Action Plan 2025–2028
Delayed publication of Action Plan 2025–2028
The Action Plan defines and specifies how the funding policy measures and funding schemes of the multi-year programme can be optimally implemented with the financial resources available.
Parliamentary debates are currently underway regarding reallocations in the federal budget. The cost-cutting measures proposed in the Expert group's "Task and subsidy review 2024" include an annual funding reduction of around 10% for the SNSF. A decision by the Swiss parliament is expected during its 2025 winter session, which will determine the extent of these budget cuts. Consequently, no definitive statements can currently be made about the SNSF's funding schemes for the 2025–2028 period. The SNSF will publish a detailed Action Plan once the financial framework has been clarified. The key points are summarised below.
What we had planned
The funds approved by Parliament in December 2024 for the 2025–2028 funding period would enable us to implement the following measures:
- Growing Project funding schemes to improve the adaptability and innovative capacity of Swiss research across all disciplines
- Enhancing professional outlooks for early-career researchers and those with non-linear career paths by improving career funding schemes, ensuring better working conditions, and increasing nominal salaries for doctoral students
- Contributing to an open and equitable research culture and results that benefit everyone by pursuing equality, diversity and inclusion in our research funding
- Maintaining the competitiveness of Swiss research in an international context by expanding funding programmes for cross-border collaborations
- Expanding and enhancing the BRIDGE funding programme, jointly financed with Innosuisse, to offer researchers better support for swiftly transforming their findings into products and services
- Strengthening the exchange between academic research and non-scientific stakeholders by involving non-scientific stakeholders from the outset in National Research Programmes (NRP)
- Optimising the promotion of clinical research by expanding and further developing Investigator Initiated Clinical Trials (IICT)
- Supporting transdisciplinary research on sustainable development by continuing the Solution-Oriented Research for Development (SOR4D) programme in collaboration with the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA)
- Making research more sustainable by developing incentives with our partners
- Establishing optimal framework conditions for research in a digital environment through our commitment to FAIR and ORD principles concerning the management of research data.
Further links:
- Project funding
- Promotion of early-career researchers
- Equality, diversity and inclusion in research funding
- International Co-operation
- BRIDGE
- Innosuisse
- National Research Programmes (NRP)
- Investigator Initiated Clinical Trials (IICT)
- Solution-Oriented Research for Development (SOR4D)
- Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA)
- National partners
- FAIR and ORD principles
What we cannot implement
The SNSF had to consolidate its portfolio to enable the measures listed. We will focus on direct Career funding from the postdoctoral level onwards by discontinuing the Doc.CH and MD-PhD schemes from 2025. We will discontinue the R'Equip scheme and, moving forward, we will fund research equipment within projects. Furthermore, we will not continue the Practice-to-Science scheme. The evaluation of the pilot scheme revealed that experts from the practical field were not supported as intended in progressing to a professorship at a university of applied sciences or a university of teacher education.
Even prior to the cuts currently under discussion, the federal funds approved for the period 2025–2028 were insufficient to fully implement the measures outlined in the Multi-Year Programme. Consequently, the SNSF had to cancel various projects, including those detailed below:
- Supporting cross-border, medium-sized consortia initiated by researchers to enhance the involvement of Swiss researchers in international thematic initiatives
- Expanding opportunities for early-career researchers from abroad to attract international talent to Switzerland
- Increasing the budget for implementation networks to connect researchers with potential users of research results
- Financing research on sustainable development within real-world laboratories, a new forum that links researchers with non-scientific stakeholders
- Strengthening research skills in relation to digital transformation through the new "Digital X" funding scheme for early-career researchers
- Creating incentives for the active and innovative (further) development of explorative ORD practices and methods
- Supporting new data infrastructures and services (DIS) to ensure the quality, security and accessibility of research data.
As highlighted above, further cuts would result in a historic setback for Swiss science.
What we currently cannot plan
The extent of the cuts to annual federal funding currently under discussion for the SNSF from 2026 will likely not be known until the end of 2025. The proposed cut of around 10% would inevitably lead to a reduction in services and jeopardise both the measures mentioned above and the established schemes.
Click here to access all of our press releases.