Barcelona resolves youth research with 23 projects approved and 118 denied

The Barcelona City Council has resolved the call for grants for young and emerging research projects 2026 with 23 projects provisionally approved, 118 denied, and 8 applications inadmissible. The resolution was issued on October 30, 2026, by the Deputy Mayor for Economy, Housing, Finance, and Tourism, using the powers delegated by the mayoral decree of June 17, 2023. The act is published in the Official Gazette of the Province of Barcelona (BOPB) on November 6, 2026, in the local administration section, with the reference CVE 202610164862.

Notification is made by publication in the gazette, as provided for in section 12.12 of the call, and the resolution is organized into three annexes: the first with the inadmissible applications, the second with those provisionally approved, and the third with those denied. Each grant has a ceiling of 80,000 euros per project, split 50% between the 2026 and 2027 annual installments, and the total of the 23 approved projects exceeds 1.7 million euros. The document bears the signature of Cristina Caballero Guzmán, delegated secretary, and is dated Barcelona, November 3, 2026.

Twenty-three projects approved, led by La Caixa and IRTA

The admitted projects were ordered by score and are distributed among research centers, universities, and hospital foundations. The highest-rated are:

• BLOOD-CLONES BCN, from the La Caixa Research Institute Foundation (file 2026_OVT_687924), 9.53 points and 80,000 euros.
• LOOKWISE, from the Institute of Agri-Food Research and Technology (file 2026_OVT_683630), 9.32 points and 79,132.40 euros.
• AQUASHIELD BCN, from the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Foundation (file 2026_OVT_681791), 9.23 points and 80,000 euros.
• COMPOST(d)ADES, from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (file 2026_OVT_681831), 9.10 points and 65,000 euros.
• Glial reactivity and sex differences in early Alzheimer’s disease, from the BarcelonaBeta Brain Research Center (file 2026_OVT_688033), 9.08 points and 80,000 euros.

Also appearing are the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, with several projects such as CircularFood (2026_OVT_685155) or AgroReg-BCN (2026_OVT_688102), and the Clínic Barcelona Research Foundation – August Pi i Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute, with PARLA-BCN (2026_OVT_687773). The approval is conditional: defects must be corrected and documentation from annex 2 must be provided, which includes debt certificates from the AEAT, the TGSS, and the IMH, as well as the NIF of the beneficiary and the legal representative, statutes, registry registration, and declarations of transparency and delinquency.

Eight inadmissions and 118 denials due to exhausted credit

Annex 1 contains eight applications inadmissible for processing, with three possible reasons: duplication of the request, failure to submit the mandatory documentation, or failure to correct it within the period provided for in point 4.3 of the call. Among the affected entities are:

• Fundació Institut de Recerca de l’Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau (2026_OVT_683514).
• Fundació Institut de Bioenginyeria de Catalunya (IBEC) (2026_OVT_684006).
• Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (2026_OVT_681946).
• Universitat Pompeu Fabra, with three applications (2026_OVT_687340, 2026_OVT_687758 and 2026_OVT_688129).
• Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (2026_OVT_685380) and TRUNCAT: Conservació i Recerca del Medi Marí (2026_OVT_688633).

Annex 3, with 118 denied applications, is dominated by code 2, that is, denial due to the exhaustion of the available budget credit: the cutoff is around 8.78 points, and the first project excluded for this reason is CULIMED-BARCELONA, from the Fundació de Recerca Clínic Barcelona (2026_OVT_687917), with 8.77 points. Only two projects are left out for not reaching the minimum score (code 4): NutriPlay, from the Institut d’Investigació Biomèdica de Bellvitge (2026_OVT_687257), with 6.94 points, and Nat-Well-Nano, from the Universitat Ramon Llull (2026_OVT_679072), with 6.30.

Ten working days to correct and two months to appeal

The deadlines opened by the resolution are as follows:

• Ten working days, counted from the day after publication in the BOPB, to submit allegations and to provide the documentation required in annex 2.
• Failure to correct or provide documentation within the deadline is equivalent to withdrawal of the application.
• Provisional granting does not generate any right as a beneficiary until the final resolution is notified.
• Against inadmissions, which exhaust the administrative route, a motion for reconsideration may be filed within one month or a contentious-administrative appeal within two months before the Jutjats del Contenciós Administratiu de Barcelona.
• The act will also be published on the City Council’s electronic notice board.

The resolution arrives while Barcelona’s urban research sector is still awaiting the closing of the municipal calls of the cycle, and leaves more than a hundred proposals without funding that had exceeded the minimum score but not the credit limit. For young and emerging research groups, the real room for maneuver is reduced to ten working days to complete the file; for the rest, the decision confirms that the bottleneck is not scientific quality but budgetary availability.

Fuente: Butlletí Oficial de la Província de Barcelona, November 6, 2026, Local Administration, pp. 1-24 (official reference: CVE 202610164862).