Update by the Chair of the German ET Coordination Group on funding in Germany, Oliver Gerberding:
Dear all,
Germany has awarded €29M to six joint Einstein Telescope (ET) R&D projects under the new ET-VorPro programme (2026–2029), strengthening instrument and hardware development. The funding will expand German ET activities, create dozens of research positions via a new jobs portal, and follows strong engagement with government representatives to showcase Germany’s leading ET contributions.
I would like to provide you with some information about recent developments in R&D funding for ET in Germany. Early in 2026 BMFTR released a call for applications for a so-called preparatory program (Vorbereitungsprogramm, ET-VorPro) to fund activities preparing the German community for the realization of ET by extending research on key technologies and by strengthening German expertise.
The applicants have now been informed of the funding decisions. In total six joint projects were selected for funding, with a total amount of about 29M€ granted over three years. This is a great boost for R&D funding in Germany and will enable us to make much more comprehensive contributions to the design and development of ET going forward. The current funding focuses almost exclusively on instrument and hardware-related R&D and should strengthen specifically the ET collaborations instrument science board (ISB) activities. For research on data analysis, simulations and theory, which is also crucial and urgent to prepare for ET and where Germany also has leading expertise, we are also in discussions about centralised funding with BMFTR.
The funding period of the Vorbereitungsprogramm started in July 2026 and will run until June 2029. Through this program also many activities will be continued and extended that were previously part of the ErUM-Pro Universum funding line through the 3G-GWD joint project, which ran from 2020 to 2026.
As the funding decisions arrived only recently the joint projects have just started their work. We will hear more about the individual projects in the coming weeks and months and we have invited the speakers of the joint projects to participate and report in the German coordination team. Through this funding we also have the opportunity to recruit several dozen outstanding researchers. To support this effort, we have established a central job portal for all German Einstein Telescope positions:
https://www.einstein-teleskop.de/jobs/. An RSS feed with the latest job announcements is also available: https://www.einstein-teleskop.de/feed/stellen/. Please feel free to share this portal with interested colleagues and students. You are also invited to use the portal to advertise otherwise funded ET positions in Germany.
Finally, I can also report about a presentation I gave on behalf of the German community to the board of governmental representatives (BGR) on June 29th, who conducted their meeting in Hannover. After a very nice tour to GEO600 we had the opportunity to present the broad German activities on the Einstein Telescope to the BGR. The presentation, which was put together with the help of various members of the coordination team (thank you again!) was very well received by the BGR members and there was a lot of interest to learn about the various activities in Germany.