ERC Starting Grants 2026: Italy wins talent but loses it to visas

Every year, part of the world’s research is decided in a simple email, often arriving early in the morning. That email carries the logo of the European Research Council, the main European body that funds frontier science, including laboratories in Italy. In that case, a scientist’s career changes, and so does the face of an institute. The European Research Council awarded 705 million euros to 421 winners in the 2026 Starting Grant call. The call is reserved for young researchers establishing their independence. It drew a record 4,807 applications, a success rate of 8.8 per cent, fewer than one accepted project for every eleven submitted. Among those names is that of Thales Gutcke, a theoretical astrophysicist who studies galaxy formation. Her story, however, tells two things at once: how high-level science is born, and how fragile the ground is on which it lands.

The project is called Sprout and has funding of 1.67 million euros over five years.

An Italian paradox in the European Research Council’s numbers

The call data published by the European Research Council show a precise anomaly. Italy is second by nationality of winners, with 50 Italians, second only to Germany. But Italy is only sixth as a destination country. Just 22 of the 421 winners, that is one in twenty, chose an Italian university or research institution to carry out their project. Switzerland and the Netherlands do better. The funding follows the researcher and goes to the hosting institution. The difference therefore translates into tens of millions of euros that end up elsewhere.

The paradox, as those who have analysed these data for years point out, is not the Italians who go abroad. It is the small number of foreigners who choose to come to Italy. The call stipulates that about one and a half million euros of each individual project be used to build the researcher’s own team. The collaborators can have any nationality. Whoever chooses a country that is bureaucratically hostile to non-EU researchers therefore starts out penalised precisely in the critical phase, that of recruitment. The European Research Council’s own estimates indicate that the call’s funds will create more than 2,700 jobs in European teams: the question is where.

Sprout: from the tiny seed to the dwarf galaxy

One possible answer comes from Trieste. Gutcke will move from the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii to INAF. INAF is the National Institute for Astrophysics. The project is called Sprout and has funding of 1.67 million euros over five years. The goal is to reconstruct a history spanning more than 13 billion years. The first galaxies of the universe were, by necessity, dwarf galaxies. These were small objects poor in stars. Those galaxies were the seeds from which the population of galaxies we observe today grew.

Sprout will develop cosmological simulations at unprecedented resolution. The simulations will directly model processes that large-scale simulations have so far had to approximate. These include supernovae, gas expulsion and accretion, the forging of the first heavy elements, and the birth of dense star clusters and black holes. The project will act as a bridge between two groups of galaxies. The first are those identified at cosmic dawn by the James Webb Space Telescope. The second are their descendants in the local universe. These descendants are observed by missions such as Euclid, Desi and Rubin. The funds will also be used to expand the computing centre in Trieste. They will also pay for three post-doctoral researchers and two PhD students. It is an entire group built from scratch. A detail that matters: Gutcke is German, her family is moving from the other side of the world, and her husband is Italian.

The residence permit that blocks careers

Precisely the case of those who arrive from abroad shows the fragile side of the system. A 27-year-old Indian researcher is completing a PhD in Italy on galaxies and black holes. She waited more than five months for her first residence permit. She waited more than seven months for the second, after an application submitted in October 2025. While waiting, she had to give up in March 2026 a rare observation in Chile and a seminar at ESO, the European Southern Observatory. Without a permit, the freedom to move remains drastically limited. The receipt issued by the post office allows only direct round trips to one’s country of origin. It does not allow travel to the rest of the Schengen area.

The stories resemble one another. A researcher in high-energy astrophysics, 27 years old, recounted one episode. He was brusquely pushed away from an office, with consequences for his psychological well-being. Hemanth, 32, specialised in instrumentation, has to give up meetings with the major international collaborations he takes part in, from the European Space Agency in France to the Netherlands. The country loses twice: it loses the opportunity for the researcher and weakens projects in which it has invested heavily. Those who have had similar experiences in Germany, Sweden or Austria describe far simpler procedures. In Germany, the same researcher obtained a temporary document on the very day her permit expired. No appointment was needed.

Those who stay, those who warn, what could change

The researchers’ judgments are nuanced but converge on one point. Italian scientific quality is described as excellent and the research environment as collaborative. The problem lies entirely elsewhere. Two researchers out of two advise foreign colleagues against Italy, although one of them encourages everyone to come as tourists. Only the researcher who had a supervisor who actively helped her recommends the country, and under precise conditions. The administrative procedures, a researcher in planetary atmospheres recalls, are interconnected: health card, tax code, police headquarters. A delay in one office reverberates on the others.

Supervisors and tutors of foreign PhD students propose a concrete path. They suggest a direct channel between universities, research institutions and the administration. The channel does not involve privileges, but is proportionate to the fact that these researchers hold an Italian contract or fellowship. They are therefore formally invited by the country. In the meantime, the European Research Council continues to reward open competitions. Foreign researchers continue to choose destinations where the wait is counted in days and not in months. Between the telescope that looks at the first galaxies and the handwritten receipt that allows one to return home, there is not only science. Bureaucracy makes the difference.

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