MSCA Staff Exchanges 2026

MSCA Staff Exchanges involve organisations from the academic and non-academic sectors (including SMEs) from across the globe. International cooperation through the participation of organisations from non-associated third countries is strongly encouraged.

Support is provided for international, inter-sectoral and interdisciplinary mobility of R&I staff leading to knowledge transfer between participating organisations.

Mobility through secondments

The organisations constituting the partnership contribute directly to the implementation of a joint R&I project by seconding and/or hosting eligible staff members. Such a project must explore activities that can be based on previous work but should go beyond and generate or strengthen long-term collaborations. Secondments must involve physical mobility^[1] of the eligible staff members and must always take place between legal entities independent from each other.

MSCA Staff Exchanges can address different dimensions of mobility: international, inter-sectoral and interdisciplinary^[2]. Exchanges between organisations within EU Member States and Horizon Europe Associated Countries should mainly be inter-sectoral, but same-sector exchanges are also possible. Interdisciplinarity is particularly encouraged for secondments between academic organisations.

The collaborative approach of MSCA Staff Exchanges should exploit complementary competences of the participating organisations and create synergies between them. The secondments should be essential to achieve the joint project’s R&I activities. The project should inter alia enable networking activities and the organisation of workshops and conferences, to facilitate sharing of knowledge and testing of innovative approaches for specific R&I topics.

Skills’ development

For participating staff members, the project should offer new skills acquisition and career development perspectives. Participating organisations must ensure that the seconded staff are adequately mentored. Proposals should clearly describe how planned international, intersectoral and interdisciplinary secondments will expose seconded staff to different skills, working cultures or career trajectories.

[1] Virtual mobility is not allowed for secondments.

[2] Interdisciplinarity means the integration of information, data, techniques, tools, perspectives, concepts or theories from two or more scientific disciplines (see definitions at the end of this Work Programme part).