NRFU (National Research Foundation of Ukraine)

The NRFU is a state budget institution created by government decision in July 2018, with its first grants awarded in 2019. It is Ukraine's main national instrument for competitive research funding.

The applicant is an institution, not a researcher

This is the first thing to understand. The competition participant is always a legal entity – a higher education institution or a research organisation. The project leader applies on behalf of the institution, not in a personal capacity.

The rule holds even in the individual projects call, where the leader is the sole author and performer: the application still goes through an institution.

One nuance on ownership: higher education institutions may be of any form of ownership, while research organisations must be state or municipal.

2026 calls

Frontier fundamental research – up to UAH 800m for the call, up to UAH 8m per project, up to three years.

Applied research for Ukraine's resilience and recovery – up to UAH 310.8m, up to UAH 7m per project, up to two years.

Individual research projects – up to UAH 100m, up to UAH 1m per project, two years, with the leader as sole performer.

An important caveat the Foundation states itself: all amounts are subject to budget appropriations actually being available. These are not guaranteed funds.

Presidential grants are not the Foundation's grants

The NRFU administers the annual Presidential grants for young scientists, and they are often attributed to the Foundation. In fact the Foundation only runs the competition and produces a ranked list: the grants are awarded by presidential decree on the ministry's proposal.

How proposals are assessed

Applications are submitted in Ukrainian and English through an electronic system with a qualified electronic signature.

Each is read by at least three independent experts from a base of over four thousand researchers, including foreign ones. Three weighted criteria: quality of the research and fit with the theme, significance of the project, and realism of the plan. Each is scored 0 to 5 with mandatory reasoning, and the total is converted to a 100-point scale.

There is a specific divergence mechanism: where the spread between experts exceeds 20%, the panel additionally rates how well-founded each score is, and the result is a weighted average. A single outlying score does not by itself decide the outcome.

There is no appeal

Worth knowing in advance: decisions on formal rejection, the ranked list and the list of winners are not subject to appeal. There is no equivalent of the European review procedure.

The wartime gap

In March 2022 the Foundation's funds were sequestered and grant support suspended. Formally there were no "years without calls", but the gap was real: after the 2021 call the next announcements came only at the end of 2022, and in 2023 there were effectively no national calls of its own.

Funding recovered gradually: about UAH 230m in 2020, a little over UAH 560m in 2024, more than UAH 900m in 2026.

The Horizon Europe office

Since December 2023 the Horizon Europe Office in Ukraine has operated as a structural unit of the Foundation. Notably, it is the only framework programme office funded entirely by the European Commission, and it also coordinates the national contact point network.