Challenge Programs 2026 Novo Nordisk Foundation Webinar

When: June 2025

1. Monday, 2nd June 2025, 14:00-15:00 CET (Modelling Human Cardiometabolic Disease)
2. Thursday, 12th June 2025, 13:00 - 14:00 CET (Biological systems under non-equilibrium conditions)
3. Wednesday, 18th June 2025, 15:00-16:00 CET (Unravelling the pathways of human invasive fungal diseases)

What: The Novo Nordisk Foundation’s 2026 Challenge Program aims to address major challenges in science and society. By fostering interdisciplinary collaboration among European researchers, the program seeks to leverage new technologies and scientific advances to create innovative solutions. The program encompasses four themes, each focusing on a critical area of research. The Challenge Program provides grants of up to DKK 75 million per project and a total of 150 million within each theme, encouraging ambitious and impactful research endeavors.

1. Modelling human cardiometabolic disease

   Cardiometabolic diseases (CMDs) such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease are the leading cause of death worldwide. Despite significant efforts to improve treatments, many drug candidates fail in early clinical trials – partly due to poor translation of findings from pre-clinical disease models into humans. Thus, there is an urgent need to develop better human CMD models – models that more accurately reflect complex disease and successfully translate basic discoveries into humans.

   For the Challenge program 2026, the Novo Nordisk Foundation asks researchers across Europe to join forces to meet this challenge. Whether in vitro, in vivo, or in silico – it is time to leverage recent scientific advances, new technologies and increased computational power to develop the next generation of disease models.

    

2. Biological systems under non-equilibrium conditions

   This webinar will cover information on the Challenge Program eligibility and application process as well as specific information about the theme ‘Biological systems under non-equilibrium conditions’.

   The challenge is to uncover the mechanisms that drive development, function and self-organisation of biological systems under non-equilibrium conditions. The outcomes of this Challenge will improve our understanding and prediction of complex systems under physiological conditions. Implications span from single biomolecules to the organism level, with potential applications in accelerated drug development, tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, and sustainable biotechnology.

   On Thursday, 28th August 2025, the Novo Nordisk Foundation will also host a workshop to foster research partnerships and initiate innovative solutions addressing this 2026 Challenge Program theme: Biological systems under non-equilibrium conditions. Find more information here and sign up here.

    

3. Unravelling the pathways of human invasive fungal diseases

The Challenge Program invites ambitious and collaborative projects that are transformative and impactful in their aim to generate important  new knowledge about human invasive fungal diseases and enable the development of better diagnostics and therapeutics.

Who: The webinars are aimed at potential applicants and others who may be interested in learning more about the Challenge programs.

Where: The webinars will be held online.

How: For participation, please sign up separately for all 3 webinars at the latest the day before the webinar:

1. Challenge: Modelling Human Cardiometabolic Disease: sign up
2. Challenge: Biological systems under non-equilibrium conditions: sign up
3. Challenge: Unravelling the pathways of human invasive fungal diseases: sign up

Presenter: The Novo Nordisk Foundation (NNF).

Further information about the webinars and the Challenge programs can be found on NNFs homepage.

N.B. The webinars will be in English.