NCN MAESTRO 18: A PLN 30 Million Call for Pioneering Basic Research Led by Poland's Most Established Scientists, Closing 15 September 2026

NCN MAESTRO 18: A PLN 30 Million Call for Pioneering Basic Research Led by Poland’s Most Established Scientists, Closing 15 September 2026

MAESTRO is the National Science Centre’s scheme for researchers who have already proved they can run a programme and now want to attempt something that a conventional panel would call too risky. The National Science Centre (NCN, Narodowe Centrum Nauki) describes the target as pioneering research, including interdisciplinary research, that is significant for the development of science, goes beyond the current state of the art, and may result in scientific discoveries. That is a deliberately high bar, and the eligibility rules enforce it before a reviewer reads a single sentence of science.

The current edition is MAESTRO 18. NCN launched it on 15 June 2026, the proposal form opened in the OSF submission system on 29 June 2026, and the deadline is 15 September 2026 at 2 pm CEST. The call budget is PLN 30 million. If you are reading this in early August, you have roughly six weeks — workable if the research idea and the track-record evidence already exist, tight if they do not, because the eligibility gate for the principal investigator alone requires documentation you cannot assemble overnight.

Key Details at a Glance

What MAESTRO Funds, and How It Differs From NCN’s Other Schemes

MAESTRO sits at the top of NCN’s domestic ladder. OPUS is open to essentially any researcher with a doctorate; SONATA and SONATA BIS target early- and mid-career investigators building their first independent teams; PRELUDIUM funds people before or around the doctorate. MAESTRO is reserved for researchers who have already led multiple funded projects and accumulated international standing, and it asks them to propose work that would be difficult to justify under a normal risk calculus.

The subject matter is basic research only. Proposals may be submitted to any of the 26 NCN panels, grouped as HS (humanities, social sciences and art sciences), ST (physical sciences and engineering), and NZ (life sciences). The panel is chosen by the principal investigator at submission and cannot be changed afterwards — a proposal can be rejected outright for landing in the wrong panel, which makes the choice a real strategic decision rather than an administrative checkbox. Interdisciplinary proposals can name auxiliary panels, and where they do, the Expert Team chair may bring in an individual review from a member of another Expert Team.

Duration is fixed to one of three options: 36, 48 or 60 months. There is no minimum or maximum project budget. That freedom is not an invitation to inflate: NCN states plainly that the budget is subject to both an eligibility check and merit-based evaluation, and that a proposal may be rejected if it plans unreasonable costs. The relevance of costs to the subject and scope of the research is one of the explicit evaluation aspects.

Who Counts as a “Well-Established and Outstanding Researcher”

This is the gate that stops most would-be applicants, and it is arithmetic rather than judgement. The principal investigator must hold at least a PhD and, in the proposal submission year or within the preceding 10 years (extendable by evidenced career breaks under the call’s terms), must have:

• had at least five papers published in renowned Polish or international academic press or journals;
• acted as principal investigator in at least two research projects funded under national or international calls — which includes managing or coordinating a research group’s work in international research projects or programmes;
• met at least three of the following: membership of the scientific committee of at least one prestigious international conference; publication of at least one monograph; presentations at prestigious international conferences; receipt of an international award or prize; membership of prestigious associations, international scientific organisations or academies; other significant scientific achievements.

For research in art, an alternative route applies: an author of works of art of international significance, or works significant for Polish culture, who has actively participated in international exhibitions, festivals or artistic events in fine arts, music, theatre or film.

There is also a repeat-applicant rule with teeth. A researcher who has already managed a MAESTRO-funded project may only apply again if they are an ERC grant winner, or if they submitted an ERC proposal within the past five years that was evaluated at least in stage I of that call. In effect, NCN treats a serious ERC attempt as evidence that you are still operating at the level MAESTRO is built for.

Host Institutions, Residency and the Proposal Limits

Proposals are submitted by an eligible entity, not by the individual alone — although a natural person is among the eligible applicant categories listed in the NCN Act. The list also covers universities; federations of science and higher education entities; institutes of the Polish Academy of Sciences; research institutes; international research institutes operating in Poland; the Łukasiewicz Centre and Łukasiewicz Research Network institutes; the Centre of Postgraduate Medical Education; the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences; scientific libraries; scientific and industrial centres; companies operating as research and development centres; groups of at least two such entities (or one such entity with at least one company); and legal entities with a registered office in Poland.

Two obligations bind the principal investigator personally. They must be employed at the host institution on at least a part-time contract for the whole project (the exception is recipients of a pension under the social insurance scheme), and they must reside in Poland for at least 50% of the project duration and be available to the host institution, excluding evidenced project-related travel, holiday and other lawful absences. If you are planning to hold this grant while spending most of the year abroad, the scheme does not accommodate that.

The submission limits matter too. No one may manage more than one MAESTRO-funded project at a time. Within a single call edition — here MAESTRO 18 and SONATA BIS 16, which close on the same day — the same person may be named principal investigator on only one proposal; if they appear on more, the one submitted to OSF earliest is the one accepted. No proposal within an edition may duplicate research tasks. Separately, the total number of NCN projects a researcher manages plus NCN proposals pending evaluation or recommended for funding in which they are PI must not exceed two, rising to three if at least one of those is an OPUS LAP proposal or a call run with a foreign research-funding agency. Several NCN instruments — PRELUDIUM BIS, DIOSCURI, TANGO, ARTIQ, MINIATURA, NAWA research components, FUGA, UWERTURA, ETIUDA, and the Ukraine programmes — sit outside these limits.

One more hard rule: proposals must not provide for any collaboration between Polish and Russian entities. Where such collaboration is planned, the proposal is rejected as ineligible.

What the Money Pays For

MAESTRO funds a team, and the composition rules are prescriptive. In addition to the principal investigator, research tasks may be carried out by post-docs, senior researchers, people in specialist supporting positions, PhD students, students and other co-investigators. The involvement of post-doc(s) and/or PhD student(s) for a combined total of at least 72 months is obligatory — a requirement that shapes the budget more than any other single rule.

A post-doc position is full-time and reserved for someone awarded a PhD in the year of employment or within 12 years before 1 January of that year (extendable by evidenced career breaks). Crucially, a post-doc must have received their doctorate from an institution other than the one employing them in the role, or have completed a continuous, evidenced fellowship of at least nine months at another institution in another country than where the PhD was conferred. Post-docs must be recruited through an open call.

A senior researcher is a full-time position, co-financed by the host institution, for someone whose PhD was conferred at least seven years before the submission date and who brings expertise and competencies the project needs. A specialist supporting position covers roles such as lab manager, senior technician or statistical analyst.

Scholarship and salary ceilings are set centrally. Doctoral scholarships under the Act on Higher Education and Science may reach PLN 6,500 per month. NCN scholarships for students or PhD students may reach PLN 5,000 per month, as may salaries paid under employment or civil-law contracts (not both at the same institution). The total a student or doctoral student receives across NCN-funded projects must not exceed PLN 8,500 per month; doctoral students already holding a doctoral-school scholarship or other funding may receive up to PLN 3,000 per month more within that ceiling.

Direct costs also cover research equipment, devices and software; materials and small equipment; outsourced services; and business travel. Indirect costs may reach 20% of direct costs, with a further up to 2% of direct costs designated specifically for open access to publications or research data. For entities applying under state aid rules, all indirect costs together must stay within 20%. During implementation, the host institution must agree with the principal investigator on the distribution of at least 25% of other indirect costs.

What Changed in This Edition

NCN flags four modifications for MAESTRO 18, and the first is the one that will catch people out.

Applicants must now disclose retracted papers. The requirement covers all researchers whose academic and research track record appears in the proposal, including senior researchers, and spans the submission year plus the full period over which listed publications were published or accepted — which must be no less than 10 years before the submission year. Reasons for retraction must be given where applicable. Start compiling this now if any co-investigator’s publication list is long; it is not a field you want to complete from memory at 1 pm on deadline day.

The other three: post-doc eligibility is now defined as a PhD conferred in the year of employment or within 12 years before 1 January of that year; new review panels are in place, which is directly relevant to panel selection; and the open access policy has been updated (version of 10 July 2025). Under that policy, results should be made openly available where possible, via journals or platforms registered or pending registration in DOAJ, via repositories listed in OpenDOAR for author accepted manuscripts or preprints, or under transformative agreements. The policy does not apply to monographs, monograph chapters or peer-reviewed collected works.

How Proposals Are Evaluated

Every proposal first passes an eligibility check performed by NCN Coordinators; only complete proposals meeting all the call’s terms progress. A proposal can still be rejected on eligibility grounds later, during merit review.

Merit-based evaluation runs in two stages, carried out by Expert Teams appointed by the NCN Council together with external reviewers who are not Expert Team members.

• Stage I — Two Expert Team members independently draft individual reviews based on the proposal and its annexes, excluding the full project description. For interdisciplinary proposals naming auxiliary panels, the chair may request an additional review from another Expert Team. At the first panel meeting the team compiles the list of proposals advancing to stage II.
• Stage II — At least two external reviewers assess the proposal and annexes, excluding the short project description. At the second panel meeting the Expert Team interviews the principal investigator, then produces a ranking list of proposals recommended for funding.

The interview is the feature that most distinguishes MAESTRO from routine grant competitions, and it deserves preparation on its own terms. Evaluation focuses on: compliance with the basic research criterion; the principal investigator’s compliance with the well-established and outstanding researcher criterion; the quality and innovative nature of the research; the project’s impact on the advancement of the discipline; feasibility; the principal investigator’s scientific achievements; other projects they have run with NCN or other funders; the relevance of costs to the research; and the development of the proposal and its compliance with the call text.

Results are published on the NCN website and delivered as a decision of the NCN Director within six months of the submission date, and by March 2027 at the latest. Applicants may appeal to the Committee of Appeals of the NCN Council where the call procedure was breached or another formal infringement by NCN occurred.

Preparing a Competitive Submission

Work backwards from 15 September and treat the OSF system as a source of delay rather than a formality.

Read the call documents first — the terms and conditions, the regulations on awarding funding, the types of costs, the proposal form template, the submission procedure, and the OSF completion guidelines. NCN publishes all of them alongside the call. Then collect what only your institution can give you: cost data, internal approval routes, and the procedure for obtaining the signature of the authorised representative who must confirm submission. If a group of Polish entities is applying, a research project cooperation agreement is obligatory. If your achievements section lists papers accepted but not yet published, you need acceptance letters from the publishers.

Two annexes carry their own guidelines and are commonly rushed: the data management plan and the ethics issues form. Both have dedicated NCN guidance documents. Neither wins a grant, but a thin data management plan reads as carelessness to reviewers who are already assessing feasibility.

On the science itself, MAESTRO rewards a specific posture. The scheme exists for work that goes beyond the current state of the art, so a proposal that reads as a competent extension of your last five years is likely to be outranked by one that names a hard problem and explains credibly why you, with this team and this budget, can attempt it now. Feasibility is separately assessed, which means ambition has to be paired with a concrete method, a realistic timeline over 36, 48 or 60 months, and a team plan where each named role has stated competencies and tasks. The Expert Team explicitly evaluates whether employing each research team member is justified.

Common Mistakes

• Assuming eligibility. Count the five papers, the two led projects, and the three distinction criteria against the 10-year window before writing anything else. Career breaks can extend the window, but they must be evidenced under the call’s terms.
• Applying to MAESTRO 18 and SONATA BIS 16 as principal investigator on both. Only the earliest-submitted proposal is accepted; the later one is lost.
• Choosing the panel loosely. It cannot be changed after submission and a mismatch can end the proposal.
• Leaving the retracted-papers disclosure to the end. It covers every researcher whose track record appears in the proposal, over at least a decade.
• Skipping the 72-month post-doc/PhD student requirement in the budget. It is obligatory, not indicative, and it must be reflected in both team plan and costs.
• Relying on the “Check completeness” button. NCN warns explicitly that passing it does not guarantee that information was entered correctly, in the right language, or that all annexes are attached.
• Underestimating the signature chain. The confirmation of submission must be downloaded, signed by the principal investigator and the institution’s authorised representative(s), and uploaded before the proposal is sent with the “Wyślij do NCN” button.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to be Polish, or work in Poland already? Nationality is not a criterion. What binds is the host institution and residency: the principal investigator must be employed at an eligible Polish host on at least a part-time contract for the project’s duration and must reside in Poland for at least half of it.

Is there a maximum I can request? No. NCN sets no minimum or maximum project budget for MAESTRO 18. The call budget as a whole is PLN 30 million, and unreasonable costs are grounds for rejection — so the discipline has to come from your own justification.

How many projects will be funded? The call announcement states the PLN 30 million budget but does not state a target number of grants. Awards depend on the proposals received and the ranking list produced by the Expert Team.

Can applied or translational work be submitted? No. MAESTRO 18 funds basic research, and compliance with the basic research criterion is the first item on the evaluation list.

When will I know the outcome? Within six months of the submission date, and by March 2027 at the latest.

What if I miss this round? MAESTRO is a recurring NCN scheme, historically announced in June with a mid-September deadline. Missing MAESTRO 18 is not fatal, but note the repeat-applicant restriction: if you have already held a MAESTRO grant, a future application requires ERC grant status or a recent ERC proposal evaluated at least through stage I.

Official Links and Contacts

• MAESTRO 18 call page (English): https://www.ncn.gov.pl/en/ogloszenia/konkursy/maestro18
• OSF submission system: https://osf.opi.org.pl
• National Science Centre: https://www.ncn.gov.pl/en
• Enquiries: [email protected]

Verify every figure and rule against the official call text before submitting. NCN publishes the terms and conditions, regulations on awarding funding, cost rules, panel list, proposal form template, scholarship regulations, state aid guidance, data management plan and ethics form guidelines, and the evaluation criteria and procedure directly on the call page — those documents, not any summary, govern the competition.