A practical guide to apply for a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA-PF) at Complutense University

Step-by-step for MSCA-PF, is a website made by the UCM European Office, to help applicants in the process of preparing and writing a successful MSCA-PF application.

The information is organized into those steps that we believe can make the work more efficient. You will find an explanation of the tasks that are part of each step, as well as a suggestion of who has to do each of the tasks. Finally, you will find links to other websites and documents that we believe can be very useful.

Keep calm and let’s do it!

MAKE SURE THAT YOU ARE ELIGIBLE FOR MSCA-PF

Who? Postdoctoral Researcher

How?  Briefly, to be eligible, you must:

  1. Be a Postdoctoral Researcher (PR) by the date of the deadline (meaning, having defended your doctoral thesis).
  2. Have a maximum of 8 years of postdoctoral experience by the date of the deadline (career breaks or years spent outside R&D do not count, and for nationals/residents of MS or AC reintegrating into a MS or AC, neither do years spent in third countries).
  3. Comply with the appropriate rules of mobility; they are different for EF or GF.

There are 2 types of MSCA-PF, with different eligibility conditions: European Fellowships and Global Fellowships (GF). Select the type of action you will apply to in the MSCA-PF program and make sure you comply with the specific set of eligibility conditions. You can check the eligibility conditions for this call in the Work Programme, page 121. 

Resubmission? 
 
Proposals involving the same beneficiary and individual researcher submitted to the previous call of MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships under Horizon Europe and having received a score of less than 70% must NOT be resubmitted to current call. Applicants who scored over 70%, will be allowed to re-submit a proposal as well as applicants that were rejected under the previous year’s Postdoctoral Fellowship call.

NOTIFY YOUR INTENTION TO APPLY FOR A MSCA-PF

 Who? Postdoctoral Researcher

How? Write an email to promocion.oeid@ucm.es informing us which type of grant you want to apply for (European Fellowships or Global Fellowships) and the research group within UCM you want to apply with.

CREATE AN ACCOUNT IN EU LOGIN

Who? Postdoctoral Researcher

How? In order to be able to access the application for the preparation and submission of the project proposal you must create an account in the EU login service. For this purpose follow the directions in this link.

REGISTER YOUR PROPOSAL IN THE FUNDING & TENDERS PORTAL SUBMISSION SERVICE

Who? Postdoctoral Researcher

How? Log into the Funding & Tenders Opportunities portal (top right corner) using your EU login account credentials. Then, open the webpage for the 2025 call and scroll down to the “Submission service / Start Submission” section.

You should select the option appropriate to the type of action you intend to apply for (see Step 0) and click on the “Start Submission” button. Now a disclaimer should appear. Confirm the acceptance of the conditions and a new window will open in the browser, leading you to the Portal Submission Service*.

  • In this new screen you will find the links to the official templates to write your proposal, download them.
  • Afterwards, continue registering the proposal in the EC system. Get detailed directions following this link

In order to register your proposal you will need the following information:

  • Beneficiary: Universidad Complutense de Madrid
  • Participant Identification Code: 999874546
  • In the field “Your role”, select “Researcher”.
  • Beneficiary contacts: it is mandatory to create a contact for the “Scientific Supervisor” with “Coordinator Contact” privileges. The OEID’s members (Lidia Prieto – lidiprie@ucm.es, Aitor Marcos – aimarc01@ucm.es) must also be included as “Contact Persons” with “Coordinator Contact” privileges, so they will be able to follow up on the preparation of the proposal.

*If the EC website fails in this action, try to register your proposal using another web browser (e.g. Google Chrome, Firefox, etc).

Who? Postdoctoral Researcher / Scientific Supervisor / OEID

How? A proposal is composed, at a minimum, of the administrative forms (part A) and the scientific/technical proposal (part B). The administrative forms must be completed online in the Portal Submission Service. Check the configuration of your internet browser (indications are provided in the application). Please note that some data fields in the administrative forms are pre-filled based on the previous steps in the submission wizard (like the abstract). However, you should check that all of them are up to date before the proposal submission. Should you have any question or need guidance about the “Declarations” section send an e-mail to OEID.

1. WRITE THE TECHNICAL PART OF THE PROPOSAL

Who? Postdoctoral Researcher / Scientific Supervisor

How? The technical part of the proposal, the description of your project, is called Part B, and must be completed offline, using the templates that you downloaded in the Submission Service Portal in Step 3. 

Read the templates carefully and try to understand what is expected in each section. Also, keep in mind that evaluators, although they are experts in your field, may not be experts in the research objectives of your project. Therefore, write your proposal from a technical point of view, but one that can be understood by any colleague in your field.

There are numerous materials to support Postdoctoral Researchers in drafting the templates of the MSCA proposal. We have curated and ordered the available documents according to their usefulness to help you in this fundamental step.

You will find that part of the information you are requested to provide in the proposal has to do with the Universidad Complutense as the institution hosting your project. There are parts of the proposal that are in this sense host-institution-dependent. We have created a  Guide to UCM specific issues – MSCA-PF to help you draft these parts.

You should initially focus your efforts on the design of the research project of the excellence section. The 40% chance of getting the funding depends on it. The project must be original and innovative (not incremental), the objectives ought to have at least a European scope (e.g., strategic EC policies, significant advancement of the state of the art of your discipline, roadmaps, current social challenges, white papers, etc.) and, it should spring from the union of your backgrounds (supervisor & fellow) in research (double transfer of knowledge). 

The Guide for Applicants (link) and the MSCA Work Programme (link) by the European Commission contain the key information about the objectives of the programme, modalities of participation, eligibility criteria, evaluation criteria and a blueprint of the technical proposal templates to be submitted. The Guide complements and explains the Work programme, but does not replace it; therefore, both documents should be read side by side.  If you have any administrative or formal questions about the MSCA-PF call, consult these documents. Besides, the MSCA Guidelines on Supervision is the reference document to craft a supervision schedule during the fellowship that meets the requirements of the call.

2. OTHER GUIDES

  • MSCA Individual Fellowships Handbook 2025: This unofficial document has been prepared by MSCA’s network of NCPs (MSCA-NET). This handbook consists of the official 2025 annotated templates (most updated version). Inside, there are explanations, examples, and tips on how to write the different sections easily. This guide can be considered as a reference book in the proposal drafting phase.

3. EXTRA BONUS!

There are two aspects that OEID wants to warn you about in advance. On the one hand, you must pay attention to every detail in these 10 pages (part B). The MSCA-PF is such a competitive call that even slightly vague statements or minor mistakes can leave you out. On the other hand, crafting an appealing narrative is crucial to drafting a competitive proposal. Evaluators read many proposals over several days — make yours stand out.

We encourage you to request the document ‘Good Examples of MSCA-PF‘ from us. This document contains excerpts from successfully funded projects that we consider exemplary.

It’s important to clarify that these examples are intended to inspire rather than dictate how your proposal should be structured. Our goal is to provide inspiration for refining sections where you may have uncertainties.

For further engagement with the proposal writing phase, OEID has crafted an ‘ESR Analysis’ containing the most common comments of evaluators for proposals of MSCA-PF-2025. Read it carefully to gain knowledge on the aspects that evaluators pay attention to.

Once you have completed Step 3 (Registration), please reach out to us at promocion.oeid@ucm.es to request access to these documents. We will verify your completion of this step before providing it to you.

ASSESSMENT AND REVIEW

Who? Postdoctoral Researcher, Scientific Supervisor & OEID

How? When you have a complete version of your proposal, we suggest that you review your work. After that, let others evaluate your proposal, specially your scientific supervisor. It is also a good idea to ask for the opinion of colleagues, especially for the review of the scientific part. 

In the last step of the evaluation, the experts will use a grid to rate your proposal. This evaluation template can be used to guide self-evaluation. Draft the proposal thinking about who will evaluate it. 

The OEID can review one draft of your proposal. Experience shows that proposals reviewed achieve better results. To gain access to this reviewing service, send your proposal before June 30th. We will review as many proposals as possible on a first-come, first-served basis. Don’t be late. Use the email address promocion.oeid@ucm.es.

Global Fellowship

In Global Fellowships, a Letter of Commitment from the Third Country Host Institution must be  included in Part B2 of the proposal. If the letter of commitment of the partner organization is not provided, the proposal will be considered incomplete and therefore will be declared inadmissible. Also, please make sure that the letter is clearly visible in the submitted part B-2 – every year a number of proposals are declared inadmissible because the letter of commitment is not visible.

Please note that no fixed template for this letter is provided. In section 7 (Part B-2) you will find a non-binding example template of Commitment letter for MSCA-PF-GF partner organizations.

Before the letter is signed, send this document to us for review/approval at any time. We have not established a deadline for this process, but do not leave this task to the last moment.