1. General description

The Research State Agency of Spain (AEI) and the Swiss National Science foundation (SNSF) work to reinforce the cooperation between the Spanish and Swiss scientific communities. Inspired by the Weave collaboration model, both agencies have agreed to launch two calls to enable research groups from both countries to submit joint research project proposals. In the first call AEI will act as lead agency opening its national “Generación de Conocimiento” call PID in 2026 and SNSF will act as lead agency opening its “Project Funding” call in 2027.

The purpose of these calls is to fund collaborative research projects involving at least one Spanish research group and one Swiss research group, whose activities are genuinely integrated and do not constitute a mere aggregation of parallel activities carried out independently by each partner.

Proposals must demonstrate the added value of bringing together research teams from Spain and Switzerland, explaining how the complementarity of their expertise, infrastructures and approaches will significantly contribute to advancing the proposed research beyond what each team could achieve individually.

Each agency will fund its own national beneficiaries through its respective national funding instruments and calls.

2. Submission and evaluation procedure

Project proposals must be prepared jointly only in English by the Spanish and Swiss research groups.

Each project must constitute a single and indivisible proposal and will be evaluated as a whole. The scientific and technical proposal submitted to each agency must be identical.

Applicants may apply under either of the following two schemes:

·         Scheme A in 2026. AEI as the Lead Agency. The Spanish research group shall submit the joint Spanish–Swiss proposal to the PID2026 call. In parallel, the Swiss research group shall submit a copy of the same proposal to the mySNF plateform within 7 days after the AEI deadline.

·         Scheme B in 2027. SNSF as the Lead Agency. The Swiss research group shall submit the joint Swiss-Spanish proposal to the “Project Funding” call. Subsequently, the Spanish research group shall submit a copy of the same proposal to the AEI Internationalisation Call, to be published for this purpose.

This is a bottom-up call, open to all scientific fields eligible under both the AEI and the SNSF.

Guidelines for this call will be published shortly.

Sheme A. Expected incompatibilities for PID2026. Please check the official call text once published to confirm the applicable incompatibility rules.

3. SNSF useful links

As lead agency: Weave / Lead Agency / International Co-Investigator Scheme

As partner agency: Weave / Lead Agency / International Co-Investigator Scheme

4. Contact information

At AEI: e-mail: bilat@aei.gob.es

At SNSF: e-mail: projects.international@snf.ch

En el SNSF: correo electrónico: projects.international@snf.ch