Three German universities and two research consortia awarded new Excellence status and funding

At a press briefing in Bonn, Federal Research Minister Dorothee Bär and Lower Saxony Science Minister Falko Mohrs disclosed that three additional German universities - Freiburg, Jena and Cologne - have been granted the Excellence University designation. The announcement also included two newly recognised research consortia: the Rhein-Main Universities (Darmstadt, Mainz and Frankfurt) and a partnership between TU Dortmund and the University of Bochum’s Ruhr Innovation Lab.

All recipients will become eligible for substantial annual funding provided jointly by the federal government and the respective state. The Excellence status is reviewed every seven years, and the programme already supports a number of long-standing institutions such as Aachen, Bonn, Dresden and others. The broader Excellence strategy allocates hundreds of millions of euros each year to promote high-impact research clusters across German higher education.