Expected number of grants

The work programme states, for each topic, how many projects the Commission expects to fund. It is one line among many and it is the single most informative number in the document, because it converts an abstract budget into your actual odds.

Divide the topic budget by the expected number of grants and you have the expected EU contribution per project. That figure tells you how large your proposal should be, and it is far more reliable than any general advice about typical project size. A proposal sized at double the topic's own expectation reads as not having read the topic.

It also tells you what you are competing against. A topic with a €20 million budget expecting two grants and a topic with the same budget expecting twenty are entirely different propositions: the first will be won by a large established consortium, the second is genuinely open. Applicants who look only at the budget consistently misjudge this.

The number is rarely displayed where people look. Portal summaries show the budget and the deadline and omit the expected grants, so the information sits in the work programme where fewer applicants go. Bemzu carries it wherever the source publishes it, and says plainly when it does not rather than filling the gap with an estimate.

Where it is genuinely absent, the honest substitute is the previous round of the same topic: how many projects were funded, and at what average size. That is public information, and it is a better basis for a decision than an assumption.