CTAO Funding Sources

The legal entity of the CTAO Central Organisation, the CTAO ERIC (European Research Infrastructure Consortium), was established by the European Commission in January 2025. Its former legal entity, CTAO gGmbH, will co-exist until all assets are transferred. The CTAO gGmbH has been receiving contributions mainly from research institutes constituting its Shareholders and Associate Members, while the CTAO ERIC is funded directly by Member States via their representing entities and expects further contributions from Strategic Partners and Third Parties.

The Central Organisation receives significant array components and services as in-kind contributions from worldwide In-Kind Contributors  that are crucial to the project.

Additionally, the Central Organisation collaborates with research institutes, both in the preparation of EU funded project proposals and the corresponding project development. Projects funded by EU grant agreements in which the CTAO has been involved are:

ACME Project (ongoing)

The CTAO is a part of the ACME (Astrophysics Center for Multimessenger studies in Europe) Project (project nr. 101131928), which receives funding from the EU Horizon research and innovation programme. This HORIZON-INFRA-2023-SERV-01 EU-funded project aims to realise an ambitious coordinated European-wide optimisation of the accessibility and cohesion between multiple leading Research Infrastructures, offering access to instruments, data and expertise, focused on the new science of multi-messenger astrophysics.

In addition, the CTAO gGmbH has received the following European Union funding:

ESCAPE Project (closed)

The CTAO gGmbH was a part of the ESCAPE (The European Science Cluster of Astronomy & Particle Physics ESFRI Research Infrastructures) project, which received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement no. 824064.

Latest news about the ESCAPE project:  ESCAPE to the Future Event Recommits ESCAPE Partners in Collaboration for Open Science.

CTA-DEV (closed)

The CTA-DEV project received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme ([FP7/2007-2013]) under Grant Agreement no. 676134. CTA-DEV addressed specific topics identified as the main bottlenecks towards the implementation of the CTAO global facility with the purpose to provide to the CTAO Central Organisation member states a legal framework for the preparations of the Observatory, to administer the project management and systems engineering, and to prepare for the deployment of the CTAO facility.