The strategic goal of the John von Neumann Programme, announced in 2023, is to strengthen the economic, social and scientific impact of domestic research. To achieve this, in 2023 we reformed the system of criteria and evaluation of innovation proposals. As a next step in the process of consolidating the Hungarian research and innovation ecosystem, the Research Council of Hungary (RCH) – whose members were nominated by consensus by the Ministry of Culture and Innovation, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the HUN-REN Hungarian Research Network – decided to renew the Hungarian excellence-based scientific research funding system in order to enable the best Hungarian researchers and research groups to conduct their work under internationally competitive conditions.

As its most important measure in 2024, RCH renewed the OTKA programme, in place to support Hungarian scientific research for nearly four decades, based on the highest international standards, with the programme continuing its former activities under the name National Research Excellence Programme (NREP). NREP was launched in 2025 with a budget of HUF 40 billion (in 2024, HUF 19 billion was available), which is three times the 2023 budget of HZUF 13.4 billion. In line with the recommendations of international professional evaluation bodies, the RCH, led by Dr. Péter Domokos, a Széchenyi Prize laureate physicist, makes decisions on the distribution of available funds. 

An important alternative inherent in the programme is that although the new scheme is designed primarily to support internationally competitive scientific excellence – and accordingly, the submission and evaluation process is in English –, the possibility for so-called Hungarikum applications is also maintained, ensuring that research important to Hungarian cultural heritage will also be eligible under the programme. 

A new feature compared to the 2024 NREP call is that addition funding can be requested for experimental research in 2025: HUF 25 million and HUF 30 million, under the STARTING and ADVANCED categories, respectively. In addition, a new category called HIGHLIGHT has been introduced. An important change is that applications based on bilateral agreements that promote international research cooperation (NN type) may also apply for larger amounts of funding (HUF 68 million for ANN, HUF 51 million for SNN). 

From the HUF 40 billion earmarked within the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund, the sub-programmes of the NREP support domestic research on the basis of excellence, in line with successful international best practices, including the ERC’s grant schemes:

• the EXCELLENCE category is for researchers who have already competed in an ERC call and received a good peer review, but were not awarded a grant due to lack of funding. For them, a special funding opportunity – up to HUF 200 million over 2 years – will ensure the continuation of promising research and preparation for a new international call, in which they are obliged to participate.
• the HIGHLIGHT category aims to provide HUF 400 million to support domestic research groups that show consistent excellence in the international community of science for a period of four years and that had already secured significant grant funding for their operations and whose excellent achievements can be sustained by this call.
• in the ADVANCED category, experienced researchers can receive up to HUF 150 million over 4 years.
• the STARTING category supports young researchers with a doctorate degree earned within the past 7 years, allowing them to HUF 125 million over 4 years.
• the two sub-programmes for international research cooperation (NN-type), based on bilateral agreements between funding organisations, aim to strengthen the international embeddedness of Hungarian science, and to support joint research by Hungarian research groups and their foreign partners in the Hungarian-Austrian and Hungarian-Slovenian relations.

The applications received are ranked in order of excellence by 14 scientific evaluation committees, each consisting of 11 to 12 Hungarian and foreign experts.