An ARC grant is a competitive research grant awarded by the Australian Research Council (ARC), the Australian Government statutory authority that funds research across all disciplines other than clinical medicine. “ARC grant” is not a single scheme — it is shorthand for any award made under the ARC’s National Competitive Grants Program (NCGP), which spans everything from early-career fellowships to multi-institution research centres.
Clinical medicine research sits with the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) instead. This guide covers how the NCGP is structured, which schemes fall under it, and how the ARC’s annual application calendar works, so a research administrator or investigator can work out which scheme applies and when to plan around it.
What counts as an “ARC grant”
The ARC does not administer a single “ARC grant” product. Instead, it runs the NCGP as an umbrella program delivered through two streams:
- Discovery Program — funds investigator-driven basic and applied research and researcher career development. Schemes include Discovery Projects, the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA), Discovery Indigenous, the Australian Laureate Fellowships, and Future Fellowships.
- Linkage Program — funds research done in partnership with industry, government, or community organisations. Schemes include Linkage Projects, ARC Centres of Excellence, the Industrial Transformation Research Program, Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF), Linkage Learned Academies Special Projects, Special Research Initiatives, and Industry Laureate Fellowships (early/mid-career and senior).
Every scheme in both streams is assessed through ARC’s own peer-review process and administered through the ARC’s Research Management System (RMS), the online portal through which institutions and applicants lodge proposals. Applications are submitted by an eligible administering organisation (almost always a university or research institution) on behalf of the investigator team, not by individual researchers directly — the institution’s research office is the formal applicant of record.
How the ARC grant calendar works
Each NCGP scheme runs on its own annual (or, for some Linkage Program schemes, more frequent) cycle, and the exact opening and closing dates shift from year to year. Rather than publish one master deadline, the ARC maintains a standing NCGP Scheme Calendar on its own website, updated as each round is confirmed, and a companion “Important Dates” page describing the general shape of the application process. Two conventions are useful to understand before checking the calendar for current dates:
- Rounds are named for the funding year, not the application year. A “Discovery Projects 2027” (DP27) round, for example, is typically applied for roughly a year in advance — proposals lodged and assessed in one calendar year fund projects commencing in a later one. Don’t assume a scheme labelled for next year is still open next year; check the specific round’s own dates.
- Different schemes cluster in different parts of the year. As illustrative recent examples (not current-cycle guarantees — always confirm against the live calendar): Future Fellowships rounds have opened in autumn (Southern Hemisphere) and closed in early November; Linkage Projects, which runs more than one round a year, has opened in January with a closing date in early March; Discovery Projects assessment and outcome milestones have fallen in March and April. The pattern is consistent — each scheme has a predictable rough season — but the specific dates are not, so treat any date outside the ARC’s own live calendar as a planning guide, not a deadline.
Most NCGP schemes follow a broadly similar sequence once a round opens: institutional registration or intent-to-submit steps (where the scheme requires them), full proposal submission through RMS by the applicant institution, external assessor and/or ARC College of Experts peer review, an applicant rejoinder stage in some schemes, and a funding outcome announcement. The number and length of these stages varies by scheme size — a large multi-year Centre of Excellence round runs a longer, more staged process than a single Linkage Infrastructure application.
Administration and eligibility basics
A few features are common across nearly all NCGP schemes:
- Institutional eligibility. Only an ARC-eligible organisation (typically an Australian university or a small list of other approved research organisations) can be the administering institution; individual researchers apply through their institution’s research office, not directly to the ARC.
- Citizenship/residency and career-stage rules vary by scheme. Career-stage-restricted schemes (DECRA, Future Fellowships, Discovery Indigenous) set specific eligibility windows tied to years since PhD award or other criteria set out in each scheme’s Grant Guidelines; broader schemes like Discovery Projects and Linkage Projects do not restrict by career stage in the same way.
- Grant Guidelines govern the specifics. Scheme rules, budget caps, and eligible cost categories are set out in each scheme’s own Grant Guidelines document, published on the relevant scheme page on arc.gov.au, and these are revised periodically — the general scheme structure described above is stable, but specific dollar caps and eligibility clauses should be checked against the current Guidelines for the round being applied to.
- Research integrity and compliance obligations attach automatically. ARC-funded institutions must comply with the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research, issued jointly by the ARC, the NHMRC, and Universities Australia, and are subject to the Australian Research Integrity Committee’s (ARIC) review process for how misconduct allegations were handled.
ARC grants vs. NHMRC grants
Because both agencies fund Australian university research and both use their own online submission systems, ARC and NHMRC schemes are often confused. The dividing line is disciplinary: the ARC funds research across all fields except clinical medicine, while the NHMRC funds health and medical research, defined broadly enough to include clinical, laboratory, and community-based studies of human disease. NHMRC schemes (such as Investigator Grants and Ideas Grants) are administered through NHMRC’s own Sapphire platform rather than the ARC’s RMS. A project that sits close to the boundary — for example, health-adjacent social science — should check each agency’s own remit guidance before choosing where to apply, since misdirected applications are generally ineligible rather than automatically redirected.
Frequently asked questions
What is an ARC grant?
An ARC grant is any award made under the Australian Research Council’s National Competitive Grants Program (NCGP) — covering schemes from investigator-driven Discovery Projects to industry-partnered Linkage Projects and career fellowships such as DECRA and Future Fellowships.
Where do I find the current ARC grants calendar?
The ARC publishes and maintains its own NCGP Scheme Calendar on arc.gov.au, showing indicative and confirmed opening/closing dates for each scheme round as they are set. Because dates shift year to year and by scheme, this is the only authoritative source for current deadlines — treat any other listing, including general guidance like this page, as a planning reference rather than a deadline source.
Who can apply for an ARC grant?
Individual researchers do not apply directly. An ARC-eligible administering organisation, almost always an Australian university, submits the proposal through the ARC’s Research Management System (RMS) on behalf of the investigator team, and that institution’s research office typically manages the internal routing, sign-off, and submission deadlines that sit ahead of the ARC’s own closing date.
What is the difference between ARC and NHMRC grants?
The ARC funds research in all disciplines except clinical medicine; the NHMRC funds health and medical research. They use separate systems (ARC’s RMS vs. NHMRC’s Sapphire) and separate scheme structures, but jointly administer Australia’s research-integrity framework.
How far in advance should I plan for an ARC grant round?
Because ARC rounds are typically named for the funding year rather than the application year, and full proposals require institutional sign-off before the ARC’s own deadline, most research offices recommend beginning internal preparation (concept development, budget planning, and institutional registration where required) several months before a scheme’s expected opening, using the ARC’s own Scheme Calendar to anticipate timing.
For related material, see CASRAI’s guides on NIH grants and NSF grants for how equivalent US federal mechanisms are structured, and the dictionary entries for the Australian Research Council (ARC) and ARC Future Fellowship for definitions of the agency and one of its flagship career schemes.
