2025: Sharp increase in both applications and research funding

The number of applications to the Swedish Research Council already increased last year. This year, the increase has been dramatic. We have received 7,400 applications this year, compared with 5,800 last year. There are several reasons for this, according to Lucas Pettersson, head of the Department of Research Funding.

“One is that we have simply issued more calls for proposals. We received a number of new assignments in the research bill that have generated new calls for proposals. In addition, we have had calls for grant proposals within five of our national research programmes.“

In addition to this, the number of applications has increased in general within the undirected calls – and this applies to all subject areas.

“We will investigate the reasons for this in more detail. But what we can see is that it is an international trend.“

The number of applications approved is also significantly higher this year: 1,043 applications, compared to 860 last year. The number of undirected project grants – i.e. research projects where the researchers themselves have formulated the research questions and developed methods for answering these – that have been awarded funding is the same as last year. However, as we have issued so many calls for proposals in addition to the ordinary ones, the proportion of research funding allocated to undirected project grants is lower than in previous years.

“Project grants within the national research programmes are not counted as independent project grants, and this also applies to a number of the applications in calls for grant proposals we have had in connection with the new Government mandate. As a result, the proportion of applications for independent project grants this year was 77 per cent of our total research funding,” says Lucas Pettersson.

The result of the 2025 funding is that a total of 5.62 billion SEK will go to research grants. This is over a billion more than last year.

In addition to this, we have funded research infrastructure to the sum of around 2.99 billion SEK. The funding has gone to national infrastructures and to membership of international research infrastructures.