Budapest, 28 May 2025 - The National Research, Development and Innovation Office (NRDI Office) has announced the HU-RIZON Programme for the second time. Its aim is to enable Hungarian universities to develop solutions to the most pressing societal and economic challenges in cooperation with internationally leading institutions.

Following 112 submissions last year, this year’s call has already attracted 132 project proposals, with a combined funding request of HUF 51 billion.

Hungary’s innovation strategy, the John von Neumann Programme, sets the goal of embedding the Hungarian scientific and research ecosystem even more deeply into the international scientific landscape. In response to the exclusion of Hungarian universities from the Erasmus and Horizon programmes, the Hungarian government launched two entirely domestically funded schemes: the Pannonia and the HU-RIZON Programmes.

The HU-RIZON Programme, with a budget of HUF 8 billion, aims to foster new collaborations between Hungarian universities and the world’s top universities and research institutes, focused on the three priority areas of the John von Neumann Programme. These three areas – digitalisation, the green transition and healthcare technology development – remain highly topical. What makes the programme special is that Hungarian higher education institutions can work with universities ranked among the world’s top 100, including Stanford, the University of Oxford, King’s College and Seoul National University.

Evaluation of the newly submitted proposals will begin in June. Domestic and international experts will assess them based on the novelty of the research, the expertise of the consortium, the involvement of young researchers and the quality of the implementation plan. Under the current call, 17 Hungarian universities and 2 Hungarian institutions abroad have submitted a total of 132 proposals, with a combined funding request exceeding HUF 51 billion.

These 2-3-year research collaborations are expected to contribute in the long term to the international embeddedness and competitiveness of Hungarian research.

The funding provided through the NRDI Office covers not only the costs of domestic institutions but also those of international partners. Each consortium is led by a Hungarian university. Last year, 30 projects received funding (for example, the University of Debrecen is working with Caltech, the University of Szeged with the University of Cambridge and Óbuda University with Stanford University). Owing to the overwhelming interest, the Ministry of Culture and Innovation increased the funding budget by 50 percent to HUF 12 billion.