NWO TDCC call for proposals 2025

NWO call for proposals and the TDCCs - developing collaborative and non-competitive projects

After the successful call for proposals in 2023/2024, the NWO will once again open a call to fund projects that address ambitions and challenges defined in each TDCC's roadmap. The final submission deadline is 20 November 2025 at 14:00:00 CET.

For those familiar with NWO’s financial instruments and open call formats, we would like to stress that the Thematic Digital Competence Centre Call, like last year’s, asks for a novel approach in developing and approving project proposals.

The role of the TDCCs as network organisations is to ensure that project proposals are developed and approved through a community-driven process. For that purpose, TDCC staff need to engage with potential project leads or teams at an early stage and facilitate the project proposal development through an open and inclusive process.

The NWO funding is divided into three portions, one for each domain: Life Sciences & Health (LSH), Natural & Engineering Sciences (NES), and Social Sciences & Humanities (SSH. Projects will need to address challenges in the relevant domain and will be developed with, and approved by, the relevant domain community.

Why a community-driven process?

We expect that the community-driven process will result in projects that are more informed by the needs of those in the relevant research domain, and therefore respond more closely to those needs. Challenges that go beyond one institution and are shared by many can be addressed collaboratively, meaning that project results will benefit a wide cross-section of the domain. The co-creative process enables links to be made - both across the Netherlands and to other countries - between those working on similar challenges, benefitting the project participants and leading to results with greater impact.

Formal requirements through which NWO ensures this approach are: 

• Every application needs to be accompanied by a submission letter from the relevant  TDCC domain 
• One third of assessment by NWO (section 4.3.1. of the call text) will be based on the degree to which a transparent, community-driven process has been followed in drawing up the application, including the involvement and consultation with a TDCC.

How to get a TDCC submission letter?

1. Submit a project idea to your relevant TDCC domain through a form

The submission/expression of interest forms are relatively simple, asking for a short description, an indication of their relation to the roadmap challenges, partnerships, etc. There are domain-specific deadlines for this step, so check the relevant form for details.

→ After submission, your idea will be checked against a set of limited criteria (domain relevance, addressing roadmap challenges, collaboration potential, etc.) and it will be either moved forward to step 2, not recommended for TDCC funding, or postponed for revisiting in the future.

2. If your project idea has passed the limited criteria check, it will be refined through a community-based process.

Each TDCC will facilitate this process for their domain-specific communities. The project idea is jointly developed further, and potential partners are included, in line with the community’s needs and the TDCC’s specific procedures. This creates the opportunity for involving stakeholders who did not themselves submit an idea. Further details will be available on each domain specific TDCC page.

→ After this, the project idea will be assessed and it will be either moved forward to step 3, not recommended for TDCC funding, or postponed for revisiting in the future.

3. You will now write the full project proposal together with the future project team.

The full project proposal must be written using the NWO application form.

4. Once your full project proposal has gone through a final check by the respective TDCC, you will receive a TDCC submission letter. 

5. You can now submit your project proposal and the accompanying TDCC submission letter to NWO, through ISAAC. 

Timeframes

The project proposal development period – steps 2 to 4 above - will last between 4 and 7 months, depending on the specific TDCC. Therefore it is important to get in touch with the relevant TDCC much sooner than the stated deadline on the NWO website.

Domain specificities

Due to the different domain landscapes and communities, there will be some differences per TDCC in the processes for project proposal development and approval. As projects funded through a particular TDCC must address the challenges relevant to that domain (as identified in the relevant roadmap), the criteria by which projects will be selected for development and support will also differ per domain.

To learn more about each TDCC’s project proposal development process follow the links: