assessed and managed the consideration of research security in the project.  
• Research organisations and entities in the public sector that receive grants (Project Owners and partners) must have action plans for gender equality (GEPs) available on their websites.  
• The Research Council requires full and immediate open access for scientific articles, see Plan S - open access to publications.  
• For all projects that handle data, the Project Owner must prepare a data management plan in connection with the revised application, where you will find more information about the requirements for data management plans in projects that receive funding from us.  
• The Project Owner decides which archiving solution(s) will be used for storing research data that emerges from the project. 
• For medical and health studies involving humans, the Research Council sets special requirements and guidelines for prospective registration of studies and publication of results.  

You must submit an annual project accounting report documenting the costs incurred and how they are financed. 

We disburse the funding in arrears. You will receive more information about this if the project should be awarded funding from us. 

All reporting must be done electronically. 

You can change and submit the application several times until the application deadline. We recommend that you submit your application as soon as you have completed the application form and uploaded the required attachments. When the application deadline expires, it is the version of the application that was submitted most recently that we process. 

• The application and all attachments must be written in English, except for the relevance attachment, which may be in Norwegian. 
• All mandatory attachments must be included. The attachments must be in PDF format. 
• The project must start between 1 October 2026 and 1 April 2027. Projects that have received a decision on allocation that do not start during this period, may lose their funding. 

Mandatory attachments 

• Project description of a maximum of 11 pages. You must use the template for 2026. 
• CVs for the project manager and for the most important project participants, each of a maximum of four pages. You assess which project participants are the most important. Key project participants who are researchers can use the CV template called "Template for CV researchers". Other key project participants can use the CV template called "Template for CV". 
• Letters of intent from all the collaborating partners. See sample letter of intent on our guidance page. The cash contribution from industry actors must be specified in the letter of intent. Cash contributions that are listed in the project budget, but not specified in the letter of intent, will not be included when we assess the application. 
• Description of relevance of a maximum of one page. Uploaded as attachment type "Other". 

You must use standard templates for all required attachments where available. The templates can be found at the bottom of the call. 

All requirements in the call must be met. Applications that do not meet the above requirements or requirements relating to the Project Owner and requirements relating to collaboration and roles in the project will be rejected. 

We will not consider attachments other than those specified above, or documents and websites linked to in the application. The system does not do any technical validation on the content of the attachments you upload, so make sure to upload the correct file for the correct attachment type. 

Optional attachment 

Feel free to attach proposals for up to three professionals (or academic communities) who you believe have the competence to assess the application, or a brief description of the expertise that you believe will be suitable for assessing it. We are not obliged to use the suggestions, but can use them if necessary. We encourage gender balance in the proposals. 

All attachments must be submitted with the application. We do not accept attachments submitted after the application deadline unless we have requested additional documentation.

We will assess the application as it has been submitted. 

Once the application deadline has passed, we will first check that all formal requirements are met. Applications that do not satisfy the formal requirements will be rejected, and applications that fall outside the topic will be rejected without assessment by peer reviewers. 

The Research Council may reject applications where the Project Owner or partner has materially breached its obligations in other projects funded by the Research Council in the two years prior to the submission of the application. 

The application may be rejected if the project manager has been convicted of misconduct by the Common Commission on Research Integrity or the National Commission for the Investigation of Research Misconduct in the last two years prior to submitting the application. 

Where the requirements are met, we will make the application, with all mandatory attachments, available in an online portal for experts who individually assess the criteria "excellence", "impact" and "implementation". The referees will then meet in thematic panels where they will reach a consensus assessment of the application for each of the three criteria. 

If, according to the referee panel's assessment, the average mark awarded is 5.0 or higher, the application will also be assessed for the criterion "Relevance to the chosen topic" by the Research Council's administration. 

The assessment of the four above criteria is summarised in an overall mark for the application. The Research Council's administration then creates ranking lists based on this grade. 

Finally, it is the portfolio board that decides whether the applications will be awarded or rejected. Their decisions are based on the ranking lists and a holistic portfolio assessment. Under the individual topics in this call, the considerations taken by the portfolio boards will be stated. 

The Research Council will fund projects that have a place on the road to a low-emission society in line with the Paris Agreement. In cases where two projects have received otherwise equal assessments, the portfolio board will prioritise the project that is most sustainable in terms of effects on climate, the environment and society. 

The portfolio board plans to hold a decision meeting in June 2026. We will publish the results of the application processing after the meeting. 

On the Research Council's website, you can read more about how we process Collaborative and Knowledge-building applications.