A paid job, not a scholarship
ISTA does not award a stipend or fellowship in the usual sense: every PhD student holds a 5-year paid employment contract with full statutory social security coverage from day one. ISTA’s own funding page states gross salaries for 2026 range from EUR 3,053 to EUR 3,673 a month, split into 14 payments a year, monthly plus double payments in June and November, an Austrian convention. The exact rate depends on whether you are admitted holding a bachelor’s or a master’s degree, and it rises again after you pass the Qualifying Exam, usually in your second year. ISTA charges no tuition fees and no application fee, so the salary is not offset by hidden costs the way a smaller stipend paired with tuition can be. For how a salaried PhD position compares with a stipend-plus-tuition scholarship elsewhere, see the guide to how PhD funding actually works.
How the 2027 intake runs
The application portal opens in late October 2026 and closes 8 January 2027 at 15:00 CET. The application itself asks for a CV, a statement of purpose, short answers to three additional questions (a maximum of five to eight lines each), transcripts and diplomas in both English and their original language, and contact details for three referees rather than uploaded letters. Those referees submit their letters separately, with their own later deadline of 12 January 2027 at 23:59 CET, so applicants should register their referees as early as possible rather than waiting until their own submission is done. Shortlisted candidates are interviewed between late February and mid-March 2027, offers go out afterward, and accepted candidates must confirm by 15 April 2027. The programme has one fixed start date, 15 September 2027.
Rotations before you commit to a lab
ISTA does not require you to have a supervisor lined up before you apply. First-year students complete at least three lab rotations, each roughly two months long, in different research groups before formally affiliating with one. The Qualifying Exam follows in the second year, where students present and defend a thesis proposal in front of a committee, testing both research background and problem-solving ability. After that, the programme moves into independent thesis research. ISTA states students typically finish in 4.5 to 6 years, even though every contract is issued for a fixed 5 years, so a fast finisher and a slower one are both accommodated within the same funding structure rather than being penalised or left unfunded partway through.
What ISTA will not pay for, and who can apply
ISTA is explicit that it “cannot provide funding for visa and relocation expenses,” so budget for the move to Klosterneuburg, near Vienna, separately from the salary above. Neither the application page nor the programme overview states a nationality or citizenship restriction, and ISTA’s own site reports 79 nationalities represented on campus, so this is a genuinely open international competition rather than one with an EU or Schengen carve-out. No English test score, such as IELTS or TOEFL, is listed as a requirement; the programme is taught in English and all application documents must themselves be submitted in English.