The Rubicon grant is a talent programme run by NWO, the Dutch Research Council, that funds recently graduated PhD holders from the Netherlands to spend up to two years doing research at an institute abroad. It sits alongside NWO’s better-known Veni, Vidi, and Vici talent grants but serves a distinct purpose: where Veni, Vidi, and Vici fund a researcher’s own line of research at increasing career stages, typically in the Netherlands, Rubicon specifically funds an outbound postdoctoral stint at a foreign research organization, immediately after the PhD. For background on how NWO is organized as a funder, its domain structure, and its other talent instruments, see CASRAI’s guide to NWO (Dutch Research Council): How Netherlands Research Funding Works. This page covers Rubicon specifically: who is eligible, what the grant covers financially, how long it runs, and how the application rounds are structured.
What Rubicon funds
Rubicon funds a period of research at “an excellent research institute outside the Netherlands.” The underlying goal, as NWO describes it, is to let talented early-career researchers build an international network and track record early in their career, which is treated as a valuable step for an academic career in the Dutch system. In a small number of exceptional cases — where the research concerns a specific language, culture, or legal system that requires study inside the Netherlands — NWO allows the research to take place domestically instead, but the default and near-universal case is a host institute abroad.
Because Rubicon sends researchers out of the Netherlands rather than funding work inside it, it is functionally closer to an outbound mobility fellowship than to a standard national research grant. Researchers and administrators comparing international postdoctoral funding models may find it useful to read this alongside CASRAI’s dictionary entry on the MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship, the EU’s own mobility-based postdoctoral mechanism, or the general postdoctoral fellowship entry for how this category of award is typically structured.
Eligibility
Rubicon eligibility is defined around the timing of the PhD defence relative to the application round’s closing date, not around nationality or discipline:
- Recent PhD required. Applicants must have had their doctorate awarded, or be due to have it awarded, within a defined window relative to the round’s closing date — in practice, within the twelve months preceding the closing date of the round being applied to.
- PhD from a Dutch research organization. The doctorate must have been obtained from a research organization recognized under NWO’s Grant Rules (in effect, a Dutch university or equivalent recognized research organization) — this is what makes Rubicon a “Dutch researcher going abroad” grant rather than an open international postdoctoral scheme.
- Limited pre-defence work at the host institute is allowed. An applicant may already be working at the intended host institute abroad before the PhD defence has formally taken place, provided that period does not exceed roughly six months of full-time equivalent work.
- No discipline restriction. Rubicon is open across all fields; applicants select the NWO domain that matches their subject area for the purposes of review (see below).
Applicants apply through the review domain appropriate to their subject: NWO’s Science domain (ENW), Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), Applied and Engineering Sciences (AES), or, for health-related research, ZonMw (the Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development, which runs health-domain funding on NWO’s behalf). CASRAI’s main NWO guide covers what each of these domains covers and how NWO’s domain structure works in more detail.
Funding amount and duration
Rubicon covers the researcher’s salary and associated fringe benefits at the host institute, travel expenses connected to the placement, and a limited allowance for research costs. It is a personal, portable grant tied to the individual researcher and the specific host placement named in the application, not a lump sum paid to the researcher directly to allocate freely.
The grant period runs for a minimum of twelve months and a maximum of twenty-four months. NWO funds Rubicon in rounds rather than as a continuously open call: as of 2026, NWO ran three Rubicon rounds across the year (rounds 2026-1, 2026-2, and 2026-3), with closing dates on 24 March, 1 September, and 1 December 2026, and a combined round budget on the order of €3.15 million per round. Because round structure, budgets, and exact deadlines are set fresh for each calendar year and can change, applicants and administrators should always confirm the current round’s closing date and budget directly on NWO’s Rubicon call page rather than relying on a prior year’s figures.
Rubicon vs. Veni: two different points in the same career path
Rubicon is frequently confused with Veni, NWO’s grant for researchers within a few years of completing their PhD, because both sit early in an academic career and both are administered by NWO under a similar domain structure. They fund different things at different moments, however:
- Rubicon funds a fixed-term (12–24 month) postdoctoral placement at a research institute abroad, applied for around the time of the PhD defence, with eligibility defined by a tight window around that defence date.
- Veni, by contrast, funds a researcher to develop their own research idea over a longer period, is open to applicants up to a set number of years after their PhD (rather than a narrow months-wide window), and is typically carried out at a Dutch research institution rather than abroad.
In practice, a common Dutch academic career path uses the two sequentially: a Rubicon grant to gain international research experience abroad immediately after the PhD, followed later by a Veni application to establish an independent research line back in the Netherlands. See CASRAI’s NWO Talent Programme: Veni vs. Vidi vs. Vici Grants Compared for how Veni fits alongside NWO’s later-career Vidi and Vici grants.
Frequently asked questions
Can Rubicon be used to do research inside the Netherlands?
Only in a narrow set of exceptions. Rubicon’s default requirement is a host research institute outside the Netherlands. NWO allows a domestic placement only where the research topic itself requires it — for example, research tied to a specific language, culture, or legal system that can only be studied in the Netherlands.
Who is eligible to apply for Rubicon?
Researchers who have recently obtained, or are close to obtaining, a PhD from a Dutch research organization recognized under NWO’s Grant Rules, applying within the eligibility window defined for the round they are entering (in practice, within twelve months of the PhD defence, with limited allowance for time already spent at the host institute before the defence).
What does Rubicon actually pay for?
Salary and fringe benefits for the researcher during the placement abroad, travel costs connected to the placement, and a limited allowance for direct research costs. It does not fund a separate institutional overhead the way a standard project grant might.
How is Rubicon different from an MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship?
Both are mobility-based postdoctoral mechanisms, but Rubicon is a Dutch national programme that funds Dutch PhD graduates to go abroad, while the EU’s MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship is a Horizon Europe instrument open to researchers of any nationality moving to or within EU/associated countries under its own eligibility and mobility rules. They are not interchangeable and have separate application processes, but researchers sometimes weigh both when planning an international postdoctoral move.
How many Rubicon grants are awarded per round?
The number awarded varies by round and by domain, since each domain (ENW, SSH, AES, and ZonMw for health research) reviews and funds applications from its own allocation of the overall round budget. Applicants should check the specific call text for the round and domain they are applying to for current success-rate and award-count information, published on NWO’s and ZonMw’s call pages.
Sources and further reading
- NWO, Rubicon programme page: nwo.nl/en/researchprogrammes/rubicon
- NWO, Rubicon calls for proposals (current rounds): nwo.nl/en/calls/rubicon
- ZonMw, Rubicon (health domain): zonmw.nl/en/subsidy/rubicon-2026-1
