Call for Advanced Computing Projects (7th ed) - A2 | A3 (Round A) | Fast Track

The Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) seeks to aggregate national advanced computing resources, promoting cooperation between the various centres involved and developing national and international partnerships with other entities. Under the terms of the Advanced Computing Projects Regulation, published under no. 1159/2026 in the Diário da República, the allocation of national computing resources is made following a tender procedure whose terms are publicised on the FCT website.

The following are eligible beneficiaries, either individually or in co-promotion:

• R&D (Research and Development) institutions;
• Collaborative laboratories;
• Technological interface centres;
• Science and technology infrastructures;
• Science and technology networks and consortia;
• Private non-profit institutions whose main purpose is R&D activities;
• Digital Innovation Hubs;
• Other public and private non-profit institutions that develop or participate in research, development, or innovation activities;
• Companies developing advanced computing projects within research, development, or innovation activities;
• Individuals carrying out activities in Portugal who intend to develop advanced computing projects in any scientific field.

Regarding applications submitted by companies as beneficiaries, advanced computing projects must:

• take place within the scope of pre-competitive research and innovation, where the goods or services resulting from such research or innovation do not yet have an assigned commercial value;
• not exceed, together with all applications of this type, 50% of the total computational allocation available under the present call.

• High Performance Computing (HPC)
• Artificial Intelligence Computing (IA)
• Scientific Cloud Computing (SCC)

These advanced computational models aim to support applications in various areas, such as bioinformatics, climate, materials and life science, computational chemistry, physics, and civil engineering, among others, thus supporting research and enhancing the competitiveness of the national industry.

• A0 – Experimental Access recommended for teams with no previous experience or history of using RNCA resources to test and explore the available HPC, AI, Cloud or visualisation resources for 6 months.
• A1 – Development Access recommended for software performance testing, code optimisation, scalability testing, benchmarking, re-factoring for 3 - 12 months.
• A2 – Regular Access recommended for scientific or innovation projects whose team has consolidated previous experience and needs resources in Deucalion and/or Cirrus+Stratus platforms for 12 months.
• A3 - Larger Access recommended for scientific or innovation projects whose team has consolidated previous experience and require larger amounts of resources on the Deucalion or MareNostrum 5 platforms for 12 months.

See more details on the limits and maximum duration for each type in section 3.2 of the Call Notice - check supporting documentation in the sidebar.

Under the terms of Articles 14 and 15 of the Advanced Computing Project Regulations and in accordance with the call notice and evaluation guide, all A2 and A3, in fast track applications will only be submitted for validation of technical suitability by the technical teams operating the computing platforms in accordance with the following simplified criteria:

• T1: Technical suitability to the computational resources 
• T2: Computational resources reasonableness 
• T3: Work Plan

This validation is based on the qualitative classification of "accepted" and "not accepted", with no final score being calculated. Accepted applications will be dealt with in rounds and on a first-come, first-served basis until the defined quota is exhausted.

A2 and A3 Applications must be submitted in English on a form on the myFCT platform.

At the end of the deadline, applications will be validated for their technical suitability and then allocated to the platforms. If the quota of resources (15%) is not used up in this batch, new batches of submissions will be opened according to the schedule:

Round of applications | Submission dates

A 22/09/2026 (17h) – 17/11/2026 (17h) Fast Track **
B 17/11/2025 (17h) – 19/01/2027 (17h) Fast Track **
C 19/01/2027 (17h) – 16/03/2027 (17h) Fast Track ** & Integral Track ***
D 16/03/2027 (17h) – 15/06/2027 (17h) Fast Track** 
E 15/06/2027 (17h) – 14/09/2027 (17h) Fast Track **

* New rounds will not be opened in the event of resource exhaustion in the previous round. Date format: dd/mm/yyyy.

** Fast track with technical and administrative validation ONLY for projects with prior scientific evaluation in the last three years – see point 8.1.1 of the notice – call open continuously in five cut-offs.
***  Integral track will include evaluation by external scientific evaluation panels, as well as technical and administrative validation – applications are open in two non-consecutive cut-offs

Important note: The following limits defined in the call for proposals apply:

• Limits for A2 applications: Each IR can submit a maximum of ONE application in each typology, throughout the entire call, subject to the availability of resources. In other words, for each typology, for each call (regardless of the batches), each person can only be associated one time as IR (see the call notice).
• Resource limit for A2 projects: 3 000 000 CPU core.hours, 1000 GPU.hours, between 3 and 6 months (see the call notice).

• Limits for A3 applications: Each IR can submit a maximum of ONE application in each typology, throughout the entire call, subject to the availability of resources. In other words, for each typology, for each call (regardless of the batches), each person can only be associated one time as IR (see the call notice).
• Resource limit for A3 projects: 30 000 000 CPU core.hours, 50 000 GPU.hours, between 3 and 12 months (see the call notice).

Information about applications can be requested through the email address: computacao-avancada@fccn.pt 

No information published on this page replaces or supersedes the Regulations and the Call Notice.