Canada’s three federal research funding agencies — CIHR, NSERC, and SSHRC, collectively the Tri-Agency — are phasing out the Canadian Common CV (CCV) as the required format for a growing set of competitions, replacing it with a new narrative-style tri-agency CV. This isn’t a full replacement yet, and it won’t be for some time, but it is a real, dated change with a specific first checkpoint: NSERC has committed to requiring the tri-agency CV for its 2027 Discovery Horizons and 2027 Arthur B. McDonald Fellowships competitions. This guide covers what the tri-agency CV actually is, why the agencies are making the change, the rollout timeline across all three agencies, and how to prepare if you’re applying to one of the affected competitions.
This page is a forward-looking companion to CASRAI’s Tri-Agency Common CV (CCV) Worked Example, which remains the right reference for the CCV itself — still the required format for most Tri-Agency competitions as of this writing. Use this page to understand what’s changing and when; use that one for a section-by-section walkthrough of the CCV you’ll likely still need to complete for most programs today.
What the tri-agency CV is
The tri-agency CV is a narrative-style curriculum vitae developed jointly by CIHR, NSERC, and SSHRC, first announced in October 2024. Rather than the CCV’s module-and-entry structure — discrete fields for each publication, grant, and position, populated once and reused across templates — the tri-agency CV asks applicants to write connected prose describing their research career. It is built around three sections:
- Personal statement — a narrative introduction to the applicant’s research trajectory and objectives.
- Most significant contributions and experiences — a curated, described (not merely listed) account of the applicant’s most important research outputs and activities, which can include publications and grants but also policy influence, public engagement, leadership, and other contributions the CCV’s output-type fields don’t capture well.
- Supervisory and mentorship activities — a dedicated section for training and mentorship work, which the CCV treats as a minor sub-field rather than a first-class category.
The whole document is capped at five pages in English or six pages in French, regardless of how an applicant distributes content across the three sections (SSHRC, Tri-agency CV FAQ).
The 2027 pilot: Discovery Horizons and the Arthur B. McDonald Fellowships
NSERC has stated it will require the tri-agency CV, rather than the CCV, for two of its funding opportunities beginning in 2027:
- Discovery Horizons — NSERC has already been pilot-testing the narrative-CV format within Discovery Horizons across four prior competitions, so 2027 is a formal, agency-wide requirement rather than a first trial.
- Arthur B. McDonald Fellowships — for the 2027 McDonald Fellowships competition, all nominees will be required to submit a tri-agency CV rather than a CCV-based one.
These two programs are the first hard deadline attached to the transition at NSERC. Outside them, NSERC’s other competitions — including standard Discovery Grants and the CREATE program — continue to use the CCV as of this writing, and NSERC has not announced a date by which the CCV will be retired agency-wide.
How this differs from the Canadian Common CV
| Dimension | Canadian Common CV (CCV) | Tri-agency CV |
|---|---|---|
| Format | Structured modules and discrete data-entry fields (publications, grants, positions, etc.) | Narrative prose across three fixed sections |
| Length | Varies by agency-configured template (e.g., NSERC Form 100) | Fixed cap: 5 pages English / 6 pages French |
| What it foregrounds | Comprehensive, itemized research output history | Selected, described contributions — including non-traditional outputs like policy influence, public engagement, and mentorship |
| Where it’s built | ccv-cvc.ca, a standalone federal biographical-data platform | Not yet integrated into a standalone platform; expected to eventually move into the Tri-agency Grants Management Solution (TGMS) |
| Current status (2026) | Still the required format for most Tri-Agency competitions | Required for a specific, named, growing set of competitions per agency |
Why the Tri-Agency is making this change
The agencies have cited two connected reasons for the shift. First, longstanding usability problems with the CCV itself: applicant feedback pointed to the burden of maintaining and updating CCV data, barriers the platform created for research collaboration, and reliability issues with the system. Second, and more substantively, the agencies describe the narrative format as an effort to align Tri-Agency review with the principles of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) — assessing contributions and impact rather than relying on output counts and venue prestige as proxies for quality. The tri-agency CV’s structure is explicitly meant to let reviewers weigh a wider range of research contributions — policy influence, public engagement, leadership, mentorship — alongside conventional outputs like publications and grants, rather than defaulting to what’s easiest to count.
This positions the Canadian shift within a broader international pattern rather than as an isolated Tri-Agency decision. UKRI’s Resume for Research and Innovation (R4RI) narrative CV, adopted in the UK, follows a similar logic and predates the Tri-Agency version; CASRAI’s NIH biosketch vs UKRI R4RI comparison and DORA and CoARA guide cover that wider responsible-research-assessment movement in more depth.
Rollout timeline across all three agencies
The transition is not synchronized across CIHR, NSERC, and SSHRC — each agency is moving at its own pace, and all of the specific dates below should be confirmed against the funding opportunity notice for the competition you’re actually applying to, since agencies have signalled these are subject to change:
- NSERC: tri-agency CV required starting with the 2027 Discovery Horizons and 2027 Arthur B. McDonald Fellowships competitions (McDonald Fellowships nomination deadline reported as December 2026 for the 2027 competition). No other NSERC programs have an announced conversion date as of this writing.
- SSHRC: already the furthest along. SSHRC uses the tri-agency CV for a specific, named set of opportunities, including Destination Horizon Grants, the Imagining Canada’s Future Ideas Lab, Indigenous Capacity and Leadership Grants, Knowledge Synthesis Grants, Policy Innovation Partnership Grants, and SSHRC Impact Awards, plus Tri-agency Institutional Programs Secretariat (TIPS) opportunities such as the Canada Excellence Research Chairs program.
- CIHR: has signalled an intention to introduce the tri-agency CV for its Project Grant competition beginning with the Spring 2026 round, but has explicitly flagged this could be delayed if the research community needs more time to adjust.
Longer term, the agencies have indicated the tri-agency CV is expected to be integrated into the Tri-agency Grants Management Solution (TGMS), the platform intended to modernize Tri-Agency application infrastructure more broadly — but no committed date for that integration, or for a full CCV retirement, has been published as of this writing.
What this means if you’re not applying to a 2027-affected competition yet
For the near term, the practical answer for most applicants is: keep using the CCV. The tri-agency CV is only mandatory where an agency has explicitly named it in a funding opportunity’s application requirements. If you’re applying to a standard NSERC Discovery Grant, most SSHRC programs outside the list above, or most CIHR competitions ahead of the Project Grant’s targeted introduction, you should still expect to build your CV through the CCV platform — see CASRAI’s CCV worked example for a full walkthrough. Always check the specific funding opportunity notice rather than assuming based on agency or program type; the transition is being introduced competition by competition, not agency-wide on a single date.
How to prepare a strong tri-agency CV
For applicants who do fall under a 2027 (or earlier, for SSHRC and eventually CIHR) tri-agency CV requirement, a few practical differences from CCV preparation are worth planning around:
- Start from significance, not completeness. The CCV rewards comprehensive, itemized listing; the tri-agency CV rewards curation. Identify the handful of contributions that best demonstrate your trajectory and impact, and describe each one in enough narrative detail for a reviewer outside your immediate subfield to understand why it matters.
- Write the personal statement as a trajectory, not a summary. It should connect past work to your current research direction and objectives, not simply restate your CV in prose form.
- Don’t undersell mentorship and non-traditional contributions. Because the tri-agency CV gives supervisory/mentorship activity its own section, and explicitly opens the “significant contributions” section to policy influence and public engagement, applicants used to CCV’s publication- and grant-centric fields should deliberately plan content for these categories rather than leaving them thin.
- Respect the page cap strictly. Five pages in English (six in French) is a hard limit regardless of how you allocate space across the three sections — plan your allocation before drafting rather than cutting down after the fact.
- Confirm the exact requirement in the funding opportunity notice. Given the competition-by-competition rollout, don’t assume last year’s application format still applies; re-check for every cycle during the transition period.
Frequently asked questions
Is the tri-agency CV replacing the Canadian Common CV entirely?
Not yet, and no date for a full replacement has been announced. As of this writing, the tri-agency CV is required only for specific, named competitions at each agency; the CCV remains the required format everywhere else.
Do I need a tri-agency CV for a 2026 NSERC Discovery Grant application?
No. The 2027 requirement announced by NSERC applies specifically to the Discovery Horizons and Arthur B. McDonald Fellowships competitions, not to standard Discovery Grants. Always confirm against the specific funding opportunity notice.
How long can a tri-agency CV be?
Five pages in English or six pages in French, regardless of how content is distributed across the personal statement, contributions, and mentorship sections.
Is the tri-agency CV the same as UKRI’s R4RI?
No, but they’re related in spirit. Both are narrative-style CV formats developed to align funder review with DORA‘s responsible-research-assessment principles, and both de-emphasize itemized output lists in favor of described contributions. They are separate documents built for separate funding systems, so a CV built for one is not a substitute for the other. See CASRAI’s narrative-CV-format comparison for more on R4RI specifically.
Where will the tri-agency CV eventually be built and submitted?
The agencies have indicated it is expected to be integrated into the Tri-agency Grants Management Solution (TGMS) over time, rather than remaining a standalone document format indefinitely, though no committed integration date has been published as of this writing.
For the CCV itself — still the required format for the large majority of Tri-Agency competitions as of this writing — see CASRAI’s Tri-Agency Common CV (CCV) Worked Example. For the broader funding system context, see Canada’s Tri-Agency Research Funding System.
