Research Connect 2026 – Access to Research Expertise for Companies

The Project Owner must be a private enterprise registered in the Norwegian Register of Business Enterprises, with economic activity in Norway and activities of an industrial or commercial nature. 

NUFs (Norwegian-registered foreign enterprises), public enterprises and sole proprietorships cannot be Project Owners. 

Researchers with whom you are going to collaborate cannot be employed by the company. 

Requirements relating to the Project Owner 

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

Requirements relating to the project manager 

The project manager must be employed by the Project Owner.  

The researcher cannot be the project manager.     

Requirements relating to collaborating partners 

You are not to register collaborating partners in the application form. You must describe any collaborating partners in the project description. 

You can apply for funding for research competence, which will be invoiced in accordance with the research organisation's market price. You must clarify the market price with the research organisation, and the number of hours and hourly rate must be specified in the application form.  

You can apply for up to NOK 100,000 per application.   

A company, identified by its organisation number, can only be granted support for one application under this call in 2026. 

Conditions for funding 

The project can start at the earliest when the application has been granted funding and the contract has been accepted. The project must start no later than 1 February 2027 and must be completed no later than 31 July 2027. 

Enterprises will receive the aid as "de minimis aid". Note that an enterprise may receive a maximum of EUR 300,000 in accumulated de minimis aid over a three-year period.

Prior to any payment of de minimis aid, the Research Council will request written confirmation and an overview of all other de minimis aid that the company has received during the past three financial years. For companies that are part of a group, the maximum limit generally applies to the group as such. See also the EU de minimis aid regulation (Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/2831). Read more about de minimis aid.

The Research Council's conditions for funding can also be found in our general terms and conditions for R&D projects on the information page What the contract involves.  

We will pay the support in arrears, based on the invoice submitted, where the invoice number, name of the researcher, hourly rate and number of hours from the participating research organisation are specified.   

Please note that you can only submit the application once. If you submit the application and subsequently see that it still needs to be changed, you can create a new application – e.g. as a copy of the one you have already submitted – and in this way submit a new version as long as the call is open for applications. 

General requirements 

• 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 max. 2 pages. Use the standard template that you can download at the bottom of the page. 
• Self-declaration form for de minimis aid. 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. Attachments cannot be forwarded afterwards.   

We will not consider documents and websites linked to in the application, or attachments other than those specified above. Please 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 for this call will be processed administratively by the Research Council. Applications will be processed on an ongoing basis. 

Funding will only be awarded to applications that meet the requirements set out in the call, including that the company's service purchases are linked to research and development work and confirmed by an approved research organisation. 

Once the application has been approved, we will publish a contract that will be available on and must be accepted via "My RCN Web". The contract is valid after the Research Council has approved the submitted contract. 

The Research Council may reject applications where the Project Owner or collaborating partner has materially breached its obligations in other projects funded by the Research Council in the two years prior to the submission of the application.