BE READY (European Partnership for Pandemic Preparedness) - Advancing knowledge of host and pathogen dynamics to better combat emerging diseases (JTC2026)

Fond National de la Recherche Scientifique (F.R.S.-FNRS)

Sciences de la vie

Sciences exactes et appliquées (2)

The aim of this call is to increase scientific understanding and evidence-based knowledge on emerging and re-emerging pathogens with pandemic potential as well as on the host responses triggered by infection in order to improve our capacity to anticipate, prevent and respond to infectious health threats.
Proposals are expected to deliver results that are directed towards and contributing to at least one of the following expected outcomes:
- Identification of novel pathogen-specific molecular targets and mutation hotspots (i.e. discovery of critical proteins, enzymes or signalling molecules that play a central role in pathogen infectivity, survival and/or resistance);
- Improving the understanding of cross-species (zoonotic) aspects of host–pathogen interactions (in the context of the One Health approach);

- Application of the “Pathogen X” approach to generate transferable knowledge that can then be applied to other threatening viruses of the same family;

- Identification, development and optimisation of (new) structures with optimal therapeutic activity and low toxicity that can be potential lead compounds (particularly for vulnerable groups);

- Identification and validation of targets, alongside data integration, interoperability and modelling efforts to demonstrate the potential of these targets, including antigenic structures suitable for vaccine development, for subsequent therapeutic development (i.e. proof-of-concept studies);

- Improving data integration and modelling to predict pathogen behaviour and therapeutic susceptibilities;

- Understanding the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying host-pathogen interactions, in humans including host predisposing factors, to guide future diagnostic, therapeutic and vaccine development;

- Development and improvement of advanced immunological assays, experimental models and preclinical studies that link host genetics to disease outcomes.

Financement

Each partner is funded separately by the national/regional funding organisation they are applying to. They must fulfil the conditions of their funding organisation.

The maximum amount of requested funding per project is 300.000 EUR for a total period of thee years. If the project involves the recruitment of a PhD student, the project duration of the F.R.S.-FNRS sub-project could be up to four years.

Eligible costs items

Personnel costs: 80,000€ EUR per year on average for the duration of the project. The usual duration of ERA-NET research programmes is three years. However, when the project involves a PhD student, the principal investigator can apply for an additional one year funding in order to complete the four years PhD programme. Since this programme is co-funded by the European Commission, this final year should not be included in the budget submitted to this call.

Equipment: can be eligible up to 20% of the total budget of the project

Running costs: travel expenses; organisation of small scientific events in Belgium; consumables and the following support costs: consumables Publication Designing (conception d’ouvrage) Dictionary Production (réalisation de dictionnaire) Purchase of Books Encoding Software Access Rights Congress Registration Fees Purchase of Computer Scanning Travel costs Visa costs Open Access publication of an article up until 500 euros (see F.R.S-FNRS Open Access policy).

“Overhead”

For “overhead” costs:

Operating expenses: up to 1% within the granted budget. This percentage should be included in the requested operating budget.

Personnel: up to 2% outside of the granted budget. This percentage will be paid upon reimbursement of expenses to institutions by the F.R.S.-FNRS.

Pour postuler

Transnational level

There will be a two-stage procedure for the applications: pre-proposals in the first stage and full-proposals in the second stage (only upon invitation to selected pre-proposals).

At both stages, one joint proposal document (in English) must be prepared by the consortium and submitted by the project coordinator exclusively through the dedicated submission electronic platform (PT-Outline). Pre-proposals or full-proposals that do not follow the template guidelines will be rejected without further review. Templates and further information on electronic submission are available on the BE READY website and in the pre-proposal template.

Please note that some funding organisations might request an additional mandatory submission on their own national/regional platform (see national Annexes)

National/regional level

Applicants must provide basic administrative data by submitting an administrative application on e-space within 5 working days after the general deadline of the call to be eligible. Please select the “PINT-MULTI” funding instrument when creating the administrative application.

Deadlines

Deadline for short proposal submission is 13 April , 14h CET.

Deadline for submission to FNRS is 20 April 2026, 14h CET.

Deadline for full proposal submission is 20 August 2026, 14h CET.

Requis d'admission

Eligibility of the consortia

General conditions for application

The duration of the (transnational collaborative) projects is maximum 36 months.
Double funding of research projects is not permitted. The JCS and national/regional funding organisations may perform cross-checks against other funding
initiatives managed by the same organisations (both national/regional calls and
Joint Transnational Calls). In addition, there can be no double funding for activities
already receiving EU funding, e.g. through Horizon 2020 or Horizon Europe.
To avoid conflicts of interest, staff directly involved in the call implementation are
not eligible to apply to this call and must maintain strict confidentiality (Firewall
measures) regarding any sensitive/confidential information related to the call.

Composition of the transnational consortium

Each consortium partner must be eligible to be funded by the respective
regional/national participating funding organisation. If a partner is found to be
non-eligible at any stage of the process by one of the funding organisations, the
entire proposal could be rejected without further review.
The consortium must involve a minimum of three (3) consortium partners (including
the coordinator), from at least three (3) different eligible countries (including at
least two EU Member States or associated countries), whose funding
organizations participate in the call (see section 3: list of participating countries).
The consortium may not have more than six (6) consortium partners (including
external partner (own/in-kind budget)).
See call document for more details.

Eligibility for belgian partners (F.R.S. - FNRS)

Applicants requesting funding from F.R.S. FNRS must comply with the following rules.

The applicant must be affiliated to a university from the Wallonia-Brussels Federation (FWB).

At the closure of the call, the applicant should also:

- Be a permanent researcher of F.R.S-FNRS (Chercheur qualifié, maître de recherches ou Directeur de recherche) or;

- Hold a tenure track position (or an assimilated position including pending tenure track) with a research institution from the FWB

After the submission of applications, the F.R.S.-FNRS and the research institutions are required to verify the eligibility of the candidates. The F.R.S.-FNRS reserves the right to refuse those whose eligibility criteria would not comply with the Regulation. In order the check the compliance with these eligibility criteria, please contact your contact person at ULB-TTO (see details below). The complete F.R.S-FNRS rules for international research projects is available at the following link: https://www.frs-fnrs.be/docs/Reglement-et-documents/International/FRS-FNRS_PINT-Multi.pdf

Zones géographiques

Les zones géographiques n'ont pas encore été spécifiées.

Documents disponibles

BeReady_JTC2026_Pre-Proposal_template-1.docx

1_BeReady_Call_Text_Final.pdf

Dernière modification le 16/02/2026 par NEMEGHAIRE Stéphanie