At the institutional level, the foundation of the 1ST Austria has been a prominent example of funding excellence. Recent initiatives are addressing a number of issues of relevance for research excellence across institutions. Developments that can be expected to contribute to overall research excellence include the increased university funding over the 2019-21 performance agreement period, disbursed under the new university funding model, an increase in the budget for competitive funding of basic research through FWF (albeit less than expected), and recent reforms towards an Austrian tenure-track model.