France-Israel Maimonide Scientific Research Program 2026

France-Israel Maimonide Scientific Research Program 2026

This page is a historical reference for the 2026 France-Israel Maïmonide scientific research call. The official Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology page marks the call as closed. Its final Israeli submission deadline was 2026-03-25 at 15:00 Israel time, so this listing is not an open application opportunity and should not be read as an invitation to submit after that date. The page is retained because the call’s scope, eligibility rules, funding ceiling, and submission route are useful to researchers preparing for a future announcement.

The call was run within the Israeli-French agreement on scientific cooperation. It was administered on the Israeli side by the Israel Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology (MOST), alongside France’s Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Space. The French-Israel High Council for Scientific and Technological Cooperation, created in 2003, leads the Maïmonide-Israel research program and sets the broad direction for bilateral scientific cooperation.

At a glance

The amount is a ceiling, not an automatic award. The official call states that funding depends on scientific evaluation, available funds, and approval of the relevant state budgets. It also describes the project period as three years. A team should therefore treat the figure as the maximum Israeli-side allocation for a selected project, subject to the approved budget and the call’s eligible-expense rules.

What the 2026 call supported

The 2026 call was narrower than the old description on this page suggested. It did not represent a general Ministry grant for any international partnership, and it did not promise the broad funding range previously shown in this record. It invited joint proposals in four announced areas:

• Applications of artificial intelligence in agriculture.
• Applications of artificial intelligence in ecology.
• Innovative tools and methodologies for medical applications.
• Green chemistry for next-generation materials.

The research had to be carried out jointly by French and Israeli teams. A proposal in which one side merely supplied a letter of support, while the scientific work remained separate, would not match the central purpose of the call. The proposal needed to explain the shared research question, the contribution of each team, the work that would be performed across the two countries, and the outputs that could not be produced as well by either side alone.

The call described the work as applied research and required the stated Technology Readiness Level range of TRL 2-4. That range is important. A project should connect a research idea to a plausible technological application, but it should not be presented as a finished commercial product or as routine procurement. Teams should define the research uncertainty they will address, the method for testing it, and the evidence that would show progress toward a useful application.

Who was eligible

The basic structure required a collaborating scientific team in each country and one Principal Investigator from each side. The person responsible for submitting the proposal was designated the Principal Investigator-Project Coordinator, or PI-PC. Both PIs needed to be able to direct the scientific work, approve the project plan, and coordinate with the affiliated institution that submitted the national application.

On the Israeli side, the PI-PC had to be affiliated with an accredited institution of higher education in Israel or with an eligible research institute. The official call defines an eligible research institute as a nonprofit organization, a government company, or a governmental unit whose role fits the research requirements. A professor emeritus could qualify when continuing to work in affiliation with the relevant institution. Affiliation alone was not enough: the PI also had to meet the applicable MOST procedures for scientific projects at the time of submission.

The French partner needed an eligible academic or research institution under the French side’s rules. The two national systems were separate, so both sides had to meet their own institutional and submission requirements. A team should confirm its French partner’s eligibility with the relevant French research office before building a final budget or promising a joint submission.

The call’s topic restrictions mattered as much as the institutional rules. A strong project needed to sit inside one of the four listed areas and maintain the applied-research and TRL 2-4 requirements. A proposal about general international mobility, a conference visit, an unrelated basic-science question, or a startup activity without the required scientific team would not be a direct fit for this cycle.

How the 2026 application worked

The official Israeli route was the Science Forefront system at https://kf.most.gov.il. The proposal had to be prepared in English. The process had separate researcher and affiliated-institution stages, so a PI should not have waited until the final day to create an account, resolve an institutional approval issue, or gather the partner documents.

1. Form the bilateral team

Start with one Israeli PI, one French PI, and an identified affiliated institution on each side. Agree on the research question, the division of work, the expected contribution of each laboratory or research group, and the people authorized to approve the application. Confirm the topic and TRL fit before drafting a long narrative. If the French partner is still provisional, the application is not ready for the submission stage.

2. Prepare the joint proposal and national materials

Use the application form and the call document attached to the official Ministry page. Build the scientific plan around the joint work rather than writing two disconnected national proposals. The package should make the problem, method, milestones, partner roles, expected results, and practical value easy to check. Prepare the budget for the Israeli side within the €80,000 ceiling and distinguish requested research costs from any contribution that is not eligible under the call.

The teams should also assemble the institutional and researcher information requested by the call materials, including the PI details, affiliations, partner information, project description, budget justification, and required signatures or supporting forms. The official page includes a project-plan form and the call document; those attachments are the authority for the exact document set. Do not substitute an old template from a previous country call.

3. Create access and submit the researcher proposal

The Israeli PI-PC had to submit the proposal in English through Science Forefront by 2026-03-18 at 15:00 Israel time. The online system was to close after that researcher deadline, and an Israeli researcher who had not submitted by then could not proceed to the later institutional stage. First-time users should have requested access and allowed time for approval by the affiliated institution’s research authority before attempting the final upload.

Before the researcher deadline, check that the project title is identical across forms, the French and Israeli PIs are named consistently, the budget totals agree, and every attachment opens correctly. Keep a copy of the submitted version and any confirmation generated by the system. The call allowed a proposal submitted before the researcher deadline to be edited by the PI-PC, in coordination with the affiliated institution, until the final joint submission deadline.

4. Complete the institutional submission

The Israeli affiliated institution had to submit the proposal through Science Forefront no later than 2026-03-25 at 15:00 Israel time. A PI upload without the required institutional submission was not a complete application. The institution should have checked the eligibility conditions, signatures, budget, and attached forms before sending the final version.

Because this was a bilateral call, the French side also had to follow its own national submission instructions. A valid joint application depended on both national sides receiving the required material in the required way. Researchers preparing for a future round should confirm the French deadline separately rather than assuming that the Israeli deadline governs both countries.

What a competitive project needed to show

The funding level favored a focused three-year plan. A team should have limited the proposal to a small number of testable objectives and linked each requested cost to a research task. For agriculture or ecology AI, that could mean defining the field or ecological data, the model-development question, the validation setting, and the performance evidence needed to support the claimed application. For medical tools, it could mean setting out the measurement problem, validation method, responsible data handling, and route from method development to a credible applied result. For green chemistry, the plan should identify the material or process challenge, the experimental work, and the criteria for judging whether the proposed chemistry improves the target property.

The partnership itself needed evidence. Explain why the French team has access, expertise, facilities, or methods that complement the Israeli team. State who owns each work package, how results will be exchanged, and when the teams will make joint decisions. Include a practical plan for data, intellectual property, publications, ethics, and any approvals that the research requires. These details do not replace scientific quality, but they show that the proposed collaboration can function during a three-year project.

Status and next-round guidance

The official Ministry page records the 2026 call as closed and does not provide a later deadline on that page. This entry therefore uses historicalReference = true and keeps the closed cycle’s actual final date in the deadline field. There is no verified basis here for writing a new application date or treating the program as rolling.

Researchers interested in a future Maïmonide-Israel round should monitor the Ministry’s international scientific relations and calls-for-proposals pages, confirm that a new call has been published, and then replace this historical entry only after checking the new country pair, topics, amount, eligibility, forms, and deadlines. The Ministry’s international relations division describes a broader network of bilateral agreements, but that general activity should not be confused with an open Maïmonide application window. Each agreement can have its own fields, funding, institutional rules, and submission timetable.

Official references

• 2026 France-Israel call page on gov.il
• Science Forefront submission system
• Ministry international scientific relations

The call page is the controlling source for the 2026 status and deadline. Read the attached call document and forms before relying on any amount, expense category, eligibility detail, or future deadline.