The paper presents the Special Research Programme ‘German in Austria. Variation – Contact – Perception’. It is not only the first large-scale linguistic research project in Austria, but probably unique with respect to the study of the linguistic situation of an entire country from a variationist-linguistic, a contact-linguistic and a perceptual-attitudinal perspective. Apart from outlining the motivations and goals of the project as a whole, the paper will present the research plans of the entire project as well as of its main task clusters, which are dedicated to different aspects of variation, contact and perception.