The Novo Nordisk Foundation has announced the latest edition of its annual Challenge Programme, where for the first time it is inviting researchers from outside Denmark, in the European Schengen area, Ireland and the UK, to lead collaborations applying for grants to study four major themes.
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As part of its ongoing internationalisation, the Novo Nordisk Foundation is now expanding its Challenge Programme, the Foundation’s largest open competition grant programme. The Programme supports ambitious research projects that focus on creating new knowledge on major global challenges based on annually selected themes.
This year, the budget for each grant has been increased by 25% to up to DKK 75 million (€10 million) over six years, bringing the overall budget to DKK 600 million (€80 million).
Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen, CEO, Novo Nordisk Foundation, said: “The Novo Nordisk Foundation is dedicated to help solving some of the major health and planetary challenges facing the world. The expansion of the Challenge Programme outside Denmark demonstrates that we are deepening our commitment to this global mission.”
With themes changing every year, the Challenge Programme provides substantial, long-term funding to enable scientific depth and focus and to facilitate synergy between the research partners. The four themes for the 2026 edition are:
- Harnessing biology for climate-resilient and healthy soils
- Unravelling the pathways of human invasive fungal diseases
- Modelling human cardiometabolic disease
- Biological systems under non-equilibrium conditions
The Challenge Programme calls for applications in open competition. Expressions of interest are invited by 8th October 2025, with the final awards announcement expected in May 2026.
The Novo Nordisk Foundation established the Challenge Programme in 2014. Since then, the Foundation has awarded close to DKK 2.8 billion (€375 million) for close to 50 different projects through the Programme.