Villum Experiment 2026

• The topic of the research must be in line with Villum Foundation’s definition of technical and natural sciences (see below).
• The applicant must hold a PhD degree or similar at the application deadline.
• Researchers who already hold a grant from Villum Foundation ending later than 31 December 2026 are not eligible to apply.
• Researchers can apply for up to DKK 2.5 million (incl. project supplement) for up to two years to explore the breakthrough potential of their idea. The budget can cover all project-related expenses such as salary, travel, running costs, etc. However, please note that the salary of professors (including associate and assistant professors) and researchers/senior researchers is not covered.
• PhD students are not eligible for support under the programme.   
• The grant must be hosted by a Danish university or research institution as indicated by a letter of support. If necessary, the research or part of it can take place at universities and research institutions abroad.
• If granted a project can start 1 October 2026 at the earliest and no later than 1 March 2027.
• Each application may only have a single applicant (i.e. no co-applicants).
• Each researcher may only submit one single expression of interest/application.
• If you submitted an expression of interest for the 2025 call and proceeded to the full application but did not make use of this opportunity, you are ineligible to apply for the present call.
• If your expression of interest is selected by lot to proceed to a full application and you do not make use of this opportunity, you will not be eligible to apply in 2027.
• If you have previously applied with an idea for the Villum Experiment, you cannot – in line with the general conditions of the foundation – apply again for the same idea. If you apply this year for a similar idea, you will be asked to describe how it differs from your previous application.
• If you identify yourself in the application or budget, you will receive an administrative rejection. 

Definition of technical and natural sciences

Villum Foundation supports technical and natural sciences embedded in Danish universities and research institutions. The research can be curiosity-driven or aiming at societal challenges. In all cases, it must have a clear scientific objective.

In relation to ERC’s evaluation panels Villum Foundation supports as a rule ”Physical Sciences and Engineering” (PE1-PE10) and parts of “Life Sciences” (LS1-LS3, LS8). Cases may occur where the research falls partly outside the categories.

Health or veterinary research, i.e. research focused on the health of humans and animals, including nutrition, medicine, biomedicine, pharmacology and research within diagnostics and methods for examination and treatment.

Furthermore, applicants affiliated with departments whose main scientific focus is within these areas (including university health departments, hospitals, the Danish Cancer Society, DTU Health Tech and SDU Health Informatics and Technology) are not eligible to apply and will receive an administrative rejection.

Projects with a commercial focus are not supported.

The expression of interest consists of a project title, an abstract of max. 1000 characters, and information about the applicant.  The title and abstract should describe the project idea in broad terms.

You also need to confirm that you are the only one submitting this idea to the call and that your host institution is aware of your expression of interest and will host your project if granted. The confirmations are done through check boxes; no documents need to be supplied for the expression of interest.

After the deadline for submitting an expression of interest has passed, the foundation will conduct a lottery for 300 application tickets in early January, and you will be informed of the result shortly thereafter. The process is a pure lottery and the scientific merits of the idea will not be assessed in any way at this stage.

If you win a ticket, you may submit a full application as outlined below. The application should be on the same idea you submitted in the expression of interest. However, both title and abstract may be adjusted if needed.

You will only be allowed to submit an application if you have submitted an expression of interest and it has been selected by lot to proceed (see above).

The full proposals are pre-screened by Villum Foundation’s secretariat and the working group for technical and natural science to check that they comply with the eligibility conditions stated above. The anonymous proposals which pass the pre-screening are distributed among the four scientific review sub-panels according to the proposal’s research area. The terms of reference of the panel can be found below along with the review sheet and an overview of the assessment and selection process. The panel members do not see the CVs or support letters and do not know the identities of the applicants.

To increase diversity and respect the uniqueness of outliers, each panel member is provided with a decisive vote which they can use only once. The panel member has the option to cast the decisive vote for an application which they find to be particularly promising/valuable and therefore deserves the highest priority.

The reviewers pass their evaluations on to the foundation and the applications are ranked according to their scores, taking the decisive votes into account.

As a final step, the CVs of the highest ranking applications are screened by Villum Foundation’s working group for technical and natural science and the foundation’s secretariat. The screening team checks the researcher's level of expertise within the area of the proposed project. The panel’s ranking is maintained, but applications that fail the screening test are disqualified. A final list of fundable applications is recommended to the board who makes the grant decision. 

Note: In previous rounds of funding, all applicants put forward by the review panel passed the final screening process.

The application must contain the following four documents:

• Proposal. Max. 10,000 characters incl. spaces (about three pages). The proposal guidelines can be found below.
• Budget. The budget template can be found below. Indirect costs are covered through a project supplement as outlined in the agreement on project supplements. For the Experiment 2026 call the project supplement is DKK 250,000 per project-funded full-time academic staff equivalent in eligible staff categories.
• CV.
• Letter of support from the host institution.

The documents above must be submitted as four separate pdf files. To preserve anonymity, it is important that you remove all personal information from the file names and metadata of the proposal and the budget. The CV and the support letter will not be seen by the Experiment panel and should (of course) include the name of the applicant. Any additional documents submitted will not be taken into consideration.

A Villum Experiment grant cannot be used to cover the salary, in full or in part, of assistant professors, associate professors or professors (or equivalent positions such as researchers or senior researchers). This is true whether or not they are permanently employed at the host institution.

If you apply for your own salary as a postdoc, you need to consider whether you will be legally able to remain in a postdoc position for the full 2-year project period. This depends on your employment history at your host institution and possibly other Danish research institutions. You may only apply for your own salary for the part of the project period in which you are a postdoc. In this case, the host institution needs to commit to covering the rest of your salary. This you need to confirm at the time of submission of the expression of interest.

• 6 January 2026 at 14:00: Deadline for expression of interest.
• 12 January 2026: Result of expression of interest lottery.
• 4 March 2026 at 14:00: Deadline for application.
• June 2026: Rejection of applications which do not meet the general conditions.
• September 2026: Approval of grant or rejection of application based on the review panel’s assessment.

1. If my application is successful, when can my project start?
   The project should start no later than 1 March 2027. Earliest start date is 1 October 2026.
    
2. Can a PhD student be employed as part of a grant?
   No. The Villum Experiment programme is dedicated to the exploration of high-risk ideas and as such not suitable for PhD students.
    
3. If I get a grant as a postdoc but is promoted to assistant professor during the project, can my salary still be covered by the grant?
   No, we do not cover the salary of professors, including assistant professors (or equivalent positions such as researchers). You will need to discuss with your host institution how to proceed in this case.
    
4. If I get a grant as a postdoc and my salary is covered from other sources, can I use the grant to employ an additional postdoc for the project?
   Yes. After granting the foundation will enter into a dialogue with you regarding the management of the project and how and by whom the postdoc will be recruited.
    
5. Can (part of) the salary of a professor be covered by the grant?
   No, we do not cover the salary of assistant professors, associate professors or professors (or equivalent positions such as researchers or senior researchers). This is true whether or not they are permanently employed at the host institution.
    
6. I am a finishing PhD student and have received the preliminary assessment of my thesis but my defence takes place after the application deadline for the expression of interest. Am I eligible to apply?
   No. It is a requirement that you have been awarded the PhD degree at the time of application.
    
7. My research is collaborative. Can I use the grant to cover the expenses of my collaborators in part or in full?
   The grant will be administered by the applicant's host institution and all payments from the foundation will be made to that institution. However, subject to the rules of your institution, you may budget for costs of other parties. This could be in the form of bench fees if visiting a collaborator or by making a contract between your institution and your collaborator for specific work to be carried out. It must not be possible to identify your collaborators from the proposal or budget.
    
8. Can there be more than one applicant on a proposal?
   No.
    
9. Why do I have to submit a CV if the evaluation is anonymous?
   The only use of the CV is to establish whether you have the formal qualifications to carry out the project (e.g. that you are not a theoretical physicist wanting to do field biology). To date, no applicant has been disqualified for this reason. The CV is not seen by the panel and is not used in the assessment.
    
10. Is there a specific format to be used for the CV?
    No. 
     
11. Is there a specific format to be used for the support letter?
    No, and it is not used in the assessment beyond ensuring that the institution will host the project if granted.
     
12. Should the support letter be anonymous?
    No, but it will not be seen by the panel.
     
13. I get the error ‘#NAME?’ when I enter a start date in the budget template
    The budget template works in Excel 2019 and later versions. An error may occur if you are using Excel 2016 or earlier versions.
     
14. Can I submit additional support letters, e.g. from collaborators?
    No. Additional material will not be seen by the panel as it would violate the anonymity of the assessment.
     
15. Can I use hyperlinks in my proposal?
    No, you are not allowed to link to additional material in your proposal. The panel will not take such links into account in their evaluation.
     
16. Can I cite one of my own papers in the proposal?
    As a general rule, no – it would allow the panel to identify you. If it is absolutely necessary to refer to previous work, use a wording along the lines of ‘Previous work by the applicant has shown…’ and describe the work in generic terms without a reference.

Villum Foundation received 1113 eligible expressions of interest by the end of the deadline, 6 January 2026. The lottery for the 300 application tickets was conducted using the SHA-256 (256 bit Secure Hash Algorithm) to generate a (pseudo-)random sequence based on the titles of the expressions of interest.

This is done by initiating the algorithm with a ‘salt’ calculated as the output of SHA-256 on the text string obtained by concatenating all the titles of the 1113 expressions of interest in the order in which they were created: salt = SHA-256(title1 || title2 || ... || title1113). The salt obtained in this way is: 

salt = 132e5863739041cf38e88cc2f137f425912421aaa9f36fe60e371b927adb439c

For each expression of interest a hash value is calculated as

hash_EoI_i = SHA-256(salt || title_i).

Finally, all hash values are sorted in increasing order and the 300 first values are selected. The corresponding expressions of interest will proceed to the application stage.

In the file below, you can find a list of all 1113 hash values together with their corresponding application ID. If you have submitted an expression of interest, you may find your application ID and verify your order in the list. You may check the calculation of the hash value, using any of the many available implementations of SHA-256 found online, by inputting the salt followed by your project title. The top 300 expressions of interest in the list have proceeded to the application stage. All applicants have received an email with the result of the lottery draw.