About the program
Formas funds research for sustainable development — environment, agricultural sciences and spatial planning, interpreted broadly enough to include social science and humanities work on sustainability. The annual open call (årliga öppna utlysningen) is its researcher-initiated core, with parallel tracks for early-career and established researchers.
Beyond the open call, Formas runs targeted calls tied to policy needs. Reviews weigh scientific quality and societal relevance roughly equally — an application that cannot articulate its sustainability relevance in concrete terms is structurally disadvantaged regardless of scientific polish.
Who can apply
- PhD required; the grant is administered by a Swedish university, institute or other approved organisation.
- Separate tracks: early-career (within a few years of the PhD) and experienced researchers — with track-specific rules.
- Applications via Prisma, approved by the administrating organisation.
Writing a competitive application
- Write the societal-relevance section as concretely as the science: who uses the results, in what decision, on what timescale.
- Match the track — the early-career track exists to shield new PIs from competing with professors; use it while you can.
- Interdisciplinary framings do well when each discipline’s contribution is specified, poorly when "interdisciplinary" is the whole argument.