Funding trends
Which areas of European research are getting more funding, and which subjects are growing fastest. The figures count research projects paid for by the European Commission.
What these figures count. Not every funded project is included here. The Commission gives some of its projects a subject label, taken from its own list of research topics. Only those projects are counted — about 19% of the projects we hold, nearly all of them from Horizon Europe and the European Research Council. The labels are the Commission's. We do not add any of our own. A project counts in the year it starts. If it carries more than one subject label, it counts once under each. The years shown are 2021 to 2025. We hold data for later years as well, but do not show it as a trend; the reason is explained below.
Research areas over time
Projects starting each year, 2022 to 2025. All six charts use the same scale, so you can compare them with one another. Hover over a point to see its figure.
The charts start at 2022, not 2021. Horizon Europe began in 2021, and that first year has only a handful of projects in each area. Including it would make the start of a new programme look like a sudden rise in research funding. The table below shows every year.
Research areas in 2025
| Research area | Projects | 2024 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| natural sciences | 2,604 | 2,741 | -5.0% |
| engineering and technology | 1,180 | 1,387 | -14.9% |
| medical and health sciences | 1,001 | 1,016 | -1.5% |
| social sciences | 950 | 1,114 | -14.7% |
| humanities | 407 | 376 | +8.2% |
| agricultural sciences | 268 | 305 | -12.1% |
Fastest-growing subjects in 2025
Subjects with at least 50% more projects than the year before. A subject is only listed if it already had five or more projects. Without that rule, a subject going from one project to three would show as 200% growth, which tells you very little.
| Subject | 2024 | 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| nanomedicine | 6 | 16 | +166.7% |
| cardiac arrhythmia | 5 | 13 | +160.0% |
| molecular biology | 5 | 12 | +140.0% |
| synthetic biology | 5 | 12 | +140.0% |
| gene therapy | 8 | 18 | +125.0% |
| electron microscopy | 6 | 13 | +116.7% |
| fluid dynamics | 6 | 12 | +100.0% |
| marine biology | 7 | 14 | +100.0% |
| racial inequality | 7 | 14 | +100.0% |
| waste management | 5 | 10 | +100.0% |
| climate change adaptation | 19 | 36 | +89.5% |
| supercomputers | 7 | 13 | +85.7% |
| bioremediation | 5 | 9 | +80.0% |
| archaeology | 19 | 34 | +78.9% |
| anthropology | 27 | 48 | +77.8% |
| pathophysiology | 18 | 32 | +77.8% |
| particle accelerator | 12 | 21 | +75.0% |
| acoustics | 6 | 10 | +66.7% |
| cardiovascular diseases | 6 | 10 | +66.7% |
| cell signaling | 6 | 10 | +66.7% |
| religions | 9 | 15 | +66.7% |
| toxicology | 6 | 10 | +66.7% |
| mass spectrometry | 8 | 13 | +62.5% |
| spintronics | 8 | 13 | +62.5% |
| general language studies | 5 | 8 | +60.0% |
Why later years are not shown
We already hold data for the years after 2025, and we update it every night. We do not show it as a trend, because our copy of it is still incomplete. It does not mean European funding has fallen.
These figures are provisional. They count subject labels rather than projects, so a project with two labels is counted twice.
| Year | Classifications | Areas covered | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 6,839 | 6 of 6 | withheld |
| 2027 | 1,216 | 6 of 6 | withheld |
Why we show no growth figure. We collect this data from the Commission in two separate ways, and one arrives more slowly than the other. Project records come in continuously. The subject labels come in a file published once a month. On 17 August 2026 the monthly file listed 4,468 projects starting in 2025 and 4,546 starting in 2026, while the continuous feed held 3,563 and 550. So we hold roughly 80% of 2025 and 12% of 2026. A growth figure based on those numbers would show how quickly our own data arrives, not how European funding is changing. The Commission is not late in publishing. 96% of these projects have their grant signed before they start, and the subject labels cover 84–88% of every recent year.
A low figure in the last row is not a half-finished year. Projects count in the year they start, and a project can be agreed before it starts. The final year here is a small number of projects already agreed for a future start date.
Updated every night from the Commission's published project data. When a subject grows here, it means more funded projects carry that label. It does not mean more money went to that subject, and it does not mean a project in that subject is more likely to be funded.