45 renewals of existing projects in receipt of funding and 25 new clusters / Funding to begin on 1 January 2026 for a period of seven years / Annual funding volume of €539 million / Universities of Excellence funding line: ten universities currently in receipt of funding to be evaluated from autumn, 15 additional universities now eligible to apply / Results announced in Bonn

Decisions have been made on future Clusters of Excellence in the second round of competition under the Excellence Strategy – the joint initiative of the federal and state governments to further strengthen top-level research at universities in Germany. Made up of researchers from the international Committee of Experts and the federal and state ministers of science and research, the Excellence Commission met in Bonn on Thursday, 22 May 2025 and selected 70 Clusters of Excellence for funding from a total of 98 funding proposals. This means the maximum number of projects has been approved as set down in the administrative agreement concluded between the federal and state governments. This was widely supported by the research community in light of the need to strengthen the international competitiveness of the German higher education and research system.

Details of the selected clusters, the universities which submitted the proposals and their locations are available as a comprehensive list and shown on a map of Germany, and also at

www.dfg.de/en
https://www.wissenschaftsrat.de/EN
www.excellencestrategy.de

The Excellence Commission’s decisions were announced following the meeting in Bonn via livestream by Falko Mohrs, this year’s Chair of the Joint Science Conference (Gemeinsame Wissenschaftskonferenz – GWK) and Minister for Science and the Arts of Lower Saxony, together with Dorothee Bär, the current Deputy Chair of the GWK and Federal Minister for Research, Technology and Space. The President of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation), Professor Dr. Katja Becker, and the Chair of the German Science and Humanities Council (Wissenschaftsrat, WR), Professor Dr. Wolfgang Wick, explained the procedures and processes behind the selection. According to the administrative agreement between the federal and state governments, the DFG is responsible for the Clusters of Excellence funding line, while the WR oversees the Universities of Excellence funding line, for which the cluster decisions serve as a key foundation.

All those involved highlighted the exceptionally high quality of the proposals submitted and the scientific excellence of the selected projects. They also emphasised the research-led nature of the selection process: decisions were made jointly by researchers and policymakers based on international peer review and solely according to scientific quality criteria.

These decisions conclude a competition between Clusters of Excellence already in receipt of funding and those that had been newly proposed. Of the 98 funding proposals from which the selection was made, 57 came from projects already in receipt of funding since 1 January 2019 in the first round of competition under the Excellence Strategy. This means that all existing Clusters of Excellence submitted renewal proposals. 143 draft proposals were initially submitted to the DFG in response to the call for proposals for the second round of competition issued in December 2022. Based on reviews by international panels, the Committee of Experts selected a total of 41 of these draft proposals on 1 February 2024; these were subsequently developed into funding proposals.

The 98 funding proposals were submitted by a total of 47 universities – 66 by a single applicant university, 21 jointly by two applicant universities, and 11 jointly by three applicant universities.

Between November 2024 and February 2025, the proposals were reviewed by 32 panels involving more than 400 researchers, around 90% of whom are based outside Germany. On this basis, the Committee of Experts initially conducted a comparative evaluation from 19 to 21 May at the Wissenschaftszentrum in Bonn and the Excellence Commission arrived at its final decisions on 22 May.

Of the 70 Clusters of Excellence selected, 45 are renewals and 25 are new. They are hosted by a total of 43 universities across 13 federal states. 43 of the 70 clusters are run by a single university, 18 by two, and nine by a consortium of three universities. Five clusters are based at universities in different several federal states.

Nearly all clusters involve non-university partners, and most are organised as interdisciplinary consortia.

Funding for the selected Clusters of Excellence begins on 1 January 2026 and will run for seven years. The newly approved 25 Clusters of Excellence may subsequently apply for a second funding period of another seven years, for which they will then enter into competition with new cluster proposals.

As outlined in the administrative agreement governing the Excellence Strategy, the 70 Clusters of Excellence will receive annual funding totalling approximately €539 million, 75% of which is provided by the federal government and 25% by the host state(s).

Due to the maximum number of selected clusters, and because nearly all of them applied for funding at the upper end of the possible range – between €3 million and €10 million per year – funding levels have to be scaled back proportionally. The requested sums will be reduced by around 24 percent, which is roughly in line with the corresponding reductions made in the first round of the competition. Clusters that are currently in receipt of funding but have not been selected for continuation will receive two-year completion funding, reduced from 70 in the first year to 30 percent of the original annual funding amount.

The current decisions on the Clusters of Excellence also provide the basis for the competition under the Universities of Excellence funding line, where ten universities and one consortium of three universities have been in receipt of funding since 1 November 2019 as a result of the first round of competition.

Based on today’s results, ten of the eleven institutions in receipt of funding under the Excellence Strategy have secured the required number of Clusters of Excellence, i.e. at least two, or three in the case of the University Consortium of Excellence. They therefore continue to meet the formal eligibility criteria for the Universities of Excellence funding line. One institution in receipt of funding under the Excellence Strategy will leave the programme on 1 January 2027 since it will no longer have the required number of Clusters of Excellence.

The remaining ten institutions in receipt of funding under the Excellence Strategy are now required to submit a self-assessment-report by 1 August 2025. On this basis, they will be evaluated by means of on-site visits conducted by international reviewers from late September to December 2025. The Committee of Experts will decide in March 2026 on the continued funding of the evaluated institutions and will submit the results of the individual evaluations to the Excellence Commission for confirmation. If the evaluation outcome is positive, the new funding period for the institutions funded under the Universities of Excellence funding line will begin on 1 January 2027.

In addition, 15 further universities are now eligible to submit a proposal in the second round of the Universities of Excellence funding line, having secured the required number of Clusters of Excellence. Since one current institution funded under the Universities of Excellence funding line will no longer receive funding, up to five new spots can be allocated.

Individual universities and university consortia planning to submit a proposal must first submit a letter of intent by 27 June 2025 and then a proposal by 12 November 2025. Decisions on these proposals under the Universities of Excellence funding line will be made by the Excellence Commission in early October 2026, with funding to commence on 1 January 2027.


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