Countdown to the decision in the Excellence Competition

The decision will be announced on Friday, 2 October, at 4 pm via livestream (in German). Of the eleven applications in total from universities and university consortia, no more than five stand a chance of being selected – and thus of receiving funding amounting to millions from the federal and state governments for at least seven years. These will join ten existing centres of excellence. Should the University of Würzburg be successful with its application, it would be the first Bavarian University of Excellence outside the state capital, Munich.

“Being recognised as a University of Excellence would make us more visible on the international stage than ever before, it would attract outstanding talent from all over the world and put us in a position to offer them, and our students, an environment in which they can research and learn with the best”, said University President Paul Pauli. “It would be a ground-breaking step.”

A close race for the title

JMU had already secured the formal eligibility to apply for a new “University of Excellence“ title over a year ago: Individual universities were only eligible to apply if they had secured funding for two so-called clusters of excellence under a preceding funding programme – large research consortia in which scientists from different disciplines work on forward-looking topics. Würzburg succeeded in doing this in May 2025 with two projects: ctd.qmat, a cluster dedicated to research into quantum materials, and NUCLEATE, a cluster focused on nucleic acid research.