Budapest, 23 April 2025 – After the overwhelming success of the 2024 HU-rizon Programme, Hungarian universities have the opportunity this year again: the National Research, Development and Innovation Office is waiting for applications for the new HUF 8 billion budget for one more month, until 23 May.

Through transcontinental research collaborations, excellent Hungarian research laboratories can become even more actively involved in the world’s scientific bloodstream, and, in cooperation with the world’s elite universities, achieve breakthroughs in solving social and economic challenges that are equally important for Hungary and the entire world.

Stanford University, Yale University, Seoul National University, University of Oxford, Univrsity of Cambridge, National University of Singapore, King’s College, the University of Tokyo and the list goes on. What do these institutions have in common, apart from being among the best universities in the world? They all participate in the HU-rizon Programme, which was launched last year and announced again this year, as a partner of a national higher education institution.

The programme is open to research institutions and researchers from any continent, but the professional leader of the consortia established is always a top Hungarian higher education institution. The consortia can be awarded up to HUF 400 million in funding to conduct often revolutionary research on topics that affect the quality of life of Hungarian people – healthy living, sustainability and the circular economy, digitalisation. The National Research, Development and Innovation Fund plans to allocate HUF 8 billion this year to finance the best proposals.

So many high-quality project proposals were received for last year’s call that the Ministry of Culture and Innovation increased the original budget of HUF 8 billion by 50 percent to HUF 12 billion, resulting in 30 out of 112 research projects being funded. Minister of Culture and Innovation Balázs Hankó stressed at the time that the scientific communities around the world, including the European Union clearly count on Hungarian researchers, with “top universities in the globe lining up to participate in research led by Hungarian universities”.

Since then, thanks to the amounts awarded in funding, Óbuda University, for example, joined forces with Stanford and the National University of Singapore to do research on medical robotics and artificial intelligence, the University of Szeged is working with the University of Cambridge and the University of Ulm on investigating the impact of micro- and nanoparticles in plastics on healthy life, and the University of Debrecen has teamed up with the Seoul National University and the University of Florida to develop driverless vehicles. The 30 winning projects bring together a large number of excellent researchers from 11 Hungarian universities and 91 institutions from 25 partner countries.

For further details on the 2025 call, please, visit the website of the NRDI Office at https://nkfih.gov.hu/english/nrdi-fund/hu-rizon-international-research-excellence-cooperation-programme-2025-121-hu-rizont/call-for-proposals