How to Write an MSCA Fellowship Proposal

Every Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) proposal — whether a Postdoctoral Fellowship, a Doctoral Network, Staff Exchanges, or COFUND — is evaluated against the same three Horizon Europe criteria: Excellence, Impact, and Implementation. Part B of the application is organised around these three sections, in that order, and each is scored separately by remote experts before a panel finalises the overall ranking. Understanding what each section is actually being scored on — not just what to write under each heading — is the single biggest lever an applicant has over the outcome.

This guide covers what belongs in each of the three sections for the most common MSCA action types, how the sections are weighted and scored, and the structural mistakes that most often cost applicants points. It assumes you already know which MSCA action fits your situation; if not, start with CASRAI’s MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship definition and the MSCA Doctoral Networks vs. Staff Exchanges vs. COFUND vs. Postdoctoral Fellowships comparison to confirm the right action type before drafting Part B. For the surrounding Horizon Europe funding landscape, see CASRAI’s Horizon Europe overview and National Contact Points guide; for the consortium-training variant of MSCA specifically, see the Innovative Training Networks (Doctoral Networks) guide.

Why the Three-Section Structure Exists

Horizon Europe evaluates every proposal — not only MSCA — against Excellence, Impact, and Implementation as its standard evaluation criteria, and Part B’s headings map directly onto them so that evaluators can score each criterion against the exact text written for it. This differs from an NIH Specific Aims page, which has no mandated internal structure (see CASRAI’s NIH Specific Aims Page guide for that comparison) — in an MSCA proposal the section headings and the scoring rubric are the same document.

For 2026 calls, each criterion is scored independently (commonly out of 5) and, for the first time, carries its own individual pass threshold in addition to the combined overall threshold — a proposal that scores well overall but falls below the floor on any single criterion can still be rejected. Exact thresholds, weightings, and page limits are reissued in the MSCA Work Programme and the call-specific Standard Application Form each year, so always confirm the current figures on the EU Funding & Tenders Portal for your specific call before finalising a submission; treat any number below as illustrative of the current structure, not a fixed constant to copy into a proposal without checking.

Weighting also differs by action type. MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships are commonly weighted roughly 50% Excellence, 30% Impact, and 20% Implementation — a heavier tilt toward the scientific/training quality of the individual project than toward the management section. Doctoral Networks, being consortium-based, put comparatively more scoring weight on network-level Implementation (partner roles, joint supervision, secondments) because the proposal has to demonstrate a workable multi-institution structure, not just a strong research plan.

Excellence: What It Actually Covers

The Excellence section is not only about the science — for MSCA specifically it also carries the training and career-development narrative, which is what structurally distinguishes an MSCA proposal from an ERC or standard collaborative-project Excellence section. For an individual fellowship (Postdoctoral Fellowships, and the fellowship elements of COFUND), Excellence typically covers:

Quality and pertinence of the research/innovation objectives — a clearly stated research question, its positioning against the current state of the art, and why it is timely and original.
Soundness of the proposed methodology — including any interdisciplinary or intersectoral approach, risk management for the research plan, and (where relevant) research-data and open-science practices.
Quality and appropriateness of the training and knowledge-transfer plan — the specific skills, techniques, or perspectives the fellow will gain, and how the host’s expertise maps onto that gap. This is the section most applicants underweight relative to how it is actually scored.
Quality of the supervision and hosting arrangements — the supervisor’s track record for mentoring researchers at the applicant’s career stage, and (for Global Fellowships) the return-phase supervision arrangement in Europe.

For Doctoral Networks, the equivalent section is framed at network level: the quality of the joint doctoral/research training programme across all beneficiaries, the complementarity of expertise contributed by each partner, and the soundness of the shared research programme the individual doctoral candidates will contribute to — not a set of independent projects that happen to share a call.

Impact: Career, Dissemination, and Communication

The Impact section is where applicants most often default to generic language (“this project will benefit society”) instead of a specific, credible pathway. It typically covers:

Credibility of the pathways towards the expected outcomes — who the intended users of the research results are (academic, industrial, policy, or societal), and a realistic account of how the work reaches them.
Measures to maximise expected outcomes — dissemination (open-access publication, conference presentation) and, where applicable, exploitation (IP protection, industry engagement, spin-out potential).
A concrete communication plan — specific audiences beyond the immediate research community, the channels used to reach them, and how the plan’s effectiveness will be monitored, not a generic promise to “communicate results widely.”
Career benefits to the researcher — for individual fellowships specifically, an honest account of how the fellowship advances the applicant’s trajectory toward research independence, which reviewers read as a distinct sub-criterion, not filler.

Reviewers score Impact against specificity: naming the actual research groups, industry sectors, or policy bodies who would use the results is stronger evidence than describing impact in the abstract.

Implementation: Work Plan, Resources, and Management

Implementation is the feasibility section — it answers “can this actually be delivered as described,” and is graded independently of how strong the underlying science is. It typically covers:

Overall coherence and effectiveness of the work plan — usually presented as work packages with a Gantt chart, milestones, and deliverables, showing how the research and training/network activities are sequenced against the project timeline.
Appropriateness of the allocation of tasks and resources — person-months, budget lines, and equipment mapped against the work packages, with contingency for foreseeable risks (e.g., secondment delays, ethics-approval timing).
Management structure and procedures — decision-making processes, and for multi-partner actions, how conflicts or underperformance by a partner would be handled.
Capacity and role of each participant — for Doctoral Networks and Staff Exchanges specifically, evidence that every beneficiary and partner organisation has a genuine, necessary role rather than a nominal one added to satisfy the minimum-partner requirement.

For a single-researcher Postdoctoral Fellowship, Implementation is comparatively lighter — institutional support, host infrastructure, and the supervisor/fellow working arrangement — but reviewers still expect a realistic month-by-month plan, not just a list of intended activities.

How the Structure Differs by MSCA Action Type

The three-heading structure is constant across MSCA actions, but what fills each section shifts with the action’s shape:

Postdoctoral Fellowships — single-researcher narrative; Excellence and Impact are written from the applicant’s individual research and career perspective, with the supervisor’s role folded into Excellence rather than treated as a separate management section.
Doctoral Networks — consortium narrative; all three sections are written at network level first, with the individual doctoral candidate projects presented as instances of the shared training programme rather than as separate proposals stitched together.
Staff Exchanges — the Implementation section carries more weight on the secondment plan itself: who moves where, for how long, and what specific knowledge or technique transfer each exchange accomplishes, since Staff Exchanges are evaluated primarily as a structured mobility-and-knowledge-transfer scheme rather than a standalone research project.
COFUND — evaluated as a programme design (the co-funded fellowship or doctoral scheme itself), so Excellence and Impact are framed around the quality and openness of the programme’s selection and training model, not a single piece of research.

See CASRAI’s MSCA action-type comparison for a fuller side-by-side of eligibility, duration, and consortium requirements across all four.

Common Reviewer Pitfalls

Treating Impact as an afterthought. A strong Excellence section with a thin, generic Impact section is a common and avoidable way to lose points — Impact is scored on its own merits, not as a bonus reflection of research quality.
Under-specifying the training plan. For individual fellowships, describing the research plan in detail but leaving the training/knowledge-transfer content vague misses a scored sub-element of Excellence specific to MSCA.
A work plan that doesn’t match the narrative. Work packages that don’t clearly trace back to the objectives stated in Excellence, or a Gantt chart that doesn’t reflect real dependencies (e.g., secondments scheduled before the skills they require are acquired), read as a feasibility red flag in Implementation.
Ignoring the individual-criterion threshold. Since recent MSCA calls score and gate each criterion separately, a proposal cannot rely on an exceptional Excellence section to compensate for a weak Implementation section — each section has to independently clear its own bar.
Missing the open-science and research-data expectations. Horizon Europe’s standard research-data management requirements apply to MSCA projects; see CASRAI’s ERC Data Management Plans under Horizon Europe guide for the shared Horizon Europe DMP framework, which MSCA host institutions are expected to follow on the same timeline logic even though the specific ERC guide is written for ERC grants.

Seal of Excellence and Resubmission

A proposal that clears the overall threshold but goes unfunded purely for budget reasons can be awarded a Seal of Excellence — a quality label some national and regional funders use to fund the project outside the MSCA budget line without a further full review. From 2026, MSCA calls also apply resubmission restrictions to proposals that score below a set threshold, limiting whether and when a reapplication in a subsequent call is permitted — a further reason to treat the first submission’s Excellence/Impact/Implementation balance as something to get right the first time rather than something to iterate toward across repeated cycles.

Frequently Asked Questions

What order should I write the sections in?

Most successful applicants draft Excellence first (it anchors the research/training narrative everything else refers back to), then Implementation (which forces concrete decisions about timeline and resources), and write Impact last, once the actual deliverables and outputs are settled enough to describe a credible pathway to their use.

How long is Part B?

Page limits are set per action type in the annual MSCA Work Programme and the call’s Standard Application Form, and have varied across recent call years — always confirm the exact current limit for your action type and call year on the EU Funding & Tenders Portal before finalising a draft, rather than reusing a previous year’s limit.

Do Excellence, Impact, and Implementation carry equal weight?

No. Weighting differs by action type — Postdoctoral Fellowships weight Excellence most heavily, while consortium actions like Doctoral Networks place comparatively more weight on network-level Implementation. Confirm the current call’s exact weighting table rather than assuming it matches a prior year.

Can a strong Excellence section offset a weaker Implementation section?

Increasingly no. Recent MSCA calls apply an individual pass threshold per criterion in addition to the combined score, specifically to prevent an imbalanced proposal from being carried by one strong section.

Is the structure the same for a resubmission?

The three-section structure stays the same, but a resubmitted proposal should visibly address the specific weaknesses named in the prior Evaluation Summary Report within the relevant section — reviewers in a new round do not see the prior report, so the improvement has to be legible from the text itself, not just true in fact.