Dear colleagues,

The call for proposals to observe with the European VLBI Network (EVN) is now open - non-expert teams are especially welcome! Please forward this email to anyone who may be interested.

The submission deadline is 1 October 2026, 16:00 UTC. Proposals must be submitted using the Northstar online tool. The full call, including the proposal guidelines, is attached and is also available on the EVN web pages.

Highlights for the October 2026 call

• New - AI declaration. All proposals must now include a declaration on the use of AI in proposal preparation. The attached call sets out what is acceptable and how to declare it; proposals without a declaration may be rejected.
• Contrary to previous announcements, a delay in satellite-tracking commitments means that the Chinese stations, Urumqi, Tianma and Kunming may be available for this call.
• Despite the publicised funding cuts, e-MERLIN remains operational and will participate in EVN observations.
• MeerKAT and the GMRT remain available on a best-effort basis (MeerKAT at 18/21 cm, GMRT at 21 cm), with bandwidth limited to 64 MHz per polarisation. Proposals must clearly justify their inclusion.

Changes coming in 2027

From January 2027, the EVN will change significantly:

• Two calls for proposals per year, on 1 April and 1 October;
• Ten one-week observing sessions spread across the year at roughly monthly cadence, each mixing e-VLBI and standard disk recording with no distinction between them;
• Proposals submitted through the new Polaris tool from the April 2027 call - training and support will be provided, so keep an eye on the EVN web pages and the VLBI mailing lists;
• Double-anonymous reviewing of proposals, also from 1 April 2027.

The European VLBI Network (EVN)

The EVN is a Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) network of radio telescopes located primarily in Europe, Asia and South Africa, operated by an international consortium of institutes. It provides very high sensitivity images at angular scales of (sub-)milliarcseconds in the radio domain.

EVN proposals may also request joint e-MERLIN and EVN observations to improve uv-coverage at short spacings, significantly increasing the largest detectable angular size to arcsecond scales. Further improvement in uv-coverage may be achieved in global VLBI observations when the EVN observes jointly with NRAO/GBO telescopes. Joint observations with the Australian Long Baseline Array are also possible, but these require separate proposals to both arrays.

EVN observations may be conducted with disk recording (standard) or real-time correlation (e-VLBI). Through 2026, the EVN observes in three sessions of approximately 21 days each, with 10 additional days available in e-VLBI mode; from 2027, this becomes ten one-week sessions, as described above.

The EVN facility is open to all astronomers. Astronomers with limited or no VLBI experience are particularly encouraged to apply for observing time. Student proposals are judged favourably by the EVN Programme Committee. You can request support with proposal preparation, scheduling, correlation, data reduction, and analysis from the Joint Institute for VLBI ERIC (JIVE) by contacting usersupport@jive.eu.

Best wishes,

Jack Radcliffe on behalf of the EVN Programme Committee