New Research Foundation funding program: Stronger incentives for cooperation, improved support for SMEs

11.03.2025

The Bavarian Research Foundation has a new funding program. The program entitled "Future Technologies for the Bavarian Economy" offers more attractive conditions than the previous one in many cases. Cooperation between industry and science is more strongly rewarded, and small and medium-sized enterprises receive an individual funding bonus. The new conditions apply to approvals from 01.06.2025. Applications can be submitted immediately.

The main features of the funding remain the same in the new program: Support is provided for application-oriented research and technology projects with the aim of later commercial exploitation of the results. Every funded project requires mandatory cooperation between industry and science. On the science side, we support universities, universities of applied sciences and non-university research institutions, while on the business side we support companies of all sizes. As in the past, our range of funding remains open to all sectors, topics and technologies. This is now even more evident in the program. There is a particular focus on six subject areas: digitalization, energy and the environment, mobility, life sciences, process and production technology and materials. These fields open up a broad spectrum in which almost every application-related technology project can be classified in practice.

The following significant changes have been made to the funding conditions:

• A cooperation supplement of up to 10 percent is granted for projects with a certain minimum share of the total costs on the scientific side.
• Small and medium-sized enterprises can apply for a supplement of up to 10 percent of their eligible costs.
• The maximum limits for grants for projects in the simplified decision-making procedure and for research alliances will be increased to 100,000 euros and three million euros respectively.
• The maximum personnel cost rates for companies will be raised and universities and colleges will be able to charge their personnel costs on an expenditure basis.

Find out more on our new website www.forschungsstiftung.bayern.de or contact us for personal advice(Tel.: 089 2102-86-3).