Protecting and strengthening the freedom and independence of research in the face of increasing hostility and attacks, including in Germany, was the central theme of the DFG’s annual meeting, which came to an end in Bonn on Wednesday, 1 July 2026.
In the course of the three-day gathering, the statutory bodies of Germany’s largest research funding organisation and central self-governing organisation for research discussed fundamental questions concerning resilience in research and the research system. With the state elections due to take place in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in September, there was also a focus on the research policy put forward by the party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and the potential implications should it become part of a state government.
“Incompatible with the fundamental principles of our constitution”
DFG President Professor Katja Becker voiced sharp criticism in Bonn of the AfD’s research policy positions. Becker referred to the party’s manifesto for the Saxony-Anhalt state election, which calls for the abolition of individual fields of research and third-party funding awarded according to established scholarly quality criteria on the grounds that research had allegedly become “politicised” and “ideological”. “Such statements demand a clear response. Not because they represent political positions, but because they reveal an understanding of research that is fundamentally incompatible with the principles enshrined in our constitution,” said the DFG President.
In response to attacks on the freedom of research, Becker emphasised the importance of the free and independent pursuit of knowledge for an open society and democracy.
“Democracy and the pursuit of knowledge are rooted in the same intellectual outlook. Both are founded on the belief that arguments should carry greater weight than authority, that criticism is more productive than certainty, and that learning matters more than being right. Both are sustained by the recognition that knowledge is never complete and that freedom is made possible not despite openness and dialogue, but precisely because of them. Without the free pursuit of knowledge a society loses its ability to distinguish between knowledge and assertion, between evidence and ideology. Those who curtail freedom of research do not weaken scholarly and scientific inquiry alone. They also undermine the very foundations of an open society,” said the DFG President in her speech at the festive event in the Bundeskunsthalle on Tuesday evening.
In front of an audience of around 400 guests from academia, politics and society – including State Secretary Dr. Rolf-Dieter Jungk of the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) and North Rhine-Westphalia’s Minister for Science Ina Brandes, both of whom delivered welcoming addresses – Becker called for a determined, collective commitment to defending the freedom and independence of research and to knowledge-driven research funding, a principle the DFG is particularly committed to upholding.
Meetings of the Statutory Bodies
Strengthening the freedom of research and the resilience of the research system are also the focus of a new policy paper prepared by a DFG Senate ad hoc working group chaired by Vice Presidents Professor Britta Siegmund and Professor Johannes Grave. Due to be published shortly, the paper outlines potential or actual threat scenarios together with possible courses of action for the research community and other stakeholders.
Other topics discussed at the meetings of the statutory bodies included the DFG’s wide-ranging activities in international research cooperation, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in research and in the DFG’s funding processes, as well as a forthcoming statement by the Permanent Senate Commission on the Transformation of Agricultural and Food Systems (SKAE) entitled Beitrag von Reallaboren zur Systemforschung in den Agrar-, Lebensmittel- und Ernährungswissenschaften [The contribution of living labs to systems research in the agricultural, food and nutritional sciences]. The agenda also included funding decisions, among them the establishment of five new Research Units.
At the final General Assembly, President Katja Becker and Secretary General Dr. Heide Ahrens reported on the DFG’s funding activities and other developments since the 2025 General Assembly in Hamburg. The representatives of the DFG’s member organisations also elected two new Vice Presidents: Professor Lutz Mädler, a process engineer at the University of Bremen, and Professor Christian Walter, an expert in international law at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich. When they take office on 1 January 2027, they will succeed Professor Hans Hasse, an engineering ex-pert, and Professor Marietta Auer, a legal scholar. Eight members were newly elected to the DFG Senate and four were reelected for a second term.
Annual Report Presents Updated Funding Figures
As outlined in the 2025 annual report presented at the General Assembly, the DFG funded a total of 30,090 projects last year, with an overall funding volume of approximately €3.8 billion. As in previous years, more than half of all funded projects – 16,532 projects or approximately 55 percent – received individual project funding; a total amount of approximately €1.4 billion was approved for these in the reporting year. In the Research Training Groups, Collaborative Research Centres and other coordinated programmes, 846 networks with a total of 11,458 projects received total funding of approximately €1.6 billion in 2025.
Broken down according to the major research disciplines, the life sciences received the most funding with about €1.3 billion (35.1 percent of the total amount approved), followed by the natural sciences with about €890 million (23.2 percent), the engineering sciences with about €788 million (20.6 percent) and the humanities and social sciences with about €663 million (17.3 percent); projects not assigned to a specific discipline received funding of approximately €148 million (3.9 percent).
Presentation of the Communicator Award
In addition to the festive event at the Bundeskunsthalle, the annual meeting also included the presentation of this year’s Communicator Award, conferred jointly by the DFG and Stifterverband for outstanding achievements in research communication. Endowed with €50,000 and the most prestigious honour of its kind in Germany, the award was presented on Monday evening at LVR-LandesMuseum Bonn to Professor Ute Schmid, a computer scientist who holds the Chair of Cognitive Systems at the University of Bamberg. Professor Schmid received the award in recognition of her longstanding commitment to building bridges between academia, education, industry and policymaking in the field of artificial intelligence (AI).
The 2027 DFG annual meeting is to be held in Marburg.