The Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) is France’s primary competitive, project-based research funding agency. For a research administrator or investigator working with French institutions or French collaborators, ANR is the counterpart to bodies like the US National Science Foundation, Germany’s DFG, or UKRI: it runs open, peer-reviewed calls for proposals and funds selected projects for a fixed term rather than providing ongoing institutional block funding.
What ANR Is
ANR was established on 7 February 2005, initially as a groupement d’intérêt public (public interest group), and was reorganized as an établissement public à caractère administratif (EPA, a category of French public administrative body) on 1 August 2006. It operates under the supervision of France’s Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation and is headquartered in Paris.
ANR funds both public research (universities, CNRS and other national research organizations, public hospitals) and, through specific instruments, private-sector partners collaborating with public research teams. Beyond its own annual call cycle, ANR is also the principal delivery operator for large components of France’s Investments for the Future program (Programme d’Investissements d’Avenir, PIA), which funds larger, longer-horizon initiatives such as Excellence Initiatives (IDEX/ISITE) and Graduate Schools (Écoles Universitaires de Recherche).
The Generic Call for Proposals (AAPG)
The Appel à Projets Générique (AAPG, Generic Call for Proposals) is ANR’s flagship annual funding round and the entry point most researchers mean when they refer to “applying to ANR.” It is open to all scientific disciplines and to public or private research actors established in France, and it is organized into several funding instruments that differ by team composition and scope rather than by discipline:
- JCJC (Jeunes Chercheuses, Jeunes Chercheurs — Young Researchers): individual research projects coordinated by a single early-career researcher, intended to help a researcher establish scientific independence and build a first team.
- PRME (Projet de Recherche Monodisciplinaire à l’international / single-team research project): ambitious, innovative research projects coordinated by one team.
- PRC (Projet de Recherche Collaborative — Collaborative Research Project): joint projects between two or more French public research entities.
- PRCE (Projet de Recherche Collaborative – Entreprise): collaborative projects that pair public research teams with a private-sector (industry) partner within France.
- PRCI (Projet de Recherche Collaborative – International): collaborative projects between a French public research entity and a foreign partner, run as bilateral calls with a partner funding agency (see below).
Each instrument sets its own eligibility rules for who may coordinate a project and how many partners a consortium may include; the current-year call documents on anr.fr/en are the authoritative source for team-size limits, duration caps, and budget ceilings for a given cycle, since these are set annually in ANR’s plan d’action (annual action plan) and can change year to year.
How the Application Cycle Works
The AAPG runs on an annual, two-stage submission process:
- Step 1 – Pre-proposal: a shorter submission (project summary, scientific context, consortium outline) evaluated by ANR’s scientific evaluation committees. Only pre-proposals that pass this stage are invited to submit a full proposal.
- Step 2 – Full proposal: a complete scientific and administrative dossier, evaluated in depth, including external peer review, before funding decisions are finalized.
For the 2026 AAPG cycle, Step 1 opened 9 September 2025 and closed 15 October 2025, with Step 1 notifications issued 17 February 2026; Step 2 opened 19 February 2026 and closed 26 March 2026, with results expected late July 2026. Exact dates shift slightly each year, so treat this as illustrative of the cadence (roughly: pre-proposals due in autumn, full proposals due the following spring, results mid-to-late summer) rather than a fixed calendar — always confirm current-cycle deadlines directly on ANR’s call for proposals pages.
International and Foreign-Based Co-Applicants
Whether a foreign-based researcher can participate in an ANR-funded project depends on the instrument:
- PRC and PRCE are structured for French public entities (PRC) or French public-private partnerships (PRCE); they are not designed for a foreign institution to serve as lead coordinator, though foreign-based researchers can sometimes participate as named collaborators within a French-led team, subject to the specific call rules for that cycle.
- PRCI is the instrument built specifically for international collaboration: a French team partners formally with a team in a country covered by one of ANR’s bilateral or multilateral agreements. As of the 2026 cycle, ANR runs PRCI-type bilateral calls with partner agencies including Germany’s DFG, Austria’s FWF, Brazil’s CNPq/FAPESP, Hong Kong’s RGC, Luxembourg’s FNR, Quebec’s FRQ, Switzerland’s SNSF, and Taiwan’s NSTC (the exact partner-agency list is set and updated annually, so confirm the current roster before assuming a given country is covered).
Bilateral PRCI-style calls use one of three coordination models, which determine which side’s rules and evaluators lead the review:
- ANR Lead Agency: ANR runs the scientific evaluation for both sides of the partnership.
- Foreign Lead Agency: the partner agency runs the evaluation, and ANR funds the French side of a project selected under the partner’s process.
- Non-Lead Agency (parallel evaluation): both agencies evaluate independently and align funding decisions.
ANR also funds two smaller instruments aimed specifically at strengthening French participation in European research: MRSEI and SRSEI, which support French teams preparing competitive proposals for EU-level calls such as Horizon Europe rather than funding the research itself. Researchers assembling an EU consortium alongside French partners should also see CASRAI’s guide to Horizon Europe and EU research funding, since Horizon Europe operates on a distinct legal and budgetary framework from ANR’s national bilateral calls even when French teams participate in both.
Beyond the AAPG: Other ANR Instruments
The AAPG is ANR’s largest recurring call, but ANR also runs or co-funds other instrument families outside it, including thematic and targeted calls tied to national research priority programs (Programmes et Équipements Prioritaires de Recherche, PEPR), technology-transfer-oriented partnership tools such as LabCom (public-private joint laboratories) and Industrial Chairs, and instruments delivered as part of the wider Investments for the Future program. A given researcher’s actual pathway into ANR funding depends heavily on discipline, career stage, and whether the project is domestic, industry-partnered, or international — the AAPG’s five core instruments (JCJC, PRME, PRC, PRCE, PRCI) cover most individual-investigator and standard-collaborative cases, but institutional research offices supporting French or French-partnered applicants should check ANR’s annual plan d’action for the complete current-year instrument list.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is ANR a government agency?
Yes. ANR is a French public administrative body (établissement public à caractère administratif) under the supervision of the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation — comparable in function, though not in legal form, to a national funding agency like the NSF or a UKRI council.
What’s the difference between PRC, PRCE, and PRCI?
All three are collaborative-project instruments within the AAPG; they differ by who the partners are. PRC is collaboration between French public research entities only. PRCE adds a private-sector (industry) partner within France. PRCI is collaboration between a French public entity and a foreign partner, run through a bilateral agreement with a partner country’s funding agency.
Can a non-French researcher be the lead coordinator on an ANR grant?
Generally, ANR grants are coordinated by a researcher affiliated with a French research entity; foreign-based researchers participate as partners, most commonly through PRCI bilateral calls where a partner agency in their own country evaluates and funds their side of the joint project. Rules vary by call and by year, so this should always be confirmed against the specific call text rather than assumed.
How long does an ANR AAPG project typically last, and what does it fund?
Duration and budget ceilings are set per instrument, per cycle, in ANR’s annual plan d’action and call documents rather than fixed permanently — consult the current year’s call for proposals for the exact parameters rather than relying on a prior cycle’s figures.
Related CASRAI Resources
See CASRAI’s Grants Management & Research Funding pillar for the broader landscape of funder types and mechanisms, the guide to Canada’s Tri-Agency research funding system for a comparable national model, and the comparison of UKRI vs. ERC funding for how UK and EU-level funding structures differ from a national agency like ANR. For role definitions relevant to any ANR consortium, see the dictionary entries for Principal Investigator (PI), Co-Investigator, and Coordinator (grant consortium).
