SNSF Ambizione 2026

What

SNSF’s Ambizione funding scheme is aimed at young researchers who wish to conduct, manage and lead an independent project at a Swiss higher education institution.

Applications may be submitted no later than four years after completing the doctorate (PhD).

The date of the examination, respectively the defense of the doctoral thesis, is the relevant date.

What

To obtain a letter of support from the vice-rector for research, please follow these steps:

  1. Download the host department confirmation letter, have it filled in by your supervisor and by the Head of department.
  2. Fill in the UNIGE RGO's form.

The UNIGE RGO form will ask you to upload the following documents:

  • The detailed letter of support from the host department, dated and signed by the contact person mentioned in the request and by the department director
  • Your CV in a SNSF format (SNSF template)
  • The UNIGE Statement of ethical risks.

With this information, we will submit the confirmation letter to the vice-rector for signature and send it to you as soon as possible.

When

To obtain a confirmation letter from the vice-rector for research, please fill in the UNIGE RGO form by Monday 19 October 2026 at the latest.

The official deadline for the Ambizione 2026 call is Tuesday 3 November 2026.

Further information

Please visit the SNSF Ambizione page for more details.

All requests for letters of support should be submitted via the UNIGE RGO form.

Mandatory information

Letter
Ethics Risks (Form)
RGO Form

FAQ

The 2026 call for applications document is your reference document for preparing your application.

Call document and eligibility criteria

Regulations, guidelines and other important information can be found on the SNSF Ambizione webpage, under “Documents”.

The SNSF has introduced a new eligibility rule: the Swiss-link. Applicants must either be Swiss nationals or holders of a degree from a Swiss higher education institution (Master’s, PhD, medical degree, an FMH specialist qualification or equivalent), or have carried out research or clinical work at a Swiss research institute for at least twelve months (with an average workload of 80 per cent) after obtaining their PhD or medical degree prior to the submission deadline.

Furthermore, a host professor can no longer support several candidates, but only one. Please consult the Ambizione Regulations to determine your formal eligibility.

Should you have any doubts about your eligibility, please contact the SNSF Ambizione team to get their approval: ambizione(at)snf.ch.

Please also note that parallel submissions may only be submitted for a Postdoc.Mobility return grant.

Budget

The average gross salary indicated by the SNSF will be around CHF 115'000/year for a work time percentage of 100% (corresponding to the salary of a scientific collaborator I in class 19 at the UNIGE). We recommend entering this sum on the SNSF portal. If successful, and for the funds to be released, you will need to confirm to the SNSF the exact amount of your salary communicated by the UNIGE Human Resources Division. 

Specific functions and salary classes for the technician or the research auxiliary of your project must be checked with the HR relay of your host department or the administration of your host faculty/center.

We do not currently offer such a tool.

All information on how to enter a budget on the SNSF portal is available here.

On the portal, each budget item is clearly explained as you enter the budget data.

For your information, you will find the amounts reimbursed by UNIGE for travel, meals and conference expenses in the memento.

Please adapt your budget according to this information.

You don’t have to calculate overheads within your budget.

Overheads are paid directly to each research institution by the SNSF, which applies its own allocation formula.

AI

On Digital University webpage, you will find information on many digital subjects included on AI – English versions can be found on each tab.

On the SNSF web page dedicated to AI in research.

Ethics

Yes, it can be found here: https://declaration-ethique.unige.ch/login.

Please note that it is only accessible with a UNIGE login. If you do not have one, please contact the RGO and we will send you a PDF copy.

Miscellaneous

For confidentiality reasons, we are unable to provide examples of funding applications.

We usually recommend searching for past applications within the host department/faculty – even those that were rejected can be useful if you get a copy of the evaluation report with the main weaknesses and strengths.

You can search the SNSF Data Portal for abstracts of successful Ambizione projects.

In principle, we do not offer comprehensive proposal reviews for this program due to the very high number of candidates and limited resources. We can provide feedback on the whole proposal, the abstract or specific sections of your application only depending on our time and workload.

We will be otherwise happy to answer any question you may have during the application process. 

For Any Question

research-grants-office(at)unige.ch
tel:+41 22 379 76 47