ARIS Slovenia (formerly ARRS): Funding Overview

ARIS — the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (Javna agencija za znanstvenoraziskovalno in inovacijsko dejavnost Republike Slovenije) — is Slovenia’s national public funding agency for scientific research and innovation activity. It is the legal successor to ARRS, the Slovenian Research Agency, and researchers who worked with Slovenian funding before 2023 will still recognize most of the underlying programme structure, application logic, and staff even though the agency’s name, legal basis, and remit have changed. This guide explains what ARIS does, how it relates to ARRS, its main funding instruments, how it connects to Horizon Europe and other EU funding mechanisms, and what an international researcher needs to know to pursue Slovenian funding or collaboration.

What ARIS is

ARIS is an independent public agency that implements Slovenia’s national research, development, and innovation policy through competitive and programme-based public funding, together with related evaluation, monitoring, and analytical functions. Its predecessor, ARRS, was established in 2003 as Slovenia’s dedicated research funding agency, operating under the country’s research and innovation activity legislation. ARIS describes itself as the national funding organisation responsible for implementing Slovenia’s national research and development programme and for Slovenia’s participation in the European Research Area.

From ARRS to ARIS: what actually changed in 2023

The rename is not cosmetic. ARIS was established under an amendment to Slovenia’s Scientific Research and Innovation Activity Act (Zakon o znanstvenoraziskovalni in inovacijski dejavnosti, ZZrID) — the amending law, ZZrID-A, was published in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia (Uradni list RS, No. 40/2023) on 3 April 2023 and entered into force the following day. Under that amendment:

ARIS became the universal legal successor to ARRS, inheriting ARRS’s staff, assets, obligations, and ongoing grant commitments.
The agency’s scope was expanded from research funding alone to research and innovation funding together — the “I” in ARIS. Innovation-support instruments that previously sat elsewhere in the Slovenian system were consolidated under the same agency as core science funding.
The underlying framework law, ZZrID, itself entered into force on 1 January 2022 and had already introduced changes such as stable (non-competitive baseline) funding for research organisations before the 2023 amendment renamed and restructured the implementing agency itself.

Practically, this means older references to “ARRS grants,” “ARRS research programmes,” or “ARRS young researcher scheme” in the literature or in institutional documentation are describing the same funding lineage now administered by ARIS — the acronym in a citation, MoU, or grant agreement dated before April 2023 is not an error, just the agency’s former name.

Structure and role

ARIS operates as an independent public agency of the Republic of Slovenia, governed under public administration and research-activity legislation rather than as a unit inside a ministry, though it implements the national research and innovation programme set by the responsible ministry. Its core functions fall into four areas, as ARIS itself groups them:

Funding science — competitive research projects, complementary schemes, targeted (mission-oriented) research programmes, stable funding for research organisations, support for young researchers, research infrastructure, and support for scientific publishing.
Financing innovation — consortium (collaborative) innovation projects, competence-development support, complementary innovation schemes, and innovation vouchers for smaller-scale support.
International cooperation — researcher mobility support, bilateral and multilateral partnership agreements, and participation in joint evaluation mechanisms such as the Lead Agency procedure.
System development — research-culture and open-science policy, evaluation methodology, and research-data infrastructure (including its RDI Hub work).

Main funding instruments for researchers

ARIS’s researcher-facing programme portfolio is broadly organised around a few recurring instrument types, consistent with the ARRS-era structure:

Research projects — competitive, peer-reviewed project grants awarded by scientific field/panel, the core mechanism for funding investigator-led research at Slovenian research organisations.
Research programmes — longer-horizon, stable funding for established research groups, intended to sustain core research capacity rather than fund a single bounded project.
Young researchers scheme — a long-running, distinctive feature of the Slovenian system in which ARIS funds PhD-track researcher positions embedded at eligible research organisations, combining doctoral training with active participation in a funded research group.
Research infrastructure funding — support for shared research equipment and infrastructure used across institutions.
Complementary schemes — smaller, targeted calls (e.g. supporting publication costs, early-career researchers, or specific strategic priorities) that sit alongside the main project and programme lines.
Innovation instruments — consortium innovation projects and innovation vouchers, funding collaborative and smaller-scale innovation activity since the 2023 remit expansion.

Exact call names, deadlines, panel structures, and eligibility thresholds change from year to year and are published only on ARIS’s own site (aris-rs.si), which maintains an English-language section — always confirm current call text there before planning a submission, rather than relying on a prior year’s call as a template.

Horizon Europe, EU funding, and Slovenia’s international position

Slovenia is an EU member state, so it participates in Horizon Europe as a full member rather than as an associated country — Slovenian researchers and institutions are eligible to lead and join Horizon Europe consortia on the same footing as any other EU member state, subject to the programme’s own eligibility and consortium-composition rules. ARIS’s role alongside Horizon Europe is largely complementary and coordinating rather than a duplicate funding channel: it supports national researchers’ access to EU funding (including hosting or coordinating Horizon Europe National Contact Points functions for Slovenia), and it runs national “complementary scheme” calls designed to sit alongside EU-funded activity — for example topping up or bridging researchers between national and EU-level support — rather than substituting for it.

Beyond Horizon Europe, ARIS participates directly in several multilateral and bilateral European funding-cooperation mechanisms relevant to international collaboration:

CEUS (Central European Science Partnership) — a joint funding agreement, which Slovenia joined in 2019 alongside Poland, Austria, and the Czech Republic, enabling funding of joint bilateral or multilateral research projects carried out by researchers from the partner countries under a shared review process.
Weave — a multilateral partnership among European funding organisations (coordinated through Science Europe) that lets research teams from participating countries submit a single joint proposal, evaluated once under a Lead Agency procedure rather than separately in each country. ARIS has participated in Weave-based cooperation with Poland’s National Science Centre (NCN) since 2021, and with other Weave partner agencies more broadly.
Bilateral agreements — ARIS maintains a broader set of bilateral research-cooperation agreements with national funding agencies beyond its immediate Central European neighbours, covering joint call mechanisms and researcher-mobility support.

For research administrators tracking Central and Southeast European funding landscapes alongside Slovenia, see the companion overviews for the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR) and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) — both are CEUS partner agencies and appear as co-funders in a number of the same joint calls ARIS participates in.

Practical guidance for international researchers

A few points matter specifically for researchers outside Slovenia who are considering Slovenian funding or collaboration:

Host affiliation is usually required. Most core ARIS instruments (research projects, programmes, young researcher positions) require the funded researcher or project to be based at an eligible Slovenian research organisation — a university, public research institute, or other body on ARIS’s register of eligible research organisations. A foreign researcher typically participates either by joining an existing Slovenian-led project or programme as a team member, by relocating to take up a funded position at a Slovenian host institution, or by being the named applicant on one side of a bilateral/multilateral joint call (CEUS, Weave, or another bilateral agreement) where the counterpart applicant is Slovenian.
Joint bilateral/multilateral calls are the most direct route for a foreign-led collaboration. Under CEUS, Weave, and ARIS’s other bilateral agreements, a non-Slovenian principal investigator can be the lead applicant in their own country while a Slovenian partner applies in parallel to ARIS — reviewed once, funded by each national agency for its own side of the consortium.
Mobility and international cooperation instruments under ARIS’s “International Cooperation” programme area support incoming and outgoing researcher mobility and are worth checking directly for shorter-term visits or exchanges, separate from full project funding.
Confirm eligibility and calls in the current year directly on aris-rs.si. Programme names, eligibility rules, and deadlines are revised periodically (as they were substantially in the 2022–2023 legislative changes described above) and are authoritative only on ARIS’s own site; do not rely on a prior year’s call documentation or on third-party summaries, including this one, without checking the live call text.
Language. Most call documentation and the application system are in Slovenian; ARIS maintains an English-language informational section covering the agency’s structure and general programme descriptions, but researchers should expect to work with a Slovenian-based host institution’s grants office for the mechanics of a specific submission.

Frequently asked questions

What does ARIS stand for?

ARIS is the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (Javna agencija za znanstvenoraziskovalno in inovacijsko dejavnost Republike Slovenije). It is Slovenia’s national public agency for funding scientific research and innovation activity.

Is ARIS the same organisation as ARRS?

ARIS is the universal legal successor to ARRS (the Slovenian Research Agency), created by an amendment to Slovenia’s research and innovation activity law that took effect in April 2023. It inherited ARRS’s staff, obligations, and ongoing grants, and its scope was expanded to cover innovation funding in addition to research funding, which ARRS did not previously administer.

When did ARRS become ARIS?

The amending legislation (ZZrID-A) was published in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia on 3 April 2023 and entered into force on 4 April 2023, establishing ARIS as ARRS’s legal successor.

Can a researcher based outside Slovenia apply directly to ARIS?

Most ARIS instruments require the applicant or funded researcher to be affiliated with an eligible Slovenian research organisation. International researchers most commonly participate by joining a Slovenian-led project as a team member, taking up a funded position at a Slovenian host institution, or applying as the counterpart lead in their own country under a joint bilateral/multilateral call such as CEUS or Weave, where a Slovenian partner applies to ARIS in parallel.

Does Slovenia participate in Horizon Europe as a member state or an associated country?

Slovenia is an EU member state and therefore participates in Horizon Europe as a full member, not under an association agreement. ARIS’s own funding instruments are complementary to Horizon Europe rather than a substitute for it — including national top-up or bridging schemes and support for Slovenia’s Horizon Europe National Contact Points.

What is the CEUS partnership ARIS participates in?

CEUS (Central European Science Partnership) is a joint funding agreement between the national research funding agencies of Slovenia, Poland, Austria, and the Czech Republic, which Slovenia joined in 2019. It enables joint bilateral or multilateral research projects carried out by researchers from the partner countries under a shared review process.