OECD Co-operative Research Programme Research Fellowships 2028: Next Call Announced for April 2027

OECD Co-operative Research Programme Research Fellowships 2028: Next Call Announced for April 2027

The OECD Co-operative Research Programme (CRP) supports short research visits by scientists working in agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and related food-system fields. Its official fellowship page now says the call for funding in 2027 is closed and that the next call, for 2028 funding, will open in April 2027. The OECD has not yet published a 2028 application deadline, award amount, or cycle-specific eligibility rules. The application form is currently unavailable.

This page is therefore an archive and planning reference, not an invitation to apply now. The concrete award terms, eligibility conditions, and materials described below come from the published 2027 guidelines and should not be assumed to carry over unchanged. The 2027 deadline was 10 September 2026. The OECD’s announcement of an April 2027 opening for the 2028 call is the only upcoming timing information currently published on the official fellowship page. Check that page and its new guidelines when the call opens before making plans or submitting anything.

Key Details at a Glance

What the CRP Is and Why It Funds Research Visits

The Co-operative Research Programme sits within the OECD’s work on sustainable agricultural and food systems. Its purpose is to strengthen the scientific knowledge base that feeds into future policy decisions on the sustainable use of natural resources across food, agriculture, forests, and fisheries. Rather than funding large multi-year grants, the CRP invests in two focused instruments: sponsorship for international conferences, workshops, and symposia; and individual research fellowships that move scientists between countries.

The fellowship stream is deliberately about mobility. The 2027 call has closed, so the details below describe the programme design and the preceding cycle rather than current application availability. A researcher may use the visit to learn a technique, access a specialised facility or dataset, work at a distinctive field site, or co-develop a method with a counterpart team. The expected value is more than a short trip: the fellow should bring skills and results back to the home institution while building a collaboration that can continue after the award. The guidelines therefore ask applicants to show why the proposed host and fellow are complementary and why the host’s infrastructure is important to the project.

Because the CRP is funded by its member governments and coordinated by the OECD Secretariat in Paris, it carries the credibility of an intergovernmental programme. A CRP fellowship is a recognisable line on a scientific CV, and the network it plugs you into is genuinely international.

The Action Areas and Policy Fit

The OECD call asks applicants to relate their work to the CRP Action Areas and welcomes applications relevant to the OECD Committee for Agriculture and other OECD bodies. The listed priorities include sustainable and resilient productivity growth, food security and nutrition; climate risks and reducing emissions from agriculture and food systems; carbon sequestration in agriculture, forestry, and land use; halting forest loss and land degradation; livestock’s environmental and animal-welfare effects; biodiversity and ecosystem services; soil health and water and air quality; agricultural knowledge transfer, including Indigenous and traditional knowledge; and fisheries and aquaculture productivity, sustainability, and resilience.

The broader CRP programme describes three current Action Areas: shaping behaviours for transformational action; strengthening resilience in the face of multiple risks in a connected world; and innovating for sustainable production and productivity. The application should make the connection explicit. Explain the scientific question, the relevant Action Area or policy priority, and the reason an international host is necessary. A project can be technically strong and still be a poor fit if it does not show a clear contribution to sustainable food, agriculture, forestry, or fisheries policy.

Who Is Eligible

The 2028 eligibility rules have not been published. The following is a summary of the 2027 guidelines only; it helps prospective applicants understand the previous cycle, but every requirement must be checked against the new call before applying.

• Your institution is in a participating country. The 2027 guidelines listed 33 participating countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Brazil and Ukraine became CRP members in July 2026. Türkiye remains a member until 24 December 2026 but will not participate in the call for fellowships funded in 2027.
• Your host is abroad in another participating country. Under the 2027 rules, the host institution had to be in a different participating country from the applicant’s institution. A scientist already holding a position in a foreign laboratory cannot apply simply to remain in that laboratory.
• Your experience matches the programme’s level. The 2027 guidelines said applicants should have four years of postdoctoral training. The programme is not targeted at PhD students, although the guidelines allow exceptional consideration for a person without a PhD who has equivalent expertise and an extensive publication record.
• Your employment can support the return and follow-through. Under the 2027 guidelines, applicants needed a contract with their present employer that ensures continued employment after the fellowship. If the contract is shorter than three years, your institution should certify that an ongoing scientific affiliation with the host laboratory will continue after the visit. Your employer must agree to both the application and the proposed fellowship before submission.

A previous CRP fellow may apply again, but only five years after the year of the first fellowship. These rules make it important to confirm your institutional status, host country, career stage, employment agreement, and prior CRP funding before spending time on the form.

Importantly, the visit must be international: you travel from your country of residence to a host institution in another participating country. A CRP fellowship is not for research at home, and it is not simply a travel grant to any destination — it is support to embed with a specific host abroad for a specific project.

What the Fellowship Covers

The 2028 award amount has not been announced. In the 2027 call, the award was a travel lump sum with three components. First, it covered travel calculated from a return economy-class air ticket between the fellow’s domicile and the host laboratory. Second, it included a weekly subsistence allowance of EUR 600 or EUR 650 per week, depending on the cost of living in the host country. This was intended to cover normal living expenses, accommodation, food, and incidental daily travel to and from work. Third, it included a EUR 165 terminal-charge allowance for transport costs incurred when taking up and leaving duties at the host laboratory.

These are the only costs covered by the fellowship-period travel lump sum. The award does not separately reimburse insurance, medical cover, passports, visas, removals, family travel, bench fees, laboratory fees, or other incidentals. Laboratory costs are normally expected to be covered by the host laboratory; if they are not, the fellow or home organisation must find another source. The fellow is not an OECD official and does not receive tax exemption on the lump sum. Under the 2027 rules, the Secretariat confirmed each successful applicant’s total because the travel component depended on distance and the subsistence component on visit duration and the host-country cost-of-living category.

How to Apply

The 2027 application form is no longer available, and the OECD has not yet published the 2028 application instructions or form. The 2027 process below is retained for planning only; use the new call documents when they appear and follow those instructions if they differ. In the closed 2027 cycle, applications were submitted in English through the OECD online application form. The form requires ordinary text rather than formatted text, bullets, or tables; if a table is necessary, the guidelines say to upload it through the form or send it separately to the Secretariat. Prepare the following before opening the application:

1. A focused research application. Describe the objectives, methods, expected outcomes, Action Area and policy relevance, and why the work is feasible within the requested six-to-twenty-six-week period.
2. A CV and publication list. Attach your CV and a list of publications written during the last five years. The CV is passed to the Scientific Advisory Body for assessment.
3. A host acceptance letter. The host institution must provide a headed, dated, and signed letter stating that it will accept you if selected. It must include the proposed starting and ending dates, what you bring to the host, what the host brings to you, the work’s objectives and methods, and the equipment provided. The original letter must also be sent to the Secretariat.
4. Employer approval. Secure your present employer’s agreement before submitting. If your contract is shorter than three years, obtain the additional certification about continuing scientific affiliation described in the eligibility section.
5. A complete online submission. Complete every relevant field in English, attach the required documents, and submit before the deadline. The system automatically confirms that the application was submitted and received.

The OECD page links the 2027 guidelines, selection criteria, Action Areas, sample applications, a sample CV, a sample invitation letter, and the PDF application form. The form is currently marked unavailable; consult these links as background until the 2028 materials are published. Use those official examples as background for the previous round. When the 2028 call opens, check the new material first; contact your National Correspondent for general eligibility questions or the CRP Secretariat at [email protected] for administrative questions.

Timeline and Deadline

The 2027 application deadline was 10 September 2026 and that call is closed. The OECD now states that the next call, for 2028 funding, will open in April 2027. It has not given a 2028 submission deadline. The 2027 guidelines initially expected decisions by mid-December 2026 and results by January 2027 at the latest; the current OECD page now says applicants will hear at the end of December 2026 or early January 2027. Those dates belong to the closed 2027 cycle. Research visits under that cycle were for 2027: for administrative reasons, the OECD advises that they do not start before 1 March 2027. Administrative arrangements for fellows departing in 2027 must be completed before 1 November 2027, although departure may take place up to 15 December 2027 at the latest.

There is no open submission window to work backward from. You can use the interval before April 2027 to learn about the programme and identify a possible research partner, but avoid treating the previous application pack as the 2028 rules. Once the 2028 call opens, confirm participating-country eligibility, the allowable visit period, award calculation, project themes, selection criteria, document list, and exact closing time from the new official guidelines. Then secure employer approval, agree the project with the host, prepare the documents the new call requests, and use the new online form. The OECD will publish the actual deadline with the call materials; no 2028 deadline is confirmed on the page today.

How to Build a Competitive Proposal

Reviewers on an international scientific panel are weighing many strong applications, so clarity and fit win. A few principles consistently separate fundable proposals from also-rans:

• Make the international dimension essential, not incidental. The single best justification is that the work can only (or can best) be done at the host: a unique facility, an irreplaceable field site, a dataset, a species population, or a method the host team pioneered. If the same project could be done at home, the case for a mobility fellowship is weak.
• Anchor explicitly to an Action Area and policy priority. Name the relevant Action Area or priority, then show how the project contributes to it. Do not make the panel guess where your work fits in the CRP agenda.
• Be realistic about scope. Six to twenty-six weeks is enough for a focused piece of work, a method transfer, a joint experiment, or a well-defined data campaign — not a full multi-year programme. Propose something you can genuinely deliver in the time.
• Show the collaboration outlasts the visit. Panels value fellowships that seed continuing partnerships, joint publications, shared methods, or reciprocal exchanges. Spell out what happens after you return.
• Demonstrate host commitment. A specific, enthusiastic invitation letter that names dates, facilities, and a named collaborator carries far more weight than a generic willingness to host.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Leaving the host arrangement too late. Without a confirmed, willing host and an invitation, the application is not viable. This is the step most likely to derail a strong scientist, so start it first.
• Ignoring country eligibility changes. Membership shifts between cycles. Confirm your country of residence is a current participant for the 2027 round — this matters especially for Brazil and Ukraine (newly eligible after joining in July 2026) and Türkiye (a member until 24 December 2026 but excluded from the 2027 call).
• Treating it as a generic travel grant. In the 2027 call, the CRP funded a defined research project abroad within its themes, not conference trips, sabbaticals, or home-country research.
• Vague deliverables. “Explore collaboration opportunities” is not a project. Panels reward specific questions, methods, and outputs.
• Ignoring the allowance limits. Budget around the return economy-class travel calculation, EUR 600 or EUR 650 weekly subsistence, and EUR 165 terminal charges. Do not assume that insurance, visas, family travel, or laboratory fees will be reimbursed.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need a PhD? The 2027 guidelines said applicants should have four years of postdoctoral training and that the programme is not targeted at PhD students. They allow exceptional consideration for someone without a PhD who has equivalent expertise and has been extensively published.

Can I visit any country I like? Under the 2027 rules, no. The host institution had to be in another country participating in the CRP, and the applicant had to work at an institution in a participating country. The host cannot simply be a foreign laboratory where you already hold a position.

How long could the visit be? Under the 2027 guidelines, between 6 and 26 weeks. Check the new rules for 2028 when published.

Did the 2027 fellowship pay a salary? No. That call provided a travel lump sum: return economy-class travel, EUR 600 or EUR 650 per week for subsistence, and EUR 165 for terminal charges. It did not cover a salary, family costs, insurance, visas, or laboratory fees. The 2028 award terms are not yet available.

When would I actually travel? The closed 2027 call was for visits undertaken in 2027, with a recommendation not to start before 1 March. The 2028 visit dates and administrative timetable have not yet been published.

What if my country’s status is unclear? Check the country list published with the 2028 call and contact your National Correspondent or the OECD CRP Secretariat before applying. Membership and participation can change between cycles; the list in the 2027 materials is historical.

Official Links and Next Steps

Check the OECD’s “CRP Applications for Fellowships” page for the current status and eventual 2028 materials: https://www.oecd.org/en/about/programmes/co-operative-research-programme/crp-applications-for-fellowships.html. It records that the 2027 call is closed, announces the expected April 2027 opening for 2028 funding, and links the prior guidelines, selection criteria, Action Areas, country information, sample documents, and currently unavailable online application form. The broader programme page is https://www.oecd.org/en/about/programmes/co-operative-research-programme.html.

There is no form to submit now. The useful next step is to monitor the official OECD fellowship page for the 2028 call expected in April 2027. When it appears, read the new guidelines from beginning to end before approaching a host or assembling documents. Then verify your institution and host against the new country rules, confirm your career stage and employment arrangement, agree a defined project, prepare only the requested supporting documents, and submit by the deadline published for that round. Keep the call documents with your records because funding exclusions, payment rules, and recipient obligations can change.