The European Research Council (ERC) officially announced, the adoption of its 2021 Work Programme by the European Commission, making it the first Work Programme to be approved in the frame of HORIZON EUROPE, the EU’s Framework Programme for Research and Innovation 2021-2027. Furthermore, an updated timeline for the opening and closing of the upcoming 2021 ERC Calls for Proposals, has also been announced. Starting Grants | ERC-2021-StG Open: 25-02-2021 Deadline: 08-04-2021 Consolidator Grants | ERC-2021-CoG Open: 11-03-2021 Deadline: 20-04-2021 Advanced Grants | ERC-2021-AdG Open: 20-05-2021 Deadline: 31-08-2021 Via the 2021 Calls for Proposals, ERC will provide €1.9 billion to around 1000 top researchers, in all stages of their career, in order to support them perform frontier research. The first 2021 ERC Call, namely the ERC Starting Grant 2021, opened on the 25 February 2021, with deadline on 8 April 2021, while on 11 March 2021 ERC opened the ERC Consolidator Grant 2021. Interested researchers should carefully study all important official documents on the aforementioned links. The 2021 ERC Work Programme, does not include a Call for Proposals for ERC Synergy Grants, however the next Call is expected to be announced around summer 2021, with funding coming from the 2022 ERC Work Programme. Likewise, no Call for the ERC Proof of Concept Grant is foreseen in the 2021 Work Programme and revisions of this grant scheme are expected. The Research and Innovation Foundation (RIF), can support researchers interested to submit proposals with a Host Institution in Cyprus, during the proposal preparation, via consulting support and pre-screening services, via the National Contact Point for ERC (Katerina Karakasidou Malla, kkarakasidou@research.org.cy, tel 22205036).