Funded by the Horizon Europe programme and the United Kingdom funds on research and innovation, GRANULAR is a four-year project and it aims to generate new insights to characterize rural diversity. To this end, GRANULAR will generate novel datasets and methods to better understand the characteristics, dynamics and drivers of rural areas. In addition, a Rural Compass will be created for rural actors in order to help them grasp the specificities and diversity of their territories, with the objective e of identifying main challenges and designing tailored place-based policies to address them.