What happened
On 17 July 2026, Spain's Carlos III Health Institute (ISCIII) announced the first provisional resolutions of the Strategic Health Action (AES) 2026, the main funding instrument for biomedical research in Spain. In total there are eleven calls resolved on a provisional basis, nine of them published that same week and two already advanced in June.
The AES covers both research projects and the human-resources contracts that sustain research careers in health. What matters about this announcement is that most contract programmes now have a provisional list, including those that concern anyone at the postdoctoral or consolidation stage. The exception sits at the other end of the career: the predoctoral contracts remain pending.
Like any provisional resolution, this one awards nothing definitively. It is the proposal that precedes the final resolution, and it opens the usual process of acceptance and, where relevant, appeals before the close. No one should treat a place as secured until the final resolution is published, but the provisional list already allows people to plan.
The figures
The provisional package amounts to 45.3 million euros and distributes 338 awards across contracts, mobility grants and projects. Within the human-resources block, the resolved programmes are:
Rio Hortega, with 76 contracts and 4.9 million euros. Miguel Servet, with 25 contracts and 7.7 million. Juan Rodes, with 25 contracts and 6.2 million. Sara Borrell, the ISCIII's flagship postdoctoral contract, with 38 contracts and 3.6 million. On top of these come 67 research-intensification contracts worth 3.4 million, four bioinformatics technical-staff contracts and seven management contracts in health research institutes.
In mobility, the M-AES call resolves 52 grants worth 0.9 million and M-BAE another 8 worth 0.1 million. The projects chapter includes 16 independent clinical research projects worth 13.8 million and 20 health technology development projects worth 3.8 million.
What is not there yet: the predoctoral health-research training contracts (PFIS and i-PFIS), the general R&D projects and the international collaboration projects. The ISCIII places them in the second half of 2026. For anyone aiming at a PFIS, the wait continues a few more weeks.
What it means for researchers
For the postdoctoral profile, the signal is concrete. If you applied to Sara Borrell, Rio Hortega, Miguel Servet or Juan Rodes, you can already check your status in the provisional resolution published by the ISCIII, without waiting for rumours or unofficial lists. The usual advice: check the official source, not third-party versions, and confirm whether your case appears as awarded, on reserve or rejected.
If the outcome is favourable, it is time to prepare the acceptance and the onboarding documentation with your centre. If it is unfavourable or you suspect an error, now is the moment to review your score and prepare an appeal, while the resolution is still provisional. And if you are waiting for a PFIS, it is worth using these weeks to get your record and research plan in order, because once the ISCIII opens that resolution the deadlines will again be short.
There is a pattern that repeats across every AES. The difference between reacting in time and arriving late comes down to having your track record documented and ready to reuse: publications, research stays, prior funding, each merit with its evidence at hand. That is the logic Reservoir is built on, storing a career once and re-projecting it into each call, so that an acceptance, an appeal or the next application does not depend on rebuilding a CV against the clock.
To place the AES within the map of health research careers, you can browse our funding calls and, if consolidation is your horizon, our analysis of the Ramon y Cajal 2026 changes, which shares its audience with Miguel Servet and Juan Rodes.
An important note on personal data: AES resolutions include named lists of beneficiaries. We link to the official source so that each person can verify their own case, but we do not reproduce those lists here.