The Aurora Mobility Programme – Researcher Exchange for New Collaboration Between Norway and France

Only approved Norwegian research organisations are eligible to apply. See the list of approved research organisations.

Requirements relating to the Project Owner 

The research organisation listed as the Project Owner in the application form must have approved the submission of the application. 

If the application is a collaboration between several organisations, the Project Owner must submit the application on behalf of all partners. 

Requirements relating to the project manager 

You must have an approved doctoral degree or achieved associate professor qualifications before the application deadline. For the purposes of this call, being or having been employed as researcher 1, researcher 2 or senior researcher in the institute sector is considered to be associate professor competence. 

Normally, a research group of 2–4 people will be behind the application for short-term stays in France. It is a prerequisite that young researchers (including PhD candidates and postdoctoral fellows) participate in the travel activities. 

You can apply for support for travel and accommodation in France. Labour costs and purchase of equipment are not covered. 

The following applies when you apply for support: 

• Projects can run over two consecutive calendar years. You can apply for support for two to four people in the application. The maximum amount of support per person per calendar year is NOK 20,000. The maximum amount of support is NOK 100,000 per application. 
• The Research Council may cover up to 100 per cent of approved costs. The Research Council disburses funding in arrears on the basis of reporting of documented expenses. 
• You can apply for reimbursement for travel costs and actual costs related to hotel accommodation and subsistence allowance in accordance with the state's rates abroad. The rates per day may be reduced if you apply for funding for a longer stay or for more than four project participants. 

In addition, you must be aware of the following if you should receive a grant from us: 

• Support for a research organisation goes to the organisation's non-economic activity. It therefore does not constitute state aid. The Research Council assumes that the necessary accounting separation is in place. 
• The Research Council's prerequisites for awards can also be found in our General Terms and Conditions for R&D Projects on the information page What the contract involves.  

You can change and submit the application several times until the application deadline. We recommend that you submit your application as soon as you have completed the application form and uploaded the mandatory attachments. When the application deadline expires, it is the version of the application that was submitted most recently that we process. 

• The application and all attachments must be written in Norwegian and/or English. 
• All attachments must be in PDF format. 

Mandatory attachments 

• Project description of maximum five pages. Use the default template that you can download at the bottom of the page. 
• CV for the project manager and other project participants in Norway. Use the standard template that you can download at the bottom of the page. 

Applications that do not meet the requirements above will be rejected. 

All attachments to the application must be submitted with the application. We do not accept attachments submitted after the application deadline unless we have requested additional documentation. 

We will not consider documents and websites linked to in the application, or attachments other than those specified above. Be careful to upload the correct attachment type, as there are no technical restrictions on what kind of templates it is possible to upload in the application form. 

Applications will be assessed in light of the purpose of the call and the following criteria:

The application will first be assessed academically in France, and then administratively by the Research Council in consultation with our French partners. 

In the assessment, we emphasize: 

• that the exchange contributes to the establishment of new cooperation between the applicant institutions in the two countries 
• that young researchers participate in the project 
• that plans for possible future European cooperation projects have been explained, in particular under the auspices of Horizon Europe 
• whether the applicant or the project has received funding from AURORA in the last two years (2024, 2025). Priority will be given to applications with otherwise similar academic quality and relevance. 

We expect to publish which applications will receive funding at the beginning of December 2025.