TU Darmstadt secures €210 million in third-party funding
2026/03/25
Over the last year, TU Darmstadt has obtained around 210.3 million euros in third-party funding. This represents a slight increase in the already high level of third-party funding – at a time when third-party funding is generally decreasing. The positive result underscores TU Darmstadt’s strong performance.
“I am delighted that, in 2025, we at TU Darmstadt succeeded in impressing once again in various competitive formats with our high-level research,” says TU President Professor Tanja Brühl. “I would like to sincerely thank all of the researchers at our university for their successful work on innovative and pio-neering projects – both in basic and in applied research. My sincere thanks also go to our colleagues from research support areas in all parts of the TU. Their impressive commitment is a key part of our joint success.”
My sincere thanks also go to our colleagues from research support areas in all parts of the TU. Their impressive commitment is a key part of our joint success.
Professor Tanja Brühl, President of TU Darmstadt
Third-party funding refers to funding that a university obtains from third parties in addition to its basic funding from the state and federal govern-ment. This money is usually linked to a project or area and is for a limited period of time. The amount of third-party funding is an important indicator of a university’s performance and research strength, as Professor Matthias Oechsner, Vice-President for Research at TU Darmstadt, explains: “It is an impressive signal that we at TU Darmstadt have been able to slightly in-crease the amount of third-party funding obtained at a time of falling ap-proval rates. We actively contribute our proven strengths as a Technical Uni-versity when cooperating with our partners within the strategic alliance of the Rhine-Main Universities (RMU). By combining our complementary pro-files, new solutions and changes are created for the near future. We also want to convince the reviewers in the competition for the status of a German University Network of Excellence of the great opportunities and potential of this alliance in April.”
As in 2024, by far the biggest provider of third-party funding was the federal government with 69.8 million euros (minus 8.9 per cent compared to the previous year), followed by the German Research Foundation (DFG) with around 52.9 million euros (minus 5.6 per cent). 33.2 per cent of the TU’s third-party funding comes from the federal government budget, 25.1 per cent from the DFG. The decrease in DFG funding for TU Darmstadt reflects a gen-eral trend. The Research Foundation’s funding rates for applications from all universities have been decreasing for several years. The drop in individual funding in the field of natural sciences, which is traditionally important for TU Darmstadt, is especially severe. TU Darmstadt is also affected by this trend.
One important reason for the increase in TU third-party funding was funding from the European Union, which increased by around 75.6 per cent to 26.1 million euros compared to the previous year. This corresponds to 12.4 per cent of the total third-party funding income. The increase is above all at-tributable to prestigious ERC grants, collaborative projects coordinated by TU researchers, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Doctoral Networks, and EU structural support.
Alongside funding from the EU, federal government and DFG, LOEWE fund-ing from the state of Hesse is a further significant source of third-party fund-ing for TU Darmstadt. The development here was also positive: income over the last year came to 15.7 million euros, an increase of around 14.1 per cent compared to 2024. The funding comes from the collaborative research pro-grammes in the LOEWE research cluster and research centres as well as indi-vidual grants under the LOEWE Exploration and LOEWE Top, Start and Transfer Professorships funding lines.
TU Darmstadt also recorded a large increase in third-party funding for indus-trial collaborative research projects and in funding from the AIF Alliance for Industry and Research. In total, projects with a funding volume of 4.5 million euros were acquired here – an increase of 40.8 per cent. This item represents 2.1 per cent of the third-party funding portfolio.
Industry also provided around 27.5 million euros of funding for joint projects with the TU (minus 3.6 per cent, representing 13.1 per cent of the total third-party funding income). Further projects with external partners came to around 13.7 million euros (minus 5.9 per cent, representing 6.5 per cent of the total third-party funding income).
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