Wissenschaftsrat

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Programme history

Excellence Strategy of the Federal and State Governments | Logo


On 19 July 2019, the Excellence Commission responsible for the decision selected ten universities and one university consortium from 19 applications for permanent funding from 1 November 2019. A list of the universities and the university consortium funded in the funding line Universities of Excellence and the university consortium can be found here.

On 11 December 2014, the Federal Chancellor and the Prime Ministers of the states (Länder) adopted a decision of principle on the succession to the Excellence Initiative after 2017:

GWK Basic Decision on the Succession to the Excellence Initiative, 2014 (German version only).

On 29 January 2016, the Report of the International Expert Commission for the Evaluation of the Excellence Initiative was published (the “Imboden Commission”, German version only).

In the context of the public expert talk on the “Further Development of the Excellence Initiative” scheduled for 17 February 2016 in the Bundestag Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment, the Chairman of the German Science and Humanities Council (Wissenschaftsrat), Prof. Dr. Manfred Prenzel, issued a position statement.

On 22 April 2016, the GWK published a press release on the new federal/state agreement on the succession to the Excellence Initiative (in German only).

On 16 June 2016, the Federal Chancellor and the Prime Ministers of the States (Länder) adopted the Administrative Agreement persuant to Article 91b, Paragraph 1 of the Basic Law (Grundgesetz) on the Funding of Top-Level Research at Universities - "Excellence Strategy” (German version only).

In a joint press release from 17th June 2016, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation, DFG) and the Wissenschaftsrat (German Science and Humanities Council, WR) welcomed the agreement reached on the new federal/state initiative (German press release).

On 11 July 2016, the WR published a programme announcement for the launch of the “Excellence Strategy” (German version only).

On 28 September 2016, the WR and the DFG published a joint press release on the call for proposals for both the Universities of Excellence and Clusters of Excellence funding lines.

The joint press release of the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) and the WR (Wissenschaftsrat) on the second meeting of the Committee of experts of 7 April 2017 is available here.

On 27 September 2018, the Committee of Experts consisting of international researchers and the Excellence Commission consisting of the federal and state science and research ministers selected a total of 57 Clusters of Excellence from 88 funding proposals for further funding. A list containing the titles and universities where the selected Clusters of Excellence are located, as well as all further information on the decisions, can be found on the DFG website.

On 19 July 2019, the Excellence Commission, which is responsible for the decision-making, selected ten universities and one university consortium for long-term funding from 1 November 2019 from 19 proposals. A list of the universities funded and the university consortium funded through the Excellence Strategy can be found here.