The HERA Joint Research Programme (HERA JRP) partners will launch a joint call for multilateral projects in two humanities research areas: “Cultural Dynamics” and “Creativity and Innovation”. By setting up a HERA JRP, the 13 national funding partners want to create collaborative, trans-national research opportunities that will derive new insights from humanities research in order to address major social, cultural, and political challenges facing Europe. In consultation with their national researcher communities, they have jointly defined and developed common research priorities, and created a new trans-national funding mechanism. They have also pooled a substantial amount of their funding in one common pot, thus increasing the efficiency and impact of public research funding. The two HERA JRP themes – “Cultural Dynamics” and “Creativity and Innovation” respond to the thematic priority issues defined in the FP7 “Cooperation” Work Programme for Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities. With the coordination of substantial research support mobilised by national funding agencies, the HERA JRP complements the existing FP7 research funding instruments by offering a more flexible suite of funding opportunities for both basic and policy-oriented trans-national collaborative research. The selection phase of the HERA JRP involves the final preparatory activities for the Call for proposals and a commonly-agreed two-stage evaluation process involving meetings of two independent, international Review Panels and remote assessments by expert referees. In the research phase, the HERA JRP will support scientific networking activities in order to foster new innovative research. The HERA JRP knowledge transfer strategy will stimulate wider public awareness about the important contributions of new humanities research. It is expected that the procedures implemented here for the first time will make a significant change in the way European Humanities research is conducted and funded.