New call for proposals: NRP 86 "Digital Resilience of Critical Infrastructures"
This National Research Programme seeks interdisciplinary research projects with elements of transdisciplinary research, which will contribute to strengthening critical infrastructures against cyberattacks and digital disruptions.
The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) is launching a call for the National Research Programme "Digital Resilience of Critical Infrastructures" (NRP 86) based on a mandate from the Federal Council.
Goals and characteristics of NRP 86
NRP 86 aims to strengthen the resilience of Switzerland's critical infrastructures towards cyberattacks and other digital disruptions. It will fund research that improves the knowledge base on vulnerabilities and risks, develops technically viable and socially acceptable solutions, and proposes governance and coordination mechanisms for an agile collective cyber defence.
NRP 86 consists of four research areas:
The research area "Data" will examine what qualifies as relevant cybersecurity data and how access to, curation of, protection of and sharing of such data can be improved between academia, public authorities and critical infrastructure operators.
The research area "Best practices" will assess which organisational, technical and operational practices can be regarded as state of the art and how they can be adopted, tested, adapted and transferred across Swiss critical infrastructure sectors.
The research area "Incentives" will investigate the economic, regulatory, behavioural and institutional conditions that shape cybersecurity investment and identify ways to align organisational decisions with system-level resilience.
The research area "Collective defence" will explore how operators, suppliers, authorities, regulators, researchers and users can coordinate responsibilities, information exchange, risk assessment and joint responses before, during and after cyber incidents.
NRP 86 will fund interdisciplinary research with elements of transdisciplinary research and practical relevance for owners and operators of critical infrastructures, security practitioners, public authorities, regulators, insurers, researchers and users of critical services. Projects are expected to involve non-academic partners, to contribute to programme-level knowledge exchange, and to produce outputs that can be taken up in policy, governance, organisational practice, technical implementation, training and public decision-making.
The programme will operate with overall funding of 5 million Swiss francs, which is expected to fund approximately five to ten projects across the four research areas. Project budgets must range between 300,000 and 800,000 Swiss francs, and projects may run for 18 to 36 months. Co-financing with other funding sources is strongly welcomed.
Submission procedure and deadlines
Applicants must submit an expression of interest via the SNSF Portal by 24 November 2026, 5 p.m. Swiss local time. This step allows the SNSF to organise the upcoming evaluation procedure. There will be no evaluation or preselection at this stage.
Please note that it will not be possible to submit a full proposal if an expression of interest is not submitted by the appropriate deadline. The submission deadline for full proposals is 19 January 2027, 5 p.m. Swiss local time. Detailed information on the participation requirements as well as on the submission and evaluation procedures is available in the call document.