Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships: CPRA 2026 Guide

What Happened to the Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships?

Banting was a long-running federal postdoctoral award intended to develop high-potential researchers into future research leaders. The programme is now listed by CIHR as discontinued for new applicants.

Canada has reorganized its federal research-training awards into the Canada Research Training Awards Suite. At the postdoctoral level, the current harmonized programme is the Canada Postdoctoral Research Award (CPRA), administered by CIHR, NSERC and SSHRC.

This CareerAidHub page is retained because researchers still search for Banting by name. The useful action now is to determine whether your work belongs under CIHR, NSERC or SSHRC and follow the current CPRA competition.

Canada Postdoctoral Research Award: Current Program

The CPRA supports postdoctoral researchers across three broad federal research mandates:

• CIHR: health research;
• NSERC: natural sciences and engineering; and
• SSHRC: social sciences and humanities.

Applicants must choose the agency that best matches the subject matter of the proposed postdoctoral research.

2026 CPRA Deadlines

Current CPRA Eligibility

To apply, you must:

• hold, or expect to hold, a doctoral or eligible health professional degree before the award start date;
• not hold or be on leave from a tenured or tenure-track faculty position; and
• normally have completed all doctoral or eligible health professional degree requirements no more than three years before 1 September of the application year.

For the degree-completion rule, the relevant date is when all degree requirements were completed, including successful defence and submission of the corrected thesis, not the convocation date.

Extensions to the normal eligibility window

The programme permits extensions in defined situations, including qualifying career interruptions, some industry or government employment, caregiving circumstances and non-research clinical training. The total extension is subject to programme rules.

Other restrictions

• You may apply a maximum of three times to CPRA.
• You cannot already have received a CIHR, NSERC or SSHRC postdoctoral award, including a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship.
• You cannot hold CPRA at the same time as another tri-agency research-training award.
• The proposed research must be predominantly research-oriented and must go meaningfully beyond the doctoral thesis.

International Applicant Rules

CPRA is open to some international applicants, but it is not an unrestricted global fellowship.

If you are not a Canadian citizen, permanent resident or protected person by the application deadline, you must meet at least one of these conditions:

• be currently registered in a doctoral or eligible health professional degree at a Canadian institution;
• have previously completed such a degree at a Canadian institution; or
• be currently conducting postdoctoral research at a Canadian institution.

Up to 20% of CPRA awards are available to international applicants.

Where Can a CPRA Be Held?

Eligible host environments can include academic research institutions, provincial research institutions, research hospitals, colleges, non-government organizations, Indigenous organizations and other institutions with a significant research-training mandate.

Canadian federal government research institutions are not eligible CPRA tenure locations.

Holding the award outside Canada

To hold CPRA at an eligible international institution, the applicant must:

• be a Canadian citizen, permanent resident or protected person as of the application deadline; and
• have completed the doctoral or eligible health professional degree at a Canadian institution.

Up to 30% of CPRA awards may be held outside Canada.

How CPRA Applications Are Evaluated

The central CPRA framework uses two equally weighted criteria:

Agency-specific instructions provide the detailed indicators and application components used by CIHR, NSERC and SSHRC.

Applicants are notified of results by 31 March.

How to Apply Now

1. Stop using historical Banting application instructions.
2. Determine whether your proposed research belongs under CIHR, NSERC or SSHRC.
3. Confirm CPRA eligibility, especially the degree-completion window and citizenship/residency rules.
4. Identify an eligible host institution and proposed supervisor.
5. Check the agency deadline and any earlier host-institution deadline.
6. Use the correct agency portal: ResearchNet for CIHR, the NSERC online system for NSERC, or the SSHRC application system for SSHRC.
7. Ensure all referee, supervisor and institutional components are completed before submission.

CareerAidHub Applicant Guidance

Choose the agency by research content

Do not choose CIHR, NSERC or SSHRC based only on your department name. The proposed research subject matter determines the most appropriate agency.

Check eligibility before writing the full proposal

The three-year degree-completion window, prior tri-agency award restrictions and international-applicant rules can determine eligibility before proposal quality is considered.

Do not describe CPRA as Banting under a new name

CPRA is a harmonized programme with its own rules, agency processes and selection framework. Historical Banting material is useful only for background.

Researchers can also review CareerAidHub’s postdoctoral fellowships, research jobs, and research grants and funding.