FCT Mobility

What FCT Mobility offered

You got up to 27,027 EUR as a one-off grant you did not have to repay. You used it for a research stay abroad or in Portugal. The money covered travel plus a monthly housing allowance that varied by destination country, paid in full at the start of your stay. Portugal's science funding agency FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia) ran the programme in two versions. The outgoing version paid for a stay of 2 to 11 months at a foreign institution. The incoming version paid for a stay of 1 to 3 months in Portugal.

Who could apply

• Degree: You held a PhD.
• Affiliation: You were a member of a Portuguese research unit (Unidade de I&D), or you had a work contract with an Associate Laboratory (Laboratório Associado).
• Field: Any subject, no limits.
• Career stage: Any stage, from early-career to senior researcher.
• Where you went: Outgoing let you go to a foreign institution anywhere in the world. Incoming brought a foreign-based researcher to Portugal.

How you applied

You applied in English through an online form on a rolling basis, with a new evaluation round at least every three months. Applications ran from 7 November 2024 until 31 December 2025 at 17:00 (mainland Portugal time), or until the budget ran out. An international panel of external reviewers scored each application, and results came within a month of each round.

How realistic are your chances?

This first edition has closed, and the numbers were encouraging: of 604 applications, 456 were funded. It spent 2.8 million EUR of the 5 million EUR budget, so most applicants who fit the criteria got support. It is not known whether a second edition will follow.