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Junior postdoctoral fellowship

This fellowship supports researchers who have recently obtained their doctorate and aim to pursue an independent research career.

Status

Open
17/11/2025

Duration

3 Year
No extension possible

Fixed operating allowance

€ 4000 to 10000 /year

In association with

Plantentuin Meise VITO WL KBS L’Oréal – UNESCO

Announcement of results

21/05/2026

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Objective

The junior postdoctoral fellowship aims to support researchers who have recently obtained a doctoral degree to further specialize in their research discipline. With the help of this fellowship, a postdoctoral researcher can develop their own research line while simultaneously acquiring additional academic skills through training and mobility, among other means. In this way, the FWO aims to provide young researchers with optimal opportunities to build an independent international research career, either within an academic context or beyond.

The FWO collaborates with the Plantentuin Meise, VITO and Flanders Hydraulics for the funding of additional postdoctoral fellowships.

The Suzanne Duchesne Fund is administered by the King Baudouin Foundation and provides €83,000 for the 2026 call in the form of special bench fees for selected postdoctoral researchers in oncology (Med4 panel).

L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science is also offering the three best junior or senior female candidates from biomedical and STEM disciplines (for applications submitted in the S&T, Bio and Med panels) an additional bench fee of €20,000 to support their research careers.

Important dates

  • 18 September 2025: call opens
  • 17 November 2025 at 5pm: call closes (last application date)
  • 23 March - 2 April 2026: online preselection meetings
  • 7 April 2026: invitation to interviews
  • 21 April - 8 May 2026: (physical) interviews
  • 21 May 2026: announcement of results
  • 1 October or 1 November 2026: start of fellowship

Features

  • Duration of the fellowship: Three years
  • Gross monthly salary (4 years seniority): €5,506.80 (index 2,1223 from 1/3/2025)
  • Bench fee which can range from €4,000 to €10,000 per year

Profile and conditions

  • See the programme regulations for more details on eligibility conditions.
  • You hold a PhD by thesis or a degree or a diploma or certificate recognized as equivalent in accordance with European Union directives or a bilateral agreement.
  • You can apply for a junior postdoctoral fellowship if your PhD was obtained no longer than 3 years before October, 1 of the year in which the fellowship would start, or will be obtained at September 15 of that year at the latest (in the latter case you need to inform the FWO of the date of your public defense - or equivalent form of assessment - by 1 July of that year at the latest).
  • You have not yet benefited from this fellowship, not even partially.
  • You can apply maximum two times for the same fellowship. You can apply for a senior postdoctoral fellowship immediately after your junior postdoctoral fellowship.
  • You agree with the Research Integrity Clause.

Application, evaluation and selection procedure

  • You have to find a supervisor at a Flemish host institution (article 3 of the regulations on postdoctoral researchers).
  • You need to submit your application via the online application (addressed to a FWO expert panel).
  • The supervisor receives a request from the FWO to write a letter of recommendation.
  • Once the expert panel has completed the preselection, you will be notified and depending on your result, you will or will not be invited to the second round.
  • If you are invited to the second round, you will be interviewed by the panel between 21 April and 8 May 2026. You will receive an invitation for this on 7 April 2026. You can consult the interview dates here.
  • On the basis of the proposals from the expert panels, the board will make the final decision on the selection. The results will be announced via email and via our results page on 21 May 2026.
  • You will get feedback on your evaluation once the decisions have been published.
  • The evaluation and selection procedures are explained in a number of information sessions (see below).

Submitting your application

You need to submit your application via the online application (addressed to a FWO expert panel). The deadline is 17 November 2025 at 5pm.

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Regulations

Additional information for applicants

Contact and information sessions

More information about the eligibility criteria, the application form or the evaluation procedure can be found in this presentation. For more specific questions, you can contact your account administrator.

If you have any technical problems with the e-portal and the application modules, please contact the IT helpdesk at FWOhelpdesk@fwo.be.

Registration for one of our information sessions must be done through the research coordination office of the institutions listed below.

Datum Instelling
19/09/2025 VUB
25/09/2025 UGent
26/09/2025 KU Leuven
30/09/2025 UHasselt
30/09/2025 UAntwerpen

Support with your application

  • Example application form: offers a number of screenshots of the online application forms and the project template outline
  • The application form has been designed to allow for many various researcher profiles and research outputs. This is because the FWO aims to give researchers the opportunity to demonstrate the construction of their research careers through a range of scientifically relevant activities, skills, experiences and achievements. This is in line with the international trend away from a single-sided focus on classical output criteria (such as publications, bibliometrics, patents, and the like) towards a broader view of what science can be and achieve, with respect for the specificity of each discipline. The application forms are aimed to help the researcher demonstrate that versatility. The evaluation procedure has also been designed with this in mind: the scoring descriptors have in the scoring grids been supplemented with these broader elements from the application form.
  • Expert panels: make the right choice!
    • You choose the expert panel that best suits your application. Make sure you thoroughly check the overview of panels and scopes for each panel so that you can make the right choice. Select the panel you feel is best suited to assess your project in terms of what it will add to the scientific knowledge base.
    • If the panel judges during the review by consensus that the application falls outside the scope of the panel, they may reject it for that reason. It is important to stress that it is the applicant who is responsible for matching the application with the correct panel.