NordForsk is the organisation under the Nordic Council of Ministers that funds and facilitates cross-border research collaboration among Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, along with the autonomous areas of the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Åland. It does not compete with national research councils such as Denmark’s Independent Research Fund (DFF), the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), the Research Council of Norway (Forskningsrådet), the Research Council of Finland, or Iceland’s Rannís — it exists specifically to fund the multi-country consortium projects that fall outside any single national funder’s mandate. For a research administrator supporting an investigator who wants to build a genuinely Nordic (rather than purely national) research collaboration, NordForsk is usually the first stop. This guide covers what NordForsk is, who can apply, how its funding calls and assessment process work, what it funds, and how it relates to the national Nordic funders and to EU-level programmes.
What NordForsk Is and Who It Answers To
NordForsk was established in 2005 by the Nordic Council of Ministers to strengthen Nordic research collaboration and research infrastructure. It operates as an institution under the Nordic Council of Ministers for Education and Research (MR-U), with its own Board and with strategic input from the Nordic Heads of Research Councils (NOS, the forum of the five countries’ national research-council leadership). It is headquartered in Oslo, Norway, co-located with two sister Nordic Council of Ministers institutions — Nordic Innovation and Nordic Energy Research — with which it sometimes co-funds cross-cutting calls.
NordForsk is not a research council in its own right and does not fund single-country, single-investigator projects. Its role is narrower and specifically multilateral: it finances and administers joint research programmes and calls on behalf of the Nordic Council of Ministers and, frequently, in partnership with the national research councils and other funding bodies that co-invest in a given call.
Why a Separate Nordic Funder Exists
Each Nordic country already funds research through its own national council — Denmark’s DFF, Sweden’s Vetenskapsrådet, Norway’s Forskningsrådet, Finland’s Research Council of Finland, and Iceland’s Rannís. None of those bodies, individually, has a mandate or a budget mechanism to fund a five-country consortium as a single coherent project. NordForsk fills that gap: it pools financial commitments from the Nordic Council of Ministers and, on a call-by-call basis, from participating national funders, so that a genuinely cross-border Nordic project can be reviewed, funded, and administered once, rather than as five separate national applications stitched together after the fact. This is the same rationale that underlies the EU’s own multinational funding instruments, but scoped specifically to Nordic — not pan-European — cooperation, and administered through a Nordic Council of Ministers body rather than the European Commission.
Who Can Apply: The Multi-Country Eligibility Rule
NordForsk funding is structured around consortium eligibility rather than individual-investigator eligibility. For most calls, a project consortium must include partners from at least three Nordic countries or autonomous areas — Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Åland all count toward this threshold. The lead applicant (project owner) must be a legal entity, typically a research-performing organisation such as a university or public research institute, based in a Nordic country or in a country that is itself a funding partner to that specific call (some NordForsk calls include Baltic or other partner countries alongside the core Nordic five). Exact eligibility criteria — minimum country count, eligible organisation types, co-funding requirements — are set per call and published in each call’s own guidelines, so applicants should always check the specific call text rather than assume a single fixed rule applies across every programme.
How to Apply: Calls, Portal, and Assessment
NordForsk runs periodic, thematically scoped calls for proposals rather than a single continuously open funding line. Applications are submitted online through the NordForsk Application Portal, which requires registration for first-time users; the portal allows an application to be edited after initial submission, but applicants must remember to formally resubmit before the published deadline for the edited version to count.
Assessment follows a two-stage structure common to Nordic and EU multilateral funders:
- Scientific peer review — proposals are scored by independent international experts against the call’s published evaluation criteria (scientific quality, Nordic added value, feasibility, and typically gender balance and researcher training/career development considerations).
- Strategic assessment by a call committee — a committee made up of representatives from the funding partners to that specific call reviews the peer-review outcomes against strategic and budgetary priorities and makes a funding recommendation.
The NordForsk Board makes the final funding decision based on the call committee’s recommendation. This structure means scientific merit alone does not guarantee funding — a proposal also has to fit the call’s strategic scope and the funding partners’ available budget for that round.
What NordForsk Funds
NordForsk’s programme portfolio has historically spanned several recurring areas of Nordic strategic priority, including health and welfare research, climate and environmental research, digitalisation, and education research, alongside cross-cutting infrastructure and researcher-mobility support. Because NordForsk operates through discrete, time-limited calls rather than a fixed set of standing programmes, the specific themes and instruments open at any given time vary; applicants and research offices should check NordForsk’s current open calls directly rather than relying on any fixed list of programme names, since calls open and close on their own schedules and are frequently co-designed with specific national funding partners for that round.
It is worth distinguishing NordForsk from other Nordic joint research bodies with overlapping-sounding remits: NOS-HS (the Joint Committee for Nordic Research Councils in the Humanities and Social Sciences) is a separate Nordic cooperative body with its own funding lines for humanities and social science research, administratively distinct from NordForsk even though the two are sometimes referenced together in national funders’ lists of Nordic and international schemes a researcher can access.
Post-Award Obligations
Once a project is funded, NordForsk requires project leaders to submit annual progress reports through the application portal, due by 31 March each year, and to report project outcomes through Researchfish, the external research-outcomes reporting platform also used by a number of European and UK funders. Research offices supporting a NordForsk-funded project should build these reporting obligations into the same compliance calendar used for the project’s national funding components, since a multi-country consortium project will typically also carry per-institution reporting duties to whichever national funder co-invested in that specific call.
NordForsk vs. the National Nordic Funders
The clearest way to place NordForsk is by what it is not: it is not a substitute for, or a competitor to, any of the five countries’ national research councils, and it does not fund the great majority of Nordic-country research, which remains nationally funded. The distinction that matters for a research administrator advising an investigator is the shape of the collaboration:
- A single-country project, even one with informal international input, applies to the relevant national funder — DFF, Vetenskapsrådet, Forskningsrådet, the Research Council of Finland, or Rannís.
- A structured, multi-country Nordic consortium project — typically three or more Nordic countries as formal partners on a single grant — applies to NordForsk, when a relevant open call exists.
- A project with EU-wide (not just Nordic) partners more commonly fits Horizon Europe or another EU framework programme instrument instead; NordForsk is Nordic-scoped and Nordic Council of Ministers-funded, not an EU body, though a project could in principle draw on both at different stages or for different work packages.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is NordForsk?
NordForsk is the Nordic Council of Ministers’ dedicated organisation for funding and facilitating cross-border research collaboration among the Nordic countries and autonomous areas. It was established in 2005 and is headquartered in Oslo.
Which countries and areas count toward NordForsk’s eligibility rules?
Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, plus the autonomous areas of the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Åland. Most NordForsk calls require consortium partners from at least three of these to be eligible; some calls also include partner countries outside the Nordic region, set on a per-call basis.
Can a single-country or single-investigator project apply to NordForsk?
No. NordForsk funds multi-country consortium projects; a single-country project should apply to the relevant national research council instead — for example DFF in Denmark, Vetenskapsrådet in Sweden, Forskningsrådet in Norway, the Research Council of Finland, or Rannís in Iceland.
Is NordForsk the same as Horizon Europe or another EU programme?
No. NordForsk is a Nordic Council of Ministers body funding Nordic-scoped collaboration; Horizon Europe is a separate European Union framework programme with its own eligibility rules and application process. A research group could be involved with both, but they are administered independently.
How are NordForsk applications assessed?
Through international expert peer review against the specific call’s published criteria, followed by strategic assessment from a call committee made up of representatives of that call’s funding partners, with the NordForsk Board making the final funding decision.
What do NordForsk grant recipients need to report after the award is made?
Annual progress reports through the NordForsk Application Portal, due 31 March each year, plus outcomes reporting through Researchfish.
