HFSP Postdoctoral Fellowships (Long-Term and Cross-Disciplinary)

Benefits & funding

• Three years (36 months) of funding, non-renewable. The allowances are administered through the host institution and the appointment must be 100 per cent full-time.
• A yearly living allowance set by host country. Year-one figures in the 2027 guidelines include USD 59,460 (United States), GBP 65,772 (United Kingdom), CHF 76,800 (Switzerland), EUR 62,016 (France), EUR 51,984 (Germany), JPY 6,898,740 (Japan), SGD 92,496 (Singapore) and AUD 90,132 (Australia). The allowance steps up in years two and three.
• A yearly research and travel allowance on top of the living allowance, also set by host country: EUR 6,432 at every euro-denominated host, USD 7,200 in the United States, GBP 5,640 in the United Kingdom, CHF 6,744 in Switzerland and JPY 784,692 in Japan.
• A relocation allowance of USD 1,000 to USD 4,000, read off a region-to-region table — USD 1,000 within Europe, USD 1,500 within Asia or within Oceania, USD 3,000 from Europe to the western United States or Canada, USD 4,000 between Europe and Asia or Oceania. A spouse or partner is funded at the fellow’s own rate, children aged 2 to 12 at 50 per cent per child and children under 2 at 10 per cent per child.
• A child allowance for fellows with children, set at 10 per cent of the applicable year-one living allowance.
• Up to three months of paid parental leave for a child born or adopted during the award period.
• The living allowance may be topped up from other sources, such as the host supervisor’s grants or institutional funds; the host institution has to be willing to support an HFSP fellowship and to top the allowance up where its own salary rules require it. Holding another paid position or another paid fellowship at the same time is not allowed.
• Year three may be spent in the same laboratory, in the home country of the fellow or of their spouse or partner, or in another HFSPO member country.

Eligibility

• Open to applicants of any nationality.
• The fellowship cannot be taken up in the applicant’s country of nationality. It also cannot be taken up in the country where the doctorate was obtained, even if the applicant is not a national of that country.
• Applicants who are not nationals of an HFSPO member country may only apply to work at an institution in a member country. The member countries are Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus (EU part), the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States; they fund HFSP directly or through the European Commission’s contribution. Nationals of member countries may propose any country they are not a national of — the 2027 allowance tables also cover hosts such as Brazil, Chile, Hong Kong, Iceland, Mexico and Thailand.
• Dual nationals may propose a host institution in one of their countries of nationality only if they have never lived in that country.
• Applicants must not have studied or worked in the proposed host country for more than 12 months, consecutively or not, by the activation date. Every previous stay counts towards those 12 months, including school, bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral study, internships, collaborations, postdoctoral work and time as a visiting scientist or technician. Anyone already working at the proposed host institution is eligible only if they arrived on or after 1 April 2026, and must activate the fellowship within 12 months of that arrival.
• A completed doctorate is not required at the time of application, so doctoral candidates who have not yet defended may apply. The doctorate must be conferred before the fellowship starts, and by 31 December 2027 at the latest. Where an applicant holds more than one relevant doctorate, the completion date of the most recent one decides eligibility.
• The gap between the doctorate and the full-proposal deadline may not exceed three years (36 months): applicants whose doctorate was conferred before 24 September 2023 are not eligible. Illness, parental leave, full-time care for an immediate family member, and military or civil service do not count towards that window.
• At least one full-length original research publication, in English, on which the applicant is a lead author. At letter-of-intent stage it may be published, accepted and in press, accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, or posted in a recognised open-access preprint repository and submitted to a peer-reviewed journal. At full-proposal stage the preprint option no longer counts.
• The host supervisor must not be a former research supervisor, a former scientific collaborator, or anyone the applicant has worked or published with. Each host supervisor may endorse only one letter of intent per competition year.
• No age limit and no minimum years of work experience are stated.
• Out of scope: purely applied work, including a primarily clinical or pharmaceutical focus; developing or improving the diagnosis or treatment of disease; identifying drug targets, and drug design and development; applied engineering, biotechnology and nanotechnology; new methods that do not set out to answer a basic biological question; work aimed directly at agricultural, forestry, environmental or conservation problems; purely observational or descriptive projects, including systematic screening and data-collection studies; obvious next steps in the field, standard approaches and incremental advances; projects that continue the host laboratory’s ongoing research or the applicant’s own previous work; and research carried out in a for-profit environment, although collaborating with a for-profit partner is allowed.

Application process

1. 1
   Apply the two-country test first: the host country must differ from both the country of nationality and the country where the doctorate was obtained, and it must be an HFSPO member country unless the applicant is a member-country national.
2. 2
   Line up a host supervisor with no prior working or publishing history with the applicant, and confirm they are not endorsing another letter of intent in the same competition year.
3. 3
   Register on ProposalCentral and initiate a letter of intent before the initiation deadline — for the 2027 competition, 5 May 2026 at 09:00 ET. Each letter of intent is assigned a seven-digit identifier.
4. 4
   Submit the letter of intent: project title; personal details including ORCID, degrees and CV; the host institution and supervisor with the intended arrival date; the title and abstract of the doctoral thesis and of any previous postdoctoral projects; disclosure of any previous or current collaboration with the proposed host supervisor; a research summary of up to 3,000 characters including spaces, covering background, aims, central hypotheses, experimental approach and expected outcomes; three key references relating to the proposed project; the applicant’s publication list together with the further detail HFSP asks for on those publications; and the host supervisor’s confirmation of support.
5. 5
   Await the letter-of-intent outcome. Only shortlisted applicants are invited to submit a full proposal.
6. 6
   Submit the full proposal: background and significance (up to 3,000 characters), specific aims (up to 8,000), experimental design (up to 6,000) and a bibliography of up to 15 references; a statement of how the project differs from the applicant’s previous work (up to 2,500); a statement on leading-edge significance (up to 4,000); an explanation of fit with the host laboratory (up to 2,000); a public summary (up to 2,400); a recommendation letter from the host supervisor plus reference letters from two additional referees; and signatures from the applicant, the host supervisor and an institutional official.
7. 7
   Await the final decision, then activate the fellowship inside the activation window.

Program timeline

1. 12 March 2026

   Application portal opens for the 2027 competition

2. Deadline to initiate a letter of intent

   5 May 2026, 09:00 ET

3. Letter of intent submission deadline

   12 May 2026, 09:00 ET

4. Letter of intent outcomes; shortlisted applicants invited to submit a full proposal

   Mid to late August 2026

5. Full proposal deadline

   24 September 2026, 09:00 ET

6. Final award notification

   End of March 2027

7. Activation window — the fellowship must start within it and runs 36 months from the chosen start date

   1 April 2027 to 1 January 2028