Note
This is an unofficial template based on the templates provided by the ERC program (originally in RTF format). The template is fairly complete and has been update to the 2026 version of the ERC Starting Grants call. However, it was not submitted to the ERC and deemed eligible (to my knowledge), so use with care and double check with the official template. Any help ironing out discrepancies is highly appreciated!
LaTeX class and template for the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant applications. The goal of this template is to be as close as possible to the original template provided by the ERC. However, at this time (2024) the call imposes very few strict rules for the formatting (margins, font size, font type), so you are always free to be more creative with it. For a wonderfully colorful example, see a proposal by Matthew von Hippel.
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Details and original template is provided here (calls are updated each year).
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For a
rtfversion of the template, you must start the submission process. The template will then be available on the left-hand side in a section named "Download Part B templates".
To use this template for your own grant proposal, you'll need to copy over
the Part B1 (erc-stg-b1-template.tex) and Part B2 (erc-stg-b2-template.tex)
template files. They both use the main document class definition from
erc-stg.cls and the bibliography file bibliography.bib. The repository also
contains two optional documents:
erc-stg-eligibility-extension-request-template.tex: A template for the form needed to request an extension for the grant.erc-stg-host-institution-letter-template.tex: A template for the form needed to attest that the host institution is willing to participate in the project.
When starting to work on the proposal, add the nocomments option to the
\documentclass at the top to remove all the explanations from the document
itself. You can, of course, just delete them too.
The resulting PDF files are included for easy viewing, but it is recommended to
build the two parts with e.g. latexmk as follows
latexmk -pdflua erc-stg-b1-template.tex
latexmk -pdflua erc-stg-b2-template.texUsing latexmk is recommended because it will nicely handle generating the
bibliography for you. If you use an IDE or Overleaf, this will be handled
automatically.
This packages provides the erc-stg class that is based on the KOMA-script
scrartcl class and accepts any options meant for it. It can be used as
\documentclass[11bp,arial,partone,draftproposal]{erc-stg}
% ... preamble ...
\begin{document}
% ... content ...
\end{document}The class has some options that can be used in the \documentclass command (as
above). They are set in the existing template files already. Any unknown
options are forwarded to the scrartcl class. There are three options meant
for drafting:
layoutgrid: overlays a grid on top of each page to check margins and other alignment issues.draftproposal: adds helpful drafting options, such as line numbers and a time stamp. This should also be removed from the templates when submitting.nocomments: disables the ERC template comments. These are just provided as documentation and should be disabled on the start of a new proposal.
The main options control the formatting of part B1 and B2. We have
partone: overwrites\maketitleto create the Part B1 title page.parttwo: overwrites\maketitlefor the Part B2 title.timesnewroman: selects the Times New Roman font (or TeX Gyre Terms) and ensures that the serif font is the default.arialselects the Arial font (or TeX Gyre Heros) and ensures the sans serif font is the default.
The class also provides a few useful commands that can be used in the proposal. These should be set in both the Part B1 and Part B2 files to ensure that the proposal metadata is available.
\ercauthor,\insertercauthor: sets the full author name (first and last name).\ercauthorlastname,\insertercauthorlastname: sets the author's last name (used in the header).\ercinstitution,\insertercinstitution: sets the hosting institution.\ercduration,\insertercduration: sets the duration of the project (in months).\erctitle,\inserterctitle: sets the proposal title.\ercacronym,\insertercacronym: sets the proposal acronym (must match the title).\ercsummary: defines the summary that appears on the title page of Part B1.\erccrossummary: defines the cross-disciplinary proposal justification that appears on the title page of Part B1. If no such justification is needed, use the\ercnocrosssummarycommand to remove the box and text for this part.
The following optional helper environments are also defined:
erccomment: exclusively used for the ERC documentation comments in the template. This is just there so that it can be globally disabled.erccvitem: a simple wrapper aroundtabularfor adding nicely aligned CV items.erctable: a simple wrapper aroundtabularwith consistent formatting.erclongtable: a simple wrapper aroundlongtablewith consistent formatting.
The official ERC guidelines require the Times New Roman, Arial or similar
fonts. On Windows, these should be available, but on Linux we fall back to the
TeX Gyre family of fonts. When using PDFLaTeX this class uses the tgtermes
package. When using XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX, we try to load the Times New Roman
font and, if it is not available, the TeX Gyre Terms font (or Arial and TeX
Gyre Heros, respectively). The official manual recommends the Nimbus fonts
(Nimbus Roman and Nimbus Sans), which are metrically compatible with TeX Gyre.
If these do not work for you, you can load fonts yourself using e.g.
% on PDFLaTeX
\usepackage{newtxtext}
\usepackage{newtxmath}
% on XeLaTeX / LuaLaTeX
\setmainfont{Times New Roman}
% or Nimbus Roman, if Times New Roman is not available
\setmainfont{Nimbus Roman}
% or Nimbus Sans, if Arial is not available
\setmainfont{Nimbus Sans}Various help around the web:
- My personal story to obtain an ERC grant – 7 submissions, 4 interviews and 6 heartbreaks: A little story about submitting ERC grants.
- An "Open-Source" Grant Proposal: Another proposal story.
- Some Thoughts on Writing a Successful ERC Proposal: Presentation slides.
- UK Research and Innovation: YouTube webinars for various ERC grants.
- Ghent University: Most big universities have some ERC grant help.
Other proposals:
Other templates:
- By Catrin Campbell-Moore (2024).
- By @trappitsch (2024) (for ERC Research Grants).
- By @birnstiel (2021).
- By @PierreSenellart (2019) (for ERC Consolidator Grants).
- By @pgarner (2015).
- By ARJ (2013) (on Overleaf).