Funding
We have listed below some of the key funding calls (mainly grants) that are applicable to companies in UK healthcare. For more information, please contact us.
Past funding calls can be viewed using these links:
Upcoming Funding Calls
NHS Cancer Programme: Innovation Open Call 4
Funders: SBRI Healthcare, in partnership with NHS England
Opens: 14 October 2026
Closes: 1pm, 1 December 2026
Sector: Healthcare & Life Sciences
Funding level: Up to £3 million excluding VAT per project, 100 per cent funded
Project duration: Up to 24 months
Eligibility: Strand 1 is open to any innovator organisation based in the UK or EU - private, public or third sector. Applicants must have a demonstrable partnership with at least one adopting NHS organisation in England and an independent evaluation partner. The innovation must hold a CE mark or equivalent regulatory approval, where required, for the cancer-related use intended, and must show evidence of safety and clinical utility from prospective use in at least one healthcare site. Engagement with Health Innovation Networks is strongly encouraged.
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NHS England has announced the fourth round of its NHS Cancer Programme Innovation Open Call. The Application Portal will open in October 2026, there is a
webinar - Support To Build Your Application - on 9 September 2026 at 12:30 pm.
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Two challenges are in scope. The first is improving productivity through managing demand or improving capacity on cancer care pathways, aimed at supporting the NHS to meet all Cancer Waiting Time standards by March 2029.
The second is driving the earlier detection and diagnosis of cancer, through novel screening, prompt presentation, case-finding or diagnostic tools, in support of the ambition that three quarters of people diagnosed with cancer will be cancer-free or living well with cancer after five years by 2035. Applicants are asked in both cases to consider the impact of their innovation on health inequalities.
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At 100 per cent funding with no match requirement and no equity dilution, it remains one of the most commercially attractive routes available to a UK health tech company.
More information here.
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BridgeAI Deployment Catalyst: AI for Operational Systems
Funder: Innovate UK
Opens: 21 October 2026
Closes: 11am, 8 December 2026
Sector: ALL
Funding level: Up to £5 million for this phase across the strand; each project requests £100,000 to £200,000 in grant (feasibility research category). Overall programme expected to reach up to £52 million over three phases (subject to business case approval). Indicative Phase 2 up to £1 million per consortium (about 6 months) and Phase 3 up to £2 million (about 22 months, with co-investment and UK investor commitment).
Project duration: 3 to 5 months (Phase 1); project must start by 1 April 2027 and end by 31 August 2027
Eligibility summary: Collaborative projects only: a UK registered micro, small or medium AI SME leads (the lead must account for 40–70% of eligible costs) with one eligible UK registered deployer (a UK medium or large business or a UK public sector organisation, such as an NHS trust, operating in an eligible sector, which must account for 30–50% of costs). One further project partner is allowed (up to 30%). Consortium size is two or three organisations. Academic institutions cannot lead. The AI solution needs a functioning minimum viable product, beyond concept stage and not already in widespread commercial deployment for the proposed use. Health and life sciences is an eligible deployer sector, so an SME can lead with an NHS or care deployer.
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BridgeAI Deployment Catalyst is a new Innovate UK programme designed to move high-potential UK AI and machine learning SMEs beyond pilots and into trusted, real-world deployment in the UK Industrial Strategy growth sectors. There are three strands, and applicants must apply to only one, chosen by the primary purpose of the AI system. The strand covered here is AI for Operational Systems, whose primary purpose is to perform, control or coordinate operational activity within workflows, processes, software, equipment or infrastructure, where reliable integration and performance matter to the deployer (in health this could mean patient flow, bed and theatre scheduling, supply chain or workforce rostering). Funding and support are identical across the strands.
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Phase 1 consortia must develop an evidence-based deployment use case; explain why the AI solution is the best way to address the deployer's challenge; assess the AI supplier's readiness (delivery capacity, standards, regulatory compliance and technical maturity) and the deployer's readiness (operational, technical, governance, assurance and regulatory); gather letters of support from further potential deployers; outline the assurance and site-preparation activity planned for Phase 2; and run a demonstration on representative deployer data and systems towards the end of the project. Illustrative capabilities include agentic and multi-agent AI, multimodal AI, foundation and domain-adapted models, advanced computer vision, graph-based AI, neuro-symbolic AI and reinforcement learning. The project must address significant unresolved deployment challenges and go beyond routine implementation or configuration.
Applications cannot be moved between strands and out-of-scope applications are not assessed.
More information here.
BridgeAI Deployment Catalyst: AI for Decision Critical Systems
Funder: Innovate UK
Opens: 21 October 2026
Closes: 11am, 8 December 2026
Sector: ALL
Funding level: Up to £5 million for this phase across the strand; each project requests £100,000 to £200,000 in grant (feasibility research category). Overall programme expected to reach up to £52 million over three phases (subject to business case approval). Indicative Phase 2 up to £1 million per consortium (about 6 months) and Phase 3 up to £2 million (about 22 months, with co-investment and UK investor commitment).
Project duration: 3 to 5 months (Phase 1); project must start by 1 April 2027 and end by 31 August 2027
Eligibility summary: Collaborative projects only: a UK registered micro, small or medium AI SME leads (the lead must account for 40–70% of eligible costs) with one eligible UK registered deployer (a UK medium or large business or a UK public sector organisation, such as an NHS trust, operating in an eligible sector, which must account for 30–50% of costs). One further project partner is allowed (up to 30%). Consortium size is two or three organisations. Academic institutions cannot lead. The AI solution needs a functioning minimum viable product, beyond concept stage and not already in widespread commercial deployment for the proposed use. Health and life sciences is an eligible deployer sector, so an SME can lead with an NHS or care deployer.
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BridgeAI Deployment Catalyst is a new Innovate UK programme designed to move high-potential UK AI and machine learning SMEs beyond pilots and into trusted, real-world deployment in the UK Industrial Strategy growth sectors. There are three strands, and applicants must apply to only one, chosen by the primary purpose of the AI system. The strand covered here is AI for Decision Critical Systems, which supports the deployment of AI whose primary purpose is to help people make consequential judgements, recommendations or decisions that are high risk or could have significant consequences for the deployer or its end users (in health this includes clinical decision support, diagnostic triage and risk prediction). Funding and support are identical across the strands.
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Phase 1 consortia must develop an evidence-based deployment use case; explain why the AI solution is the best way to address the deployer's challenge; assess the AI supplier's readiness (delivery capacity, standards, regulatory compliance and technical maturity) and the deployer's readiness (operational, technical, governance, assurance and regulatory); gather letters of support from further potential deployers; outline the assurance and site-preparation activity planned for Phase 2; and run a demonstration on representative deployer data and systems towards the end of the project. Illustrative capabilities include agentic and multi-agent AI, multimodal AI, foundation and domain-adapted models, advanced computer vision, graph-based AI, neuro-symbolic AI and reinforcement learning. The project must address significant unresolved deployment challenges and go beyond routine implementation or configuration.
Applications cannot be moved between strands and out-of-scope applications are not assessed.
More information here.
BridgeAI Deployment Catalyst: AI for Assurance and Compliance
Funder: Innovate UK
Opens: 21 October 2026
Closes: 11am, 8 December 2026
Sector: ALL
Funding level: Up to £5 million for this phase across the strand; each project requests £100,000 to £200,000 in grant (feasibility research category). Overall programme expected to reach up to £52 million over three phases (subject to business case approval). Indicative Phase 2 up to £1 million per consortium (about 6 months) and Phase 3 up to £2 million (about 22 months, with co-investment and UK investor commitment).
Project duration: 3 to 5 months (Phase 1); project must start by 1 April 2027 and end by 31 August 2027
Eligibility summary: Collaborative projects only: a UK registered micro, small or medium AI SME leads (the lead must account for 40–70% of eligible costs) with one eligible UK registered deployer (a UK medium or large business or a UK public sector organisation, such as an NHS trust, operating in an eligible sector, which must account for 30–50% of costs). One further project partner is allowed (up to 30%). Consortium size is two or three organisations. Academic institutions cannot lead. The AI solution needs a functioning minimum viable product, beyond concept stage and not already in widespread commercial deployment for the proposed use. Health and life sciences is an eligible deployer sector, so an SME can lead with an NHS or care deployer.
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BridgeAI Deployment Catalyst is a new Innovate UK programme designed to move high-potential UK AI and machine learning SMEs beyond pilots and into trusted, real-world deployment in the UK Industrial Strategy growth sectors. There are three strands, and applicants must apply to only one, chosen by the primary purpose of the AI system. The strand covered here is AI for Assurance and Compliance, which supports AI whose primary purpose is to monitor, test, verify, validate or evidence compliance with regulatory requirements, standards or controls (in health this could include clinical safety case tooling, DCB0129/0160 evidence, audit, medicines or device compliance monitoring and patient safety surveillance). Funding and support are identical across the strands.
Phase 1 consortia must develop an evidence-based deployment use case; explain why the AI solution is the best way to address the deployer's challenge; assess the AI supplier's readiness (delivery capacity, standards, regulatory compliance and technical maturity) and the deployer's readiness (operational, technical, governance, assurance and regulatory); gather letters of support from further potential deployers; outline the assurance and site-preparation activity planned for Phase 2; and run a demonstration on representative deployer data and systems towards the end of the project. Illustrative capabilities include agentic and multi-agent AI, multimodal AI, foundation and domain-adapted models, advanced computer vision, graph-based AI, neuro-symbolic AI and reinforcement learning. The project must address significant unresolved deployment challenges and go beyond routine implementation or configuration.
Applications cannot be moved between strands and out-of-scope applications are not assessed.
More information here.
Cluster 1 Health 2027, Call 01 (single-stage)
Funder: Horizon Europe (EU)
Opens: 29 October 2026
Closes: 5pm CET, 17 February 2027
Sector: Healthcare & Life Sciences
​Funding level: Per-topic EU contribution per project (portal budget overview): IND-01 cell-free protein synthesis EUR 6-8m (4 grants, EUR 24.5m); DISEASE-08 antimicrobials EUR 8-10m (5 grants, EUR 44.2m); DISEASE-05 small-molecule antivirals EUR 9-11m (5, EUR 44.2m); DISEASE-06 flavivirus mAbs EUR 9-10m (4, EUR 37.3m); DISEASE-07 mAbs for other viruses EUR 9-10m (4, EUR 37.3m); DISEASE-10 EUR 3-4m (3, EUR 11.8m); CARE-02 personalised approaches to reduce adverse drug reactions from polypharmacy EUR 8-10m (4, EUR 38m); STAYHLTH-01 EUR 6-8m (5, EUR 39.3m); ENVHLTH-02 climate exposome EUR 10-11m (4, EUR 45m); ENVHLTH-MISSCLIMA-03 health adaptation tools, Pre-Commercial Procurement EUR 4-5m (4, EUR 20m). Call total approx EUR 341.6m.
Project duration: Not fixed in the call overview; typical topics run 36-60 months
Eligibility: Consortia of at least 3 independent legal entities from 3 different countries, with at least one in an EU Member State and the others in Member States or Associated Countries. The UK is an Associated Country, so UK SMEs, universities and NHS bodies can be full funded partners or coordinators.
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Call HORIZON-HLTH-2027-01 is the first of three 2027 Health Cluster calls under the Horizon Europe 2026-2027 work programme. Ten single-stage topics share a budget of roughly EUR 340 million, with per-project EU contributions mostly EUR 6-11 million. The cluster targets better health outcomes, resilient health systems and a competitive EU health industry.
Topics cover cell-free protein synthesis platforms for discovery or production of biologicals (the industry destination; development of innovative antimicrobials against resistant pathogens; small-molecule antivirals and monoclonal antibodies for pathogens with epidemic potential; personalised approaches to reduce adverse drug reactions from multiple medications; staying-healthy prevention (STAYHLTH-01); the climate exposome (ENVHLTH-02); and a Pre-Commercial Procurement topic for tools and technologies supporting health adaptation to climate change (MISSCLIMA-03, EUR 4-5m per project, public procurers buy R&D services from competing suppliers). Most topics are Research and Innovation Actions, so they are R&D-heavy, with Technology Readiness Levels typically below clinical deployment. Proposals outside the topic scope, or without the required consortium composition, are ineligible.
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Application process: one submission through the EU Funding & Tenders Portal, assessed by independent experts against excellence, impact and implementation with thresholds; funding decisions are expected in mid-2027 with grant agreements to follow.
More information here.
Current Funding Calls
Local Innovation Partnerships Fund — Clinical Commercial Catalyst for Health & Life Sciences
Funders: WMCA and UKRI
Open
Closes: No date given. Respond asap
Sector: Healthcare & Life Sciences
Funding level: £100k–£1m grant (projects sized £200k–£2m; 50% industry match required)
Duration: Project-dependent
Eligibility: UK-registered businesses with a primary or secondary base in the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) area (Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Walsall, Wolverhampton), or able to demonstrate clear economic benefit to that area. Companies outside the West Midlands region must commit to relocating before project end.
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The Local Innovation Partnerships Fund (LIPF) is a WMCA/UKRI programme providing grant funding and business support to companies commercialising at scale in three priority sectors. The Clinical Commercial Catalyst for Health & Life Sciences is one of them, led by the University of Birmingham in partnership with Aston University, Birmingham City University, Coventry University, University of Warwick, University of Wolverhampton, NHS teams, Medilink Midlands, and RESILIENCE Ltd.
The programme offers flexible grant funding alongside access to clinical trials infrastructure, NHS testing environments, health data and patient populations, near-patient biomanufacturing facilities, academic and clinical R&D partnerships, investment readiness and scale-up support, and regulatory-ready evidence development.
Grants are paid in arrears. Up to 30% of grant value can flow to a research or technology organisation (RTO). The entry point is a short expression of interest form; detailed conditions follow an initial assessment.
More information here.
Greater Manchester LIPF: Wearables & Remote Monitoring Innovation Cluster
Funders: UKRI / LIPF (Greater Manchester Combined Authority)
Open
Closes: SME sub-calls not yet open - register interest now
Sector: Health tech - wearables, remote monitoring, digital health
​Funding level: £5.5m LIPF + £5.6m private co-investment (total £11.1m); individual SME grant levels TBC when sub-calls open
Duration: Programme runs to 2031
Eligibility: SMEs with wearable/remote monitoring technology; primary connection to or willingness to work within Greater Manchester. Sub-call eligibility criteria TBC.
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The Greater Manchester Wearables and Remote Monitoring Innovation Cluster (GM-WIC) is a newly launched LIPF-funded programme led by Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT) in partnership with the University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University, and the NIHR Manchester Health Determinants Research Collaboration. It is designed to accelerate wearable and remote monitoring technologies from concept to NHS deployment by integrating the region's health system, academic infrastructure, and commercial partners in a single cluster.
GM-WIC will support SMEs through targeted accelerator programmes, real-world NHS testing platforms, and clear adoption pathways, with the explicit aim of enabling companies to scale rapidly from development through to deployment. MFT's Hospital at Home programme provides an established NHS environment for piloting connected and wearable technologies. SME-facing open calls are expected to emerge as the programme moves from setup to delivery.
More information here.
Contact: Health Innovation Manchester >>>
Greater Manchester LIPF — Greater Data Accelerator
Funders: UKRI / LIPF (Greater Manchester Combined Authority)
Open
Closes: SME sub-calls not yet open - register interest now
Sector: Healthcare & Life Sciences
​Funding level: £6.7m LIPF to the programme; individual SME support levels TBC when sub-calls open
Duration: Programme runs to 2031
Eligibility: SMEs with data, AI, diagnostics or medicines-development technology; connection to or willingness to work within Greater Manchester. Sub-call eligibility TBC.
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The Greater Data Accelerator is a newly launched LIPF-funded programme led by Health Innovation Manchester and the University of Manchester. It is designed to harness Greater Manchester's population-scale health data infrastructure - one of the largest integrated health datasets in the country - to accelerate the development and adoption of new medicines and diagnostics technologies.
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The programme builds on Health Innovation Manchester's existing Greater Data Innovation Services platform, which provides structured access to NHS health data for research and innovation. SME-facing accelerator rounds and data-access calls are expected to follow as the programme enters delivery. The focus is on translational work that moves innovations from research into clinical and commercial use.
More information here.
Contact: Health Innovation Manchester >>>
​Quarterly Research Grant Funding Programme
Funder: Cure Parkinson's
Open:
Closes: 12 October 2026
Sector: Healthcare
This scheme is providing grants for scientists and clinicians from universities, hospitals and commercial organisations to help them fund preclinical and clinical research focused on slowing, stopping, or reversing Parkinson’s.
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There are grants of up to £250,000 which prioritise projects that are likely to lead to clinical trials in people with Parkinson’s within 5 years. For clinical research, CP funds clinical trials and sub-studies of trials in people with Parkinson’s. The grant amount is flexible but please contact CP ahead of submission if you are thinking of applying for a clinical trial.
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2025/2026 application deadlines:
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Monday 3 November 2025
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Monday 12 January 2026
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Monday 13 April 2026
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Monday 22 June 2026
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Monday 12 October 2026
More information here.
Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP): 2026 – 2027 Round 3
Funder: Innovate U
Opened: 13 August 2026
Closes: 11am, 14 October 2026
Sector: ALL
Funding: £12.5 million total fund. Typical project cost £8,500 per month; Innovate UK funds up to 67% of the knowledge base costs for SMEs, 50% for large companies, 75% third sector, 50% public sector
Duration: 12 to 36 months
Eligibility: Application is led by a UK registered higher or further education institution, RTO or Catapult, partnered with a UK registered business of any size with two or more full-time employees. The business contributes to project costs.
The Knowledge Transfer Partnership programme places a high-calibre graduate or postgraduate (the KTP Associate) inside a business to deliver a strategic innovation project, supervised jointly by the company and an academic partner.
Applications are submitted by the knowledge base partner, but the project is designed around the business partner’s innovation need and the business retains the resulting capability.
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KTP is one of the most reliable routes for a smaller health tech company to embed genuinely new technical capability - clinical data science, regulatory-grade software engineering, health economics modelling, AI/ML development - without carrying the full salary cost or the recruitment risk. The grant contribution is calculated against the knowledge base costs, so the cash contribution required from an SME is typically around a third of the total.
More information here.
UKRI Translation: BBSRC Proof of Concept 2026
Funder: BBSRC
Opened: 5 August 2026
Closes: 4pm, 14 October 2026
Sector: Biosciences
Funding level: £3 million total fund. Award range £100,000 - £800,000 full economic cost (FEC); BBSRC funds 80% of FEC
Project duration: Up to 24 months
Eligibility: The project lead must be based at a UK research organisation eligible for BBSRC funding. Projects must build on prior BBSRC support and set out a clear pathway to real-world use through commercialisation, adoption or progression towards deployment. Businesses participate as project partners and as the commercialisation route rather than as the lead applicant.
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BBSRC Proof of Concept is the bioscience arm of UKRI's consolidated translation portfolio. It funds the step that sits between a research finding and something a customer will buy - generating the technical, regulatory or market evidence needed to move a bioscience result towards a product, service or solution with economic, societal or environmental impact.
The requirement for prior BBSRC support means the underlying science must already exist; this is not a call for new discovery work.
More information here.
Translation Accelerator Kidney Award Scheme (TAKA) - 2026 round
Funder: Kidney Research UK
Opened: 2 September 2026
Closes: 19 October 2026 (EoI)
Sector: Healthcare & Life Sciences
Funding level: Level 1 up to £79,999; Level 2 £80,000–£125,000. 100% of eligible
costs. Several awards expected.
Duration: Up to 15 months
Eligibility: Applications welcomed from researchers in UK higher education
institutions, NHS clinicians and clinical academics. Two parallel
workstreams: Therapeutics and MedTech.
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TAKA exists to close the funding gap between early university and NHS research and a product or treatment that reaches everyday care. The awards fund short, discrete, patient and clinic-focused projects that address one specific challenge or question about an innovation in order to get it to the clinic faster. The stated purpose is explicitly commercial de-risking.
Kidney Research UK says this funding is intended to develop the opportunity and
reduce risk for potential commercial partners, making the innovation more attractive to them.
The application process splits into two parallel workstreams. Therapeutics covers
interventions that prevent, treat, cure or modify the course of kidney disease through a direct biological, pharmacological or physiological effect. MedTech covers technologies, devices or tools for diagnosis, monitoring, prevention or delivery of care in kidney disease that do not act by pharmacological, immunological or metabolic means; which captures digital diagnostics, remote monitoring, decision support and dialysis-adjacent technology.
This is an expression of interest process, so the first-stage is lower effort relative to the award size, and at 100% of eligible costs there is no match funding requirement.
More information here.
i4i FAST (Sept 2026): respiratory care pathway
Funder: NIHR
Opened: 29 September 2026
Closes: 1pm, 20 October 2026
Sector: Respiratory
​Funding level: £50,000 to £100,000 per award
Project duration: 6 to 12 months
Eligibility: Open to legal entities registered in the UK, including HEIs, NHS providers, SMEs, charities and local authorities, so an SME can lead. Innovation must already be at TRL 4+ with a functional prototype and preliminary bench or retrospective-data evidence. Out of scope: conceptual designs, literature reviews or untested algorithms (TRL 1-3), acute-hospital-only technologies, administrative or logistical improvements with no patient-care impact, general wellness apps and NICE Tier A digital tools, products already established in the market seeking adoption funding, cystic fibrosis diagnosis tools, and acute respiratory infections and other conditions on the page's exclusion list.
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The NIHR Invention for Innovation (i4i) FAST programme is a one-stage commissioned funding opportunity for innovations that address unmet needs across the respiratory care pathway. It aims to improve prevention, risk identification, diagnosis, monitoring, treatment, self-management and long-term care for eligible chronic respiratory conditions in adults and children, in community, primary care or home settings. It is delivered in partnership with the NIHR HealthTech Research Centres in Diagnostic and Technology Evaluation and Community Healthcare, the Respiratory Transformation Partnership and Asthma+Lung UK.
The call covers asthma, COPD, bronchiectasis and cystic fibrosis (but not tools to diagnose CF, which is genetic) and interstitial lung diseases. Symptom-focused technologies are welcome even without a specific diagnosis, for example tools for breathlessness or cough, or tools that separate respiratory from non-respiratory causes. Eligible technologies are medical devices, in vitro diagnostics and digital health technologies, with priority for NICE Tier C digital technologies; Tier B is considered only with a robust link to an NHS clinical pathway, clinician-facing utility and no standalone consumer wellness use. Applicants are encouraged to align with the stakeholder priorities from the HERON priority-setting partnership
More information here.
​Next generation artificial intelligence (AI): explainable AI
Funders: UK Research and Innovation / EPSRC
Opened: 11 August 2026
Closes: 4pm, 20 October 2026
Sector: ALL
Funding: £12.05 million total fund. Maximum £602,500 full economic cost per project; UKRI funds 80% of FEC (£482,000)
Duration: Up to 24 months. Projects must start 1 February 2027
Eligibility: Project lead must be based at a UK research organisation eligible for UKRI funding.
This call funds speculative, high-risk fundamental research aimed at delivering a step change in the explainability of future AI systems. It sits within UKRI’s Next Generation AI programme and is deliberately framed around ideas that would struggle to find funding through conventional responsive-mode routes. A webinar is scheduled for 8 September 2026.
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Explainability is the single largest regulatory and adoption obstacle facing AI in health and care. UKCA and CE marking of AI-enabled medical devices, MHRA expectations on algorithmic transparency, NICE evidence standards for digital health technologies and NHS procurement assurance all turn in part on whether a system’s outputs can be explained to clinicians, regulators and patients. Advances funded here will shape what is expected of commercial health AI products over the next five years.
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The award is academically led and there is no route for a company to apply as project lead. The realistic opportunity is to join as a named project partner supplying real-world clinical data, a deployment environment, or a use case that grounds the research in a regulated setting.
More information here.
​Engineering Biology Access to Infrastructure Pilot
Funder: Innovate UK
Opened: 7 September 2026
Closes: 11am, 21 October 2026
Sector: BioTech
​Funding level: Share of up to £5m; total eligible project costs must be between
£200,000 and £750,000
Duration: Pilot scale and validation projects (see competition scope for
project dates)
Eligibility: UK registered businesses. Indicative success rate stated by
Innovate UK at up to 20%.
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Innovate UK will invest up to £5m to scale engineering biology innovations through pilot scale and validation projects. Projects must focus on developing or applying engineering biology solutions to one or more of six themes, of which Health is listed first.
The distinguishing feature of this competition against the sibling collaborative R&D round is the project size band. At £200k to £750k total eligible costs it is accessible to a single SME or a small partnership without the consortium-building overhead of a multi-million-pound collaborative bid, and the emphasis on accessing infrastructure means the money is aimed at getting a validated process onto pilot-scale equipment rather than at fundamental discovery.
More information here.
Pilot Award
Funder: Alzheimer's Research UK
Opened: July 2026
Closes: 28 October 2026
Sector: Healthcare & Life Sciences
Funding level: Up to £100,000
Project duration: Up to 12 months
Eligibility: Lead Applicant at a UK university, hospital or research institution with a contract covering the grant period. No prior dementia research experience required but a dementia researcher must be on the team. Co-Investigators and Collaborators from SMEs and from outside the UK are permitted.
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The one stage Alzheimer's Research UK Pilot Award supports early-stage, high-risk, high-reward ideas with the potential to open new directions in dementia research. It helps researchers at any career stage generate data, test highly novel hypotheses and build new collaborations, and the data or collaborations established are intended to underpin later project and programme funding.
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Applications must fit at least one of the scheme's remit areas: testing highly novel high-risk ideas; first independent awards led by an Early Career Researcher; new multidisciplinary collaborations between two or more Joint Lead Applicants from different disciplines; and new entrants to dementia research from related fields such as data science, chemistry and mathematics. The call lists immunology, engineering, physics, data sciences, statistics and chemistry as examples of disciplines it wants to see collaborating with dementia researchers. Applications must address a clear link to an urgent question in dementia research. Lead Applicants without dementia experience must apply alongside at least one dementia researcher.
More information here.
Programme Award (outline stage)
Funder: Alzheimer's Research UK
Opened: July 2026
Closes: 28 October 2026
Sector:
Funding level: Up to £1.5 million per programme
Project duration: Up to 5 years
Eligibility: Lead Applicant must be based at a UK university, hospital or research institution with a contract (fixed term or tenure) covering the grant.
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The Alzheimer's Research UK Programme Award is a two stage process that supports ambitious, integrated programmes of research that bring together diverse expertise across multiple workstreams to address a complex central theme in dementia research. It is designed for established research leaders to deliver sustained, long-term and potentially renewable impact. The scheme expects a cohesive team-science effort combining complementary approaches, disciplines and technologies rather than a collection of separate projects.
ARUK aims to fund programmes that tackle major challenges in dementia through coordinated, multi-stranded research, integrate diverse expertise, methodologies and technologies, deliver long-term impact with clear pathways to translation and patient benefit, and build critical mass and leadership in the dementia research community. The theme is open across ARUK's strategic priorities of treatment, diagnosis and prevention. The page lists no specific excluded topics beyond the expectation of a single complex central theme and an established leader at the helm.
More information here.
​Translation Call 2027 - Outline stage
Funder: Arthritis UK
Open
Closes: 28 October 2026
Sector: Arthritis
Funding level: Up to £250,000 per project; Arthritis UK expects to invest around GBP 1 million in total in this two stage call. Salaries, expenses and small items of essential equipment can be requested; pilot clinical or feasibility study costs allowed.
Project duration: Up to 24 months
Eligibility: Lead applicant must be based at an eligible UK institution and one applicant must hold a tenured position at the lead institute. Applications with industrial partners are encouraged.
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Arthritis UK, the charity formerly known as Versus Arthritis, runs its Translation Call to push novel technologies for people with arthritis towards clinical development and industry investment. It is a proof-of-concept scheme: projects should have reached a stage where further technical, market or commercial validation is needed to attract commercial investment, and the funding should advance the technology along the developmental pathway toward further investment or development by industry.
Technology areas in scope are medical devices, orthotics, implantable therapeutic delivery, diagnostics, imaging technologies, cell therapy and regenerative medicine, and novel therapeutics (small molecules or biologics). Projects can address any of Arthritis UK's research strategy priority areas but must tackle an unmet clinical need identified by people with arthritis. The scheme can pay for reasonable costs of a pilot clinical or feasibility study but will not fund later-stage or large clinical trials. Basic discovery science and health services research are not what this call is seeking.
More information here.
Advancing innovation in accelerated cancer diagnosis
Funder: Innovate UK, on behalf of the Office for Life Sciences Cancer Healthcare Goals programme
Opened: 1 September 2026
Closes: 11am, 28 October 2026
Sector: Healthcare & Life Sciences
​Funding level: Up to £25.4 million in total across the competition
Project duration: To be confirmed in the competition brief at opening
Eligibility: Open to collaborations only. To lead, your organisation must be a UK registered business of any size, an academic institution or an NHS organisation. The consortium must contain at least one UK registered micro, small or medium sized enterprise claiming grant funding on the application.
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Innovate UK, acting for the Office for Life Sciences Cancer Healthcare Goals programme, will invest up to £25.4 million to support the clinical validation and evaluation of early cancer diagnostic technologies and devices.
The emphasis on clinical validation and evaluation rather than early-stage development is the defining feature. This competition is aimed at technologies that already exist and need the real-world clinical evidence base required to move into NHS deployment, rather than at concepts still being proven in the laboratory. That places it downstream of Biomedical Catalyst and upstream of routine commissioning, occupying the evidence-generation gap where a great many UK diagnostics companies stall.
The eligibility structure is broad on the lead side - a business, an academic institution or an NHS organisation can all lead - but narrow in one crucial respect: at least one UK registered SME must be claiming grant funding on the application.
In effect the competition cannot proceed without commercial participation, which is unusually favourable for smaller diagnostics companies looking to attach to a clinically credible consortium.
More information here.
CfI: Innovation in play to improve child outcomes
Funder: Innovate UK
Opened: 15 September 2026
Closes: 11am, 28 October 2026
Sector: Child health
Funding level: Up to £3 million total. Phase 1 projects of £200,000 to £500,000 total eligible costs, inclusive of VAT. Phase 1 of a potential three-phase competition; only successful Phase 1 applicants are invited to Phase 2.
Project duration: Phase 1 duration set by the competition timetable; subsequent phases depend on Phase 1 outcomes and separate applications.
Eligibility: Contracts for Innovation. Open to organisations developing practical, deliverable solutions. Applications centred on screen-based play are explicitly ineligible.
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UKRI is investing up to £3 million through its Breaking Down Barriers to Opportunity Mission in this Contracts for Innovation competition. The aim is to support organisations to develop practical solutions that reignite the importance of play and increase access to real-world play environments and experiences, improving outcomes for children and young people up to the age of 18.
The competition is focused specifically on the role of play in shaping the home learning environment - the everyday interactions, relationships and experiences outside the classroom known to strongly influence children's development and educational outcomes. UKRI is seeking evidence-informed solutions that leverage play as a mechanism to improve children's learning, development, health, happiness and wellbeing; reduce inequalities in access to enriching play experiences; support families, caregivers, educators and communities to facilitate play; and strengthen the role of play across home, education and community settings.
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UKRI is open to intervention programmes or services, behaviour change approaches, new delivery or partnership models, and design-led or place-based innovations. By the end of Phase 1, projects must demonstrate robust evidence for practical approaches deliverable in real-world settings and adoptable more widely by organisations, services and communities.
More information here.
Pathfinder Challenges 2026: Biotechnology for Healthy Ageing
Funder:EIC - Horizon
Open
Closes: 5pm (CET), 28 October 2026
Sector: Biotech
​Funding Level: Up to €4,000,000 per project (EU contribution); total Challenge budget: €32,000,000
Project Duration: Typically 3–4 years.
Eligibility: UK applicants are eligible as a Horizon Europe Associated Country. For Pathfinder Challenges, single applications and 2-member consortia (including UK-only) are permitted. Multi-country consortia also welcome. Applicants should be research institutions, SMEs, or collaborative partnerships.
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The EIC Pathfinder Challenges 2026: Biotechnology for Healthy Ageing is one of three challenge themes under the EIC Work Programme 2026. The Challenge targets breakthrough proof-of-concept research into biotechnology and pharmaceutical interventions that can prevent, delay, or reverse age-related diseases - a rapidly growing priority given demographic trends across Europe.
Projects are expected to deliver proof of concept in one of three areas:
(a) a biotechnology or pharmaceutical intervention to prevent, delay, or reverse the onset of a specific age-related disease;
(b) a biomarker-based tool to support the responsible deployment of ageing-related interventions; or
(c) a novel New Approach Methodology (NAM) that advances the state of the art and enables future development of healthy ageing interventions. Digital health, AI-driven biomarker discovery, and precision diagnostics approaches are strongly aligned with option (b).
Unlike EIC Pathfinder Open (see above on this page), this Challenge stream allows single-entity applications, making it significantly more accessible for UK health tech companies without a pre-existing European consortium.
More information here.
Research for Patient Benefit (RfPB) – July 2026
Funder: NIHR
Opened: 15 July 2026
Closes: 1pm, 28 October 2026
Sector: Healthcare
Funding level: Regionally administered awards (typically up to c.£350,000)
Project duration: Up to 36 months
Eligibility: Three streams: researcher-led (2026/442), NIHR JLA rolling (2026/443) and NIHR NICE rolling (2026/444). Includes a highlight notice on oral and dental health. Two-stage: outline then full.
RfPB funds research concerned with the day-to-day practice of health service staff, with clear potential to benefit patients and NHS users. It is one of NIHR's most accessible programmes and is regionally administered.
More information here.
Safeguarded AI: Cybersecurity
Funder: ARIA
Opened: 4 September 2026
Closes: 2pm, 31 October 2026
Sector: AI
​Funding level: £20m total call. Track 1 (Blue Teams) approximately £2.5m–£3.5m per project, with 3–6 teams expected to be funded
Project duration: 10–15 months, running from project start to the end of November 2027
Eligibility: Open across the R&D ecosystem including startups, industry and academia; single organisations or teams spanning sectors. ARIA typically requires more than 50% of project costs and personnel time to be in the UK, with exceptions possible where a strong UK-benefit case is made in the application. Single-stage application, maximum 5 pages for Track 1.
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Safeguarded AI is a £59m ARIA programme sitting within the Trust Everything, Everywhere opportunity space. This £20m call seeks to test and accelerate the hypothesis that AI-enabled formal methods can make production-grade cyber defence practical at scale. Track 1 funds Blue Teams to build security-critical software components whose key security properties are backed by machine-checked proofs, under clearly stated threat models and assumptions, using AI as a central means of reaching levels of formal proof that would not otherwise be tractable.
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Funded teams work in 8-week sprint cycles. Six weeks are spent building and formally verifying a system or component against a declared specification and threat model. One week is given to red-teaming, in which a central Red Team that has had full viewing access to the development and verification process attempts to break the system and delivers a detailed report covering attack attempts, outcomes and reproducible artefacts for any successful breaks. The final week is for review and retargeting, with the next sprint target agreed in conversation with the ARIA programme team. Applicants are asked to propose a tractable but ambitious initial target together with plausible candidates for more ambitious follow-on targets; final target selection is subject to programme team approval both at project start and at each sprint cycle.
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ARIA expects the majority of project costs to fund a small, high-calibre technical team (typically two to four people) plus compute, which it estimates teams will budget at up to £200k per sprint on average.
More information here.
​Engineering Biology Collaborative R&D: Round 3
Funder: Innovate UK
Opened: 8 September 2026
Closes: 11am, 3 November 2026
Sector: BioTech
​Funding level: Share of up to £8.5m; total eligible project costs must be between
£750,000 and £2.5m
Duration: Per competition scope; two-stage assessment process
Eligibility: UK registered businesses, business-led collaborative projects
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The aim of this competition is to deliver business-led research and development that leads to new engineering biology products, processes or services, and that de-risks the adoption of new engineering biology technologies offering high market potential. As with the infrastructure pilot, projects must address one or more of six themes with Health listed first.
This is the larger and more strategic of the two engineering biology competitions open this week. The £750k to £2.5m band implies a genuine consortium - typically an SME lead with academic, clinical or manufacturing partners - and the two-stage assessment process means a first-stage pass is required before a full submission is considered.
More information here.
Frontier AI: SME Champions, Phase 1
Funder: Innovate UK
Opened: 1 October 2026
Closes: 11am, 11 November 2026
Sector: ALL
Funding level: Total project eligible costs £150,000 to £250,000; up to 3.1 million GBP total fund (subject to sufficient quality applications); grant covers up to 70% of eligible costs for micro/small, 60% for medium (feasibility studies and industrial research); max 3 million GBP per enterprise per competition. The call says about a 2% chance of success. Phase 2 (separate competition, subject to business case approval) is expected to be up to 1 million GBP over up to 12 months.
Project duration: 1 to 3 months as published; start by 1 April 2027; end by 30 June 2027
Eligibility: An SME can lead, and works alone: the applicant must be a UK registered micro, small or medium-sized enterprise. There are no partners or subcontractors (subcontractors not allowed). One application per SME. Cannot reuse a previously submitted application. All work, exploitation and most spend must be in the UK. Project must start at TRL 1 to 3.
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Innovate UK will invest up to 3.1 million GBP in Phase 1 of a three-phase Frontier AI pipeline, aligned with the Sovereign AI Unit's mandate to build UK national champion AI companies. Phase 1 funds UK SMEs to validate the technical feasibility of state-of-the-art or genuinely new AI and ML capabilities, where the advance comes from innovation in model or system architecture, training methodology, core learning algorithms or core control algorithms. Only successful Phase 1 applicants will be invited to Phase 2, which depends on business case approval and a separate competition (expected up to 12 months and 1 million GBP).
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Projects must fit one of four themes and one named priority within it. For health the relevant theme is AI-Enabled Health and Life Sciences, with priorities of predictive healthcare, medicines discovery, medicines manufacturing optimisation, and genomics and multi-omics. AI must be the core technical contribution, starting at TRL 1 to 3, with a clear route to defensibility such as protectable IP or a proprietary data advantage. Deliverables are a proof-of-concept prototype, a validation methodology against predefined metrics, evidence of technical novelty, a scaling rationale and a technical whitepaper. Synthetic or simulated data may be used. Out of scope: routine integration or deployment of existing tools or third-party models, literature reviews, hardware-led work, non-AI R&D and fully autonomous targeting.
More information here.
Impact Acceleration Awards
Funder: MRC
Opened: 16 July 2026
Closes: 4pm, 11 November 202
Sector: Healthcare & Life Sciences
Funding level: £50,000 - £300,000 full economic cost, funded at 80% FEC plus 100% of permitted exceptions
Project duration: 6 to 18 months
Eligibility: Project leads must be based at an MRC-eligible research organisation. Projects must target a single high-risk development step backed by prior funding. Industry partners join as collaborators and can be the intended route to market.
The MRC Impact Acceleration Award provides single-step support for developing a new or repurposed medicine, medical device, diagnostic or other medical product. The design is deliberately narrow: the applicant identifies one high-risk step in the development pathway, and the award generates the critical data needed either to de-risk onward progression or to establish failure early and cheaply.
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The scheme (previously known as the 'Gap Fund: single-step support for medical product development) sits strategically between the smaller Impact Acceleration Account block awards and the larger MRC Proof of Concept scheme, filling a gap that has historically stranded promising device and diagnostic projects.
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This is one of the most practical translational schemes on the current landscape for medtech and diagnostics SMEs, because the 'one high-risk step' framing maps cleanly onto the real blockers SMEs face - a usability study, a regulatory gap analysis, a validation dataset, etc.
More information here.
Healthcare Implementation Fund
Funder: British Heart Foundation
Opened: 21 September 2026
Closes: 12pm, 16 November 2026
Sector: Cardiology
Funding level: Up to £500,000 per project (applicants requesting most or all of it must give strong justification); detailed budget required for every cost. BHF reports about GBP 5.74m awarded across previous rounds.
Project duration: Not stated
Eligibility: Lead applicant/investigator must be employed by an NHS organisation or a UK academic institution. Teams should be identified and supported by regional innovation boards (Health Innovation Networks in England, Innovation Hubs in Scotland, Cardiac Network Board in Wales, Cardiology Network in Northern Ireland). Multidisciplinary team that jointly scoped the problem is required; scoping must be complete (problem and novel solution identified). Projects may include third-sector and industry partners where it benefits people with cardiovascular disease; industry is not eligible to lead.
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The Healthcare Implementation Fund, renamed from the Healthcare Innovation Fund, is the British Heart Foundation's route for supporting measurable improvement in the delivery of services for people with cardiovascular disease. It funds projects in real-world NHS settings that build the evidence for new ways of delivering care, so that successful models can be adopted more widely. Previous rounds have funded things such as AI stethoscopes, online psychological support and a parent portal for children with congenital heart disease.
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The fund supports novel ideas for early-stage testing and early-stage scaling. Projects must have completed scoping, meaning a problem and a novel solution have been identified, and should deliver at least one of: reduced hospital admissions or readmissions, improved patient flow, support for quality care, better use of resources, implementation of new technology, or improved communication and collaboration. All eight criteria must be addressed, including innovation or novelty, a primary focus on service delivery for any type of cardiovascular disease, a structured and systematic project design, team calibre proportionate to project complexity, a systematic evaluation approach, budget justification and proportionate patient and carer involvement. Basic research is not the aim and the page implies projects without regional innovation board backing will not be competitive.
More information here.
Developmental pathway funding scheme: stage one
Funder: MRC
Opened: 2 July 2026
Closes: 9am, 18 November 2026
Sector: Healthcare & Life Sciences
Apply for funding to develop and test novel therapeutics, medical devices, diagnostics and other interventions.
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Your project can start and finish at any stage on the developmental pathway from prototype development, through pre-clinical refinement and testing to early-phase clinical studies and trials (up to phase 2a).
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You must be based at a research organisation eligible for Medical Research Council (MRC) funding.
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There is no limit on the amount of funding you can apply for, but it should be appropriate to the project. We usually fund 80% of a project’s full economic cost (FEC).
More information here.
Definitive social care evaluations
Funder: NIHR - HTA
Opened: 6 August 2026
Closes: 1pm, 18 November 2026
Sector: Social Care
Funding level: No fixed cap. HTA commissioned awards are budgeted to the study; multi-site effectiveness trials in this programme typically fall in the £1m - £3m range and must be fully justified
Project duration: Typically 3 – 5 years for a definitive multi-site trial. Full applications open late January 2027, close 18 March 2027, decision June 2027
Eligibility: Two-stage commissioned call, outline first. Applications may be led by universities, local authorities, and NHS bodies or other providers of NHS services across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Interventions must already have progressed with UK funding and be ready for a definitive multi-site trial. SMEs join as intervention providers, technology partners or evaluation partners.
The HTA Programme is seeking social care research studies that have already progressed with UK funding and are now ready for a multi-site effectiveness and cost-effectiveness trial - the study that establishes whether an intervention works in practice and should be recommended for use. The call is explicitly intervention-focused, with service user and carer focused outcomes, and defines an intervention as any social care therapy or programme intended to improve quality of life.
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Crucially, this is a broad call rather than a narrow topic specification. There is no restriction to a particular condition, setting or population, provided the proposal falls within the HTA remit and the intervention has a credible prior evidence base. That breadth is unusual for an HTA commissioned call and considerably widens the range of SMEs who could plausibly feature in a bid.
More information here.
Efficient, Structured and Controllable AI Systems
Funder: Innovate UK
Opened: 12 October 2026
Closes: 11am, 18 November 2026
Sector: ALL/ AI
Funding level: Up to £1.66m in total for the competition. Total eligible project costs per project £50,000–£150,000. Grant rate 70% of eligible costs for micro and small organisations, 60% for medium (feasibility and industrial research categories).
Project duration: 1 to 3 months; must start by 1 April 2027 and end by 30 June 2027
Eligibility: Single applicants only. The lead must be a UK registered micro, small or medium sized enterprise (SME). No consortium, and subcontractors are not allowed. An organisation can lead only one application. Work must be carried out in the UK and results exploited in the UK. An SME can lead; there is no partner route.
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Innovate UK will invest up to £1.66m in industrial research into novel, reusable AI mechanisms that could form the foundation of the next generation of AI and machine learning systems. The strategic rationale is that capabilities beyond the current state of the art will need fundamentally different underlying architectures and learning systems. The competition is aimed at research-intensive AI start-ups, deep tech SMEs, university spinouts and pre-commercial companies developing proprietary AI technology. It is phase 1 of a potential two-phase competition; no funding is currently allocated to phase 2, and Innovate UK quotes a 4% chance of success based on similar competitions.
Projects must start at TRL 1 to 3 and advance by 0.5 to 1 TRL. Applications must select one main theme and at least one specific priority within it:
(1) resource and data adaptive learning (active and probabilistic learning, continual and selective learning, data-efficient learning);
(2) causal and intervention-grounded models (causal representation learning, interventional or counterfactual learning, causal discovery under partial observability);
(3) learned modular computation and routing;
(4) geometric, equivariant and physics-structured learning. Projects must deliver a prototype architecture or subsystem, an experimental validation environment, results against named baselines, ablation and negative-control evidence, and a technical white paper. Out of scope are projects that integrate or productise existing AI tools or third-party models, prompt engineering, generic agent orchestration, routine GNN application, literature reviews, and projects without clear background IP, a defensibility route, or a falsifiable hypothesis.
More information here.
Speech and language therapist-led interventions for school-aged children with developmental language disorder
Funder: NIHR - HTA
Open: 6 August 2026
Closes: 1pm, 18 November 2026
Sector: Paediatric Health
Funding level: No fixed cap; budget must be justified against the research specification. Evidence-gathering and prioritisation studies of this type generally sit below the cost of a definitive trial
Project duration: Full applications open late January 2027, close 18 March 2027, decision June 2027
Eligibility: Two-stage commissioned call, outline first. Standard HTA Programme eligibility applies. Multidisciplinary teams are expected; technology providers and speech and language therapy services are natural collaborators.
The research question is which speech and language therapist-led interventions supporting school-aged children with developmental language disorder (DLD) are most suitable for future studies of comparative effectiveness. This is a prioritisation and evidence-mapping call rather than a definitive trial: the programme wants to know which of the many interventions currently in use deserve to be tested head to head.
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The specification is explicit that eligible interventions include in-person, online, digital and remote delivery, provided individually or in groups. Required outputs include a survey of current practice describing the interventions and techniques in use, the factors influencing therapists' decisions about which interventions to offer, and how interventions are adapted to the heterogeneity of the target group.
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This is one of three related paediatric speech and language calls released simultaneously, alongside developmental stammer and non-progressive motor disorders affecting speech. Teams working in this space should read all three specifications together before deciding which to target, or whether a coordinated approach across more than one is feasible.
More information here.
Interventions for school-aged children with a developmental stammer
Funder: NIHR - HTA
Opened: 6 August 2026
Closes: 1pm, 18 November 2026
Sector: Paediatric Health
Funding level: No fixed cap; budget must be justified. Clinical and cost-effectiveness trials in the HTA portfolio commonly run to seven figures
Project duration: Full applications open late January 2027, close 18 March 2027, decision June 2027
Eligibility: Two-stage commissioned call, outline first. Standard HTA Programme eligibility. Applicants must define and justify inclusion criteria, with explicit attention to children with comorbidities such as ADHD and children for whom English is not a first language.
This call asks a straight effectiveness question: what is the clinical and cost-effectiveness of intervention(s) for school-aged children with a developmental stammer? Unlike the DLD call, this is framed as a comparative trial rather than a prioritisation exercise, so the programme is looking for a study that produces a definitive answer.
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The specification asks applicants to detail intervention parameters including the intensity, frequency and duration of sessions, to demonstrate how the intervention responds to the heterogeneity of individual participants in terms of their characteristics, circumstances and needs, and to outline any training that speech and language therapists would require to deliver it.
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Research inclusion is given unusual prominence. Applicants are directed to consider the inclusion of children with common comorbidities such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and children for whom English is not their first language - both groups routinely excluded from stammering research to date.
More information here.
​Interventions for children and young people with nonprogressive motor disorders affecting their speech
Funder: NIHR - HTA
Open: 6 August 2026
Closes: 1pm, 18 November 2026
Sector: Paediatric Health
​Funding level: No fixed cap; budget must be justified against the research specification
Project duration: Full applications open late January 2027, close 18 March 2027, decision June 2027
Eligibility: Two-stage commissioned call, outline first. Standard HTA Programme eligibility. The anticipated target group is children and young people of primary and secondary school age, potentially extending to age 25.
The programme is seeking evidence on the relative clinical and cost-effectiveness of different direct speech interventions for children and young people whose speech intelligibility and overall communication is affected by cerebral palsy or other non-progressive motor disorders. The comparison is between direct speech interventions rather than between intervention and no intervention.
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The specification anticipates a target group spanning primary and secondary school age and potentially extending to those up to 25 years old. Importantly, it notes that in addition to the direct speech interventions being studied, participants may use or continue with a form of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) - meaning AAC is treated as part of the real-world context rather than an exclusion criterion.#
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This is the third of the paediatric speech and communication trio. It addresses a population with substantial unmet need and a notably thin comparative evidence base, which is generally a favourable position for a well-constructed application.
More information here.
UK Obesity Research Institute
Funder: Medical Research Council
Opened: 30 July 2026
Closes: 4pm, 19 November 2026
Sector: Healthcare & Life Sciences
Funding level: Up to £60 million
Project duration: Seven years, with potential to renew
Eligibility: Director-led applications to establish a collaborative national institute; funding subject to approval of a full business case
MRC is seeking director-led applications to create a UK Obesity Research Institute investigating the mechanistic biomedical drivers of obesity and related cardiometabolic disease, and delivering transformative impact in obesity research.
At up to £60 million over seven years this is one of the largest single UK health research opportunities currently in the market. Applications must set out the design and delivery of a collaborative institute, not a single-site programme.
More information here.
Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation (EME) Programme: researcher-led workstream
Funder: NIHR
Opened: 6 August 2026
Closes: 1pm, 25 November 2026
Sector: Healthcare & Life Sciences
Funding level: £500,000 stated as the funding available amount for this opportunity
Project duration: Two-stage; outline followed by full application. Methodological sub-studies (SWATs) are eligible within the award
Eligibility: Two-stage funding opportunity, outline first. Proposals must fall within the EME Programme scope: research into the efficacy and/or mechanism of interventions based in, or used by, the NHS and its partners. Open to researcher-defined topics rather than a prescribed specification.
The EME Programme funds ambitious studies evaluating interventions with the potential to deliver a step-change in the promotion of health, the treatment of disease, or the improvement of rehabilitation and long-term care. The researcher-led workstream carries no topic restriction - applicants bring their own question, provided it addresses efficacy and/or mechanism for an intervention used in or by the NHS.
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The opportunity is eligible for a methodological sub-study (a Study Within A Trial, Review or Project) which allows a team to test and improve research methodology alongside the main evaluation and can add meaningful value to an application.
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The absence of a prescribed topic makes this the most flexible NIHR route available to SMEs right now. Where an SME has an intervention with a plausible efficacy claim and an academic or NHS partner willing to lead, the question is defined by the applicant rather than by a commissioning brief. The mechanism arm is particularly useful for digital and device interventions, because it funds work establishing how and why something works, often the missing evidence in a health tech company's dossier when it comes to NICE or commissioner scrutiny.
More information here.
HTA Application Development Award
Funder: NIHR
Opened: 11 June 2026
Closes: 1pm, 25 November 2026
Sector: Healthcare & Life Sciences
Award Size: £150,000. A one stage process.
Duration: Up to 18 months.
Eligibility: Researchers in England intending to submit a full application to the HTA Programme. Applications must relate to questions of direct relevance to the NHS and social care.
This grant supports the development stage of health technology assessment research proposals - covering systematic reviews, pilot studies, and feasibility work that will inform a full HTA application.
More information here.
​Commercialising Knowledge Assets Fund
Funder: Innovate UK
Opened: 17 September 2026
Closes: 11am, 1 December 2026
Sector: ALL
Funding level: Grants from £50,000 up to £250,000.
Project duration: Projects must last exactly 6, 12 or 18 months. All of them must start between 1 March and 1 April 2027.
Eligibility summary: Lead applicant must be a UK-registered Public Sector Research Establishment (PSRE), UKRI wholly-owned institute, or other public sector body. Not directly open to SMEs as lead applicant.
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CKAF is a recurring Government Office for Technology Transfer fund that helps public sector research organisations move viable knowledge assets (including health and care technologies) towards commercial readiness. This is relevant where an SME is seeking to in-license, spin out, or commercially partner around a PSRE-held technology.
More information here.
Development of novel evaluative methodologies to overcome systemic barriers in social care research
Funders: NIHR / MRC - Better Methods, Better Research (BMBR) Programme
Opend: 8 September 2026
Closes: 1pm, 1 December 2026
Funding level: £625,000 available
Project duration: Methodology development project; full application (single stage)
Eligibility: UK research teams meeting BMBR remit; priorities set with DHSC, NHS, local government, Department for Education and public contributors
This BMBR call funds the development of highly applicable evaluative methodologies that overcome the logistical and design barriers inherent in conducting robust social care research; fragmented providers, small sites, consent complexity and weak routine data.
More information here.
Sector: Social Care
The use of synthetic data in health and social care research
Funders: NIHR / MRC - Better Methods, Better Research (BMBR) Programme
Opened: 8 September 2026
Closes: 1pm, 1 December 2026
Sector: Healthcare & Life Sciences
​Funding level: £625,000 available
Project duration: Methodology development project; full application (single stage)
Eligibility: UK research teams meeting BMBR remit; priorities set with DHSC, NHS, NICE, MHRA and the devolved administrations.
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The joint NIHR–MRC Better Methods, Better Research programme is funding methodology development using synthetic health data; creating methods that leverage the opportunities of synthetic data while managing its limitations.
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Synthetic data is central to unlocking health data for AI development where real patient data cannot be shared, and this call is explicitly aimed at building the methodological foundations regulators and the NHS will rely on.
More information here.
Researcher-led (BMBR Programme)
Funders: NIHR and MRC
Opened: 8 September 2026
Closes: 1pm, 1 December 2026
Sector: Healthcare & Life Sciences
Funding level: Up to £625,000 (100% FEC basis for valuation); MRC and NIHR will
usually fund up to 80% of FEC
Duration: Per project specification
Eligibility: One-stage, researcher-led. Full application required at first
submission.
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The BMBR Programme is a joint MRC and NIHR programme that aims to ensure optimal research methods are used to advance biomedical, health and care research, policy and delivery. This researcher-led opportunity is a single-stage call.
Two features are worth noting. First, the call is eligible for methodological substudies, (Studies Within A Trial, Review or Project) which can be attached to a host study to improve the methodology of future research as well as the host study itself, and which can support the decarbonisation of research. Second, research outputs are expected to be available and usable to the fullest extent, with open-source software and code explicitly encouraged and the supporting costs eligible under NIHR open access funding guidance.
More information here.
Enabling AI adoption across science and engineering
Funder: EPSRC
Opened: 29 September 2026
Closes: 4pm, 1 December 2026
Sector: AI
Funding level: £5 million total fund. Maximum £250,000 full economic cost per project; UKRI funds 80% of FEC.
Project duration: Maximum 12 months, with a fixed start date of 26 April 2027.
Eligibility: Applicants must be based at a UK research organisation eligible for UKRI funding.
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UKRI is funding ambitious and exploratory projects that bring together artificial intelligence and domain expertise, with the potential to unlock new opportunities for applying AI to important research challenges in priority science and engineering disciplines.
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Applications must address domain-specific research challenges within one of five named priority areas: engineering biology, advanced materials, quantum technologies, medical research, and fusion energy. Within engineering biology, UKRI particularly encourages applications in AI-enabled biotechnologies relevant to sustainable food systems, clean growth, health and environmental solutions — with named examples including identifying novel biological components and pathways, modelling cellular and metabolic systems, predictive genome design, automation and high-throughput phenotyping, and biosecurity and biological risk management.
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All five priority areas have been identified as offering significant opportunities for AI to accelerate research and innovation and for deeper integration of AI capabilities to drive scientific and technological progress. A webinar is scheduled for 14 October 2026, ahead of the 1 December closing date.
More information here.
Understanding inhabitants’ experiences of neighbourhoods to support their health and well-being
Funder: Horizon Europe
Open
Closes: 5pm (CET), 1 December 2026
Sector: Healthcare
​Funding level: Indicative budget €15 million; approx. €5 million EU contribution per project
Project duration: Not stated in the published call summary
Eligibility: Standard Horizon Europe consortium rules. Projects must involve a wide range of participants including vulnerable and marginalised groups (older adults, children and young people, disabled people and carers, migrants and refugees, LGBTQIA+ communities) across urban, peri-urban, rural, coastal and island settings. UK organisations eligible as associated-country participants.
Evidence on how people experience their neighbourhood (sensory, emotional and social) and how that shapes health and wellbeing, with recommendations for local authorities and the cultural and heritage sector. Fits population health, health inequalities and healthy-place agendas.
More information here.
Programme Grants for Applied Research - October 2026 (children and young people)
Funders: NIHR, in partnership with the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health
Opened: 7 October 2026
Closes: 1pm, 2 December 2026
Sector: Child health
​Funding level: Programme-scale funding (PGfAR awards are typically £2–3 million)
Project duration: Typically three to five years
Eligibility: Ring-fenced funding opportunity; UK research teams addressing transformative change in CYP health, care and wellbeing, aligned to the Health and Growth Missions and the Fit for the Future 10 Year Health Plan
NIHR is again partnering with the RCPCH to invite programmes of research capable of delivering a transformative stepped change in children and young people's health, care and wellbeing. The opportunity is ring-fenced for this theme.
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Applicants are encouraged to draw on current government policy ambitions, including the 10 Year Health Plan and equivalent initiatives across the devolved administrations.
More information here.
i4i Product Development Awards
Funder: NIHR
Opened7 October 2026
Closes: 1pm, 2 December 2026
Sector: Healthcare & Life Sciences
​Funding level: Funding is uncapped, with typical awards between £0.5m and £1.5m. Applications are not required to sit within that range if well justified.
Project duration: Typically 24 to 36 months.
Eligibility: Open to higher education institutions, small and medium enterprises, NHS or social care providers, not-for-profit organisations, and local authorities and governments based in the UK. PDA requires at least one co-applicant from an organisation different to the contracting organisation, so a collaboration is mandatory. Proposals must address an area of unmet need and show a clear pathway to adoption and commercialisation.
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The NIHR i4i Product Development Awards are the programme's flagship translational stream, supporting collaborative research and development projects for medical devices, in vitro diagnostic devices and high-impact, patient-focused digital health technologies intended for use in the NHS or social care systems.
Scope covers preclinical and clinical product development and the generation of real-world evidence to support NHS or social care adoption. The entry point is experimental proof-of-concept or laboratory-validated technology. Innovations focused on real-world evidence generation must already hold regulatory approval, or demonstrate equivalent safety and efficacy for the intended use.
More information here.
i4i Product Development Awards (PDA) NICE early use recommendation
Funder: NIHR
Opened: 7 October 2026
Closes: 1pm, 2 December 2026 (Outline stage)
Sector: Healthcare & Life Sciences
Funding level: No upper or lower limit; costs must be justified and offer value for money. SMEs and NHS organisations can receive up to 100% of requested funding with no match funding for commercial organisations; HEIs up to 80% of full economic cost; large enterprises are expected to provide in-kind contributions.
Project duration: Up to 36 months
Eligibility summary: Consortium of
(1) an evaluation partner as lead applicant and contracting organisation, which must be a UK legal entity;
(2) one or more technology partners supplying the early use product(s); and
(3) at least one NHS adopting site or service.
The product must hold a published NICE early use recommendation (formerly early value assessment). An SME can partner as the technology provider; whether an SME can act as evaluation partner and lead depends on the i4i programme page rules and its ability to run the evaluation, so check this with the i4i team first.
This i4i Product Development Awards (PDA) funding opportunity is dedicated to closing the evidence gap that stops technologies recommended for early use by NICE from achieving a full NICE evaluation and widespread NHS adoption. NICE early use assessment (previously early value assessment) allows promising devices and digital technologies to be used in the NHS while evidence is gathered; this call funds that evidence generation, running to the evidence generation plan NICE sets for each product. It is a two-stage call: an outline application, then a full application for shortlisted teams.
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In scope is the generation of real-world evidence, or other relevant evidence, required by NICE for a product (or products under a topic) to reach a full NICE evaluation, in line with the NICE early use recommendation and evidence generation plan. Also fundable are the additional evidence commissioners need to encourage uptake in the NHS and social care, and activities that capture learning into generalisable guidance for innovators. Eligible costs explicitly include design and delivery of real-world evaluations, small technology adaptations needed for end-user acceptance during the project (but not requiring further regulatory approval), staff training and training materials, implementation research including clinical pathway analysis and sustainability evaluation, implementation cost analysis, and market analysis. Products must already have a published NICE early use recommendation; if the evidence cannot be delivered within the PDA timeframe the researcher-led PDA route is the alternative.​
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Process: launch webinar was held on 5 October 2026; outline applications opened 7 October and close 2 December 2026 at 1:00 pm; full applications open 11 February 2027 and close 1 April 2027 at 1:00 pm; funding decisions no earlier than June 2027.
More information here.
i4i LeapX joint funding opportunity (UK–Singapore)
Funders:NIHR, National Health Innovation Centre Singapore
Opened: 7 October 2026
Closes: 1pm, 2 December 2026
Sector: Healthcare & Life Sciences
​Funding level: Up to £500,000 in the UK and up to SG$750,000 in Singapore, each to deliver work in the respective country.
Project duration: Up to 24 months
Eligibility summary: Mandatory two joint leads: one UK lead applicant and one Singapore lead applicant, each meeting their own funder's eligibility rules (UK applicants must be within the remit of the NIHR i4i PDA programme). Eligible products are medical devices, IVDs and Tier C (Class C-D) digital health technologies; biotech is not eligible. Technology must be at TRL 5 or above in its country of origin, validated in a relevant environment with intended end users and authentic clinical data. A collaboration agreement must be in place within 3 months of project start. UK SMEs can lead the UK side provided they meet i4i PDA eligibility, so this is open to SME leadership.
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NIHR and the National Health Innovation Centre Singapore (NHIC) have launched this joint opportunity to support collaborative, late-stage development and evaluation of healthcare innovations. The shared aim is to generate target-market evidence, in both the UK and Singapore, that accelerates regulatory approval and clinical adoption in each market. It sits within the NIHR i4i PDA programme and the NHIC LeapX programme and is a two-stage process, with outline applications first and full applications for those invited.
The focus is late-stage productisation, clinical validation and/or commercialisation of medical devices, in vitro diagnostics and Tier C digital health technologies; biotech is excluded. All applications must meet at least TRL 5 in the country of origin, which the call defines tightly: devices must have moved beyond bench testing into use by intended end users in a representative clinical workflow; IVDs must be validated on authentic, real-world clinical samples from the target population showing initial sensitivity and specificity (contrived or spiked samples are not enough); and digital health technologies must have a functional beta version validated on actual clinical data from the target demographic, with usability and workflow testing by the clinicians or patients who will use it. Each side funds activity in its own country.
More information here.
Early Detection and Diagnosis Project Award
Funder: Cancer Research UK
Opened: 10 September 2026
Closes: 3 December 2026
Sector: Cancer
Funding level: Up to £500k per award (larger or longer requests considered only with exceptional rationale agreed in advance); equipment up to £50k; smaller pilot applications accepted. CRUK pays directly incurred cost. Five-year rolling success rate 22%.
Project duration: Up to 4 years
Eligibility: Lead applicant must be a scientist, clinician or healthcare worker at a UK university, medical school, hospital or research institute (generally fully funded by the host). A company cannot lead. Multi-institution UK teams encouraged; international and commercial organisations may be co-investigators or collaborators. Commercial collaborators need a letter of support describing funding or in-kind contribution. Out of scope: late-stage or metastatic disease (except recurrence detection), work without line of sight to early detection impact, CTU infrastructure. Single stage process.
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Cancer Research UK's Early Detection and Diagnosis Project Award funds exceptional science intended to change how and when early cancers and pre-cancerous states are detected and diagnosed. It is the charity's main project-level vehicle for early detection research (it now covers what were previously separate biomarker and sample-collection style proposals) and sits alongside a larger Programme Award and a £100k Primer Award.
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The scope runs from discovery through to translational research. Examples in remit include discovery and validation of signatures for early cancer or pre-cancer including the technologies to enable this, development and validation of tests and interventions, clinical trials of early detection technologies, health systems research, clinician decision support, public behaviour, and health economics. Applications must show early detection relevance, a line of sight to clinical or population impact, and a clearly articulated cancer question. A spotlight call on reducing inequalities in early detection and diagnosis runs across several rounds, and comparable-quality proposals addressing it may be prioritised. Tissue banks are fundable only where no comparable collection exists and the proposal also funds a research project using it.
More information here.
​Clinical Research Funding Scheme
Funder: Cancer Research UK
Open
Closes: 3 December 2026 (full application stage)
Sector: Cancer
Funding level: Flexible and module-dependent. This is a modular scheme with no single fixed award ceiling.
Project duration: Typically up to 10 years; longer durations considered if justified. Project dependent.
Eligibility: Applicants must be based at a UK university, medical school, hospital, UKCRC-registered clinical trials unit or research institution. Proposals must be investigator-led, and all applications must have a UKCRC-registered clinical trials unit coordinating the clinical trial or study. Open to researchers at any career stage. This is a closed round - applicants must contact CRUK ideally one month, and at least two weeks, before the deadline for a confidential eligibility discussion before submitting.
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Cancer Research UK's Clinical Research Funding Scheme is a modular scheme providing support for high-quality clinical research, associated translational research, and the collection of samples and data. Funding amount is flexible and depends on which modules are requested, and funding periods typically run up to ten years, with longer durations considered where justified.
Each module carries its own applicant eligibility guidance, and the scheme is deliberately open across career stages - from early-career researchers nearing completion of clinical trials training through to established investigators. CRUK encourages applications that include early-career researchers who have had limited previous involvement as co-investigators and collaborators.
More information here.
Gambling harms research grants
Funders: Arts and Humanities Research Council / Medical Research Council / Economic and Social Research Council
Opened: 21 September 2026
Closes: 4pm, 8 December 2026
Sector: Addiction health
​Funding level: Up to £2,000,000 full economic cost (FEC) per award; UKRI funds 80% of FEC. Total fund £18,000,000.
Project duration: Up to 3 years
Eligibility summary: Lead applicant must be based at a UK research organisation eligible for UKRI funding. Open to all UKRI research councils; interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches are encouraged. SMEs join as project partners rather than as lead applicants.
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This is a UKRI cross-council call worth £18m in total, funding grants of up to £2m (80% FEC) over up to three years to deepen understanding of, or develop solutions for, the prevention and treatment of gambling-related harms. It is open to the full range of UKRI research councils and interdisciplinary proposals spanning clinical, behavioural and social science approaches are explicitly encouraged.
This new call is the broader, general ‘gambling harms’ funding. SMEs, particularly those building screening, early-intervention or digital therapeutic tools for gambling-related harm, can participate as technology or evaluation partners within an academic-led consortium.
More information here.
Sustainable Medicines Manufacturing Innovation: CR&D Round 2
Funders: Innovate UK and DHSC
Opened: 5 October 2026
Closes: 11am, 2 December 2026
Sector:
Funding level: Up to £7 million in total. Each project may request £500,000 to £1 million in grant.
Project duration: 9 to 12 months; projects must start by 1 April 2027 and end by 31 March 2028
Eligibility summary: Collaborative projects only. Led by a UK registered business of any size, research and technology organisation (RTO), catapult, not-for-profit, public sector organisation or charity; academic institutions cannot lead; an RTO lead must collaborate with two businesses (one SME and one of any size). The consortium must include at least one UK SME claiming grant. Technologies must already be at TRL 6 or above and advance at least two TRL levels. An SME can lead.
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Innovate UK, working with the Department of Health and Social Care, is investing up to £7 million to support the technical development and commercial readiness of sustainable technologies for manufacturing medicines. The call is the second round of the Sustainable Medicines Manufacturing Innovation programme and aims to cut the environmental footprint of medicines production while strengthening the UK as a location for medicines manufacturing investment. Innovate UK notes a likely success rate of around 15%.
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Projects must address three pillars: green chemistry (for example biocatalysis, flow chemistry, solvent-free systems, sustainable solvents, biomanufacturing of APIs and technology switches away from solid-phase synthesis), circularity (recycling and reuse of solvents, water, plastics and packaging) and productivity and resource efficiency. They must also cover two critical enablers, regulations, and measurements, standards and data, and must evidence sustainability claims through baseline measurements and defined metrics showing measurable improvement in productivity, waste, emissions, energy use or resource efficiency.
The four goals are disruptive process technologies, adoption across the sector, UK investment attractiveness, and stronger academia-industry-government collaboration. Projects must show how at least one UK SME improves productivity, competitiveness and growth.
More information here.
Using 'big data' to impact health and health inequalities
Funder: NIHR (Public Health Research Programme)
Opened: 21 July 2026
Closes: 1pm, 8 December 2026
Sector: Healthcare & Life Sciences
Funding level: PHR programme-scale funding
Project duration: Two-stage: outline then full application
Eligibility: UK research teams; research into data linkage and big data usage in local and/or regional government, or interventions addressing barriers to and risks of big data usage
This new PHR commissioned call funds research into the health and health inequality impacts of data linkage and big data usage in local and regional government, and into interventions that address the barriers to, or risks associated with, that usage.
More information here.
Public Health Research Programme Rapid Funding Scheme
Funder: NIHR
Opened: 16 December 2025
Closes: 16 December 2026
Sector: Healthcare
The Public Health Research (PHR) Programme funds research to generate evidence to inform the delivery of non-NHS interventions, intended to improve the health of the public, and reduce inequalities in health.
The Rapid Funding Scheme (RFS) was launched in March 2018 and offers researchers the opportunity to apply for funds to conduct rapid baseline data collection, as well as other feasibility work, prior to intervention implementation, for unique, time-limited opportunities such as a natural experiment or similar evaluations of a new public health intervention.
This scheme is not intended to fund studies which provide definitive answers to questions to inform service provision – it is to prepare for such studies.
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Funding is a maximum of £50,000 for a duration of 6 months.
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More information here.
Project Grants - 2027 round (preproposal stage)
Funder: Parkinson's UK
Opened: 30 September 2026
Closes: 4pm, 7 January 2027
Sector: Parkinson's
Funding level: Usually up to £400,000 (average past award £260,000).
2025 round: 38 preproposals, 21 invited, 6 funded.
Project duration: Up to 36 months
Eligibility: Applicant must be based at a UK university or research institute, NHS Trust or statutory social care organisation. Co-applicants and collaborators can be at institutions inside or outside the UK or at pharmaceutical or biotech companies. Projects focused on GBA1 are not accepted in the 2027 round. Meaningful involvement of people with lived experience and EDI consideration expected.
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Parkinson's UK Project Grants fund groundbreaking research to tackle the major unanswered questions in Parkinson's. It is a two stage process.
Projects should answer a single question or small group of Parkinson's research questions. The charity gives examples such as understanding the causes of Parkinson's and Parkinson's-like disorders (MSA and PSP), investigating links with other conditions like diabetes, discovering new drugs or investigating biomarkers, and cohort studies or pilot clinical trials. Projects focused on GBA1 are excluded this year because Parkinson's UK is supporting that area via the GBA1-PD Research Catalyst Program. Applicants are expected to work with people with lived experience throughout and to consider equity, diversity and inclusion; this is part of the assessment. Healthcare service improvement projects belong in other schemes such as the Excellence Network grants.
More information here.
Centres of Excellence for Regulatory Science and Innovation
Funder: MRC
Opened: 22 September 2026
Closes: 4pm, 12 January 2027
Sector: Life Sciences
Funding level: Total fund £20,000,000; up to four Centres expected to be funded, each for an initial 3 years with a further 2 years subject to spending review.
Project duration: Up to 5 years (3 years initial + 2-year extension subject to funding review)
Eligibility summary: Lead and co-lead applicants must be UK research organisations eligible for MRC funding. International researchers can join as project co-leads. Industry, including SMEs, can be included as project partners.
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The MRC and the Office for Life Sciences are jointly funding up to four new Centres of Excellence for Regulatory Science and Innovation (CERSI), each addressing strategic regulatory science priorities through sustained, multi-year programmes of research. The scheme is designed to build UK capacity in the science that underpins regulatory decision-making - covering areas such as novel trial design, real-world evidence methodology, and evaluation frameworks for emerging health technologies.
More information here.
Research Programme for Social Care
Funder: NIHR
Opened: 23 September 2026
Closes: 1pm, 20 January 2027
Sector: Social care
Funding level: There's no upper budget limit for individual projects. The one exception is early-career applications, which are capped at £300,000 requested from NIHR. You propose whatever budget the work needs, but value for money is one of the main assessment criteria.
Project duration: NIHR doesn't set a maximum length. Your team proposes it as part of the plan. Projects in this round can't start before 1 April 2028.
Eligibility summary: Open to researcher-led proposals covering both adult and children's social care. Applicants should check the RPSC scope and eligibility criteria; SMEs typically participate as technology, evaluation or delivery partners alongside an eligible lead applicant.
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NIHR has opened a new two stage researcher-led funding round under the Research Programme for Social Care (reference 2026/498), alongside two evergreen commissioned strands (NIHR NICE rolling funding opportunity and NIHR James Lind Alliance rolling funding opportunity.
This is a new round (distinct outline/full-application timetable and reference number) rather than a duplicate of the generic 'Research Programme for Social Care' grant already published.
More information here.
Small Molecule High Throughput Screen using AstraZeneca Facilities
Funders: MRC and AstraZeneca
Opened: 10 September 2026
Closes: 4pm, 28 January 2027
Sector: Life Sciences
Funding level: £1m total fund; maximum award £270,000
Duration: Per project
Eligibility: Research organisations eligible for MRC funding.
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This scheme funds researchers to run a high throughput screen using AstraZeneca's compound library and screening robots. The real prize is access to a pharmaceutical company's industrial screening infrastructure and compound collection which is not otherwise purchasable at this price point, and the award covers the cost of running the screen rather than simply granting cash.
The round is open to all targets, which removes the therapy-area gating that constrains many industry-partnered schemes.
More information here.
Translational Awards (preliminary stage)
Funder: BHF
Opened: 30 September 2026
Closes: 5pm, 3 February 2027
Sector: Cardiology
Funding level: No upper limit; amount must be justified and appropriate. Eligible costs include staff (not PhD studentships), consumables, essential equipment, consultancy, CRO outsourcing, project manager (0.2 FTE, grade 7-8) and IP protection/commercialisation costs.
Project duration: Up to 3 years, with 3-5 progression milestones
Eligibility: Principal investigator must be a researcher at an established UK research institution; application must be made in partnership with the institution's Technology Transfer Office. Individuals or teams from commercial organisations can apply only as collaborators, not PI. Excludes open-ended investigative research and late-phase clinical trials.
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BHF Translational Awards (is a two stage process) that support the pre-clinical and early-phase clinical development of new cardiovascular medicines and technologies. The scheme is designed to move fundamental discovery science along the translational pathway, first into human studies and through to phase II trials, towards patient benefit and commercialisation. Proposals are expected to show a strong intellectual property position and a development proposition that could attract follow-on investment. The next preliminary deadline is 3 February 2027, with a further one on 4 August 2027, and BHF advises allowing up to ten months from preliminary submission to a final funding decision.
Fundable areas span novel therapeutics (small molecules and biologics), drug repurposing, devices and surgical techniques, diagnostics and imaging technologies, digital solutions, cell therapy and regenerative medicine, and early-phase clinical studies up to phase II.
More information here.
Project Grants
Funder: British Heart Foundation
Open
Closes: There are no closing dates. Please submit the application when it is ready and allow up to 6 months from submission to decision.
Sector: Healthcare & Life sciences
Funding level: Up to £500,000 per award
Project duration: Up to 4 years (longer only in exceptional circumstances)
Eligibility: Principal investigator usually a post-doctoral researcher at any career stage, based at an established UK research institution.
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Project Grants are the British Heart Foundation's core scheme for short-term, hypothesis-driven cardiovascular research, covering staff costs, consumables, essential equipment and limited conference travel. Because there is no fixed deadline, it functions as an always-open funding line rather than a single competition round. The scheme explicitly supports clinical studies (with additional costing guidance for clinical trials units and clinical imaging), making it relevant wherever a digital health or medtech innovation needs a formal clinical evaluation in a cardiovascular population - for example remote monitoring, AI-assisted diagnostics, or digital rehabilitation tools being tested against a defined clinical hypothesis.
More information here.
Translational Pump Priming Awards (rolling)
Funder: British Heart Foundation
Open
Closes: Rolling - no closing date; decision in about 6 weeks
Sector: Cardiology
Funding level
Up to £50,000 per award. Funds consumables, outsourced work to CROs and regulatory consultation fees; does not fund equipment, salaries, training, patent filing, animal licences, travel or public engagement.
Project duration: Maximum 9 months
Eligibility: PI must be a researcher at an established UK research institution (postdocs, group heads and fellows qualify). Staff of commercial organisations and SME representatives may take part as collaborators, with formal collaboration agreements. Exploratory discovery research is excluded.
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Translational Pump Priming Awards are the BHF's one stage, small, agile funding for the development of innovative technologies in heart, stroke and circulatory diseases. They sit under the Translational Awards committee and are aimed at proof-of-principle or de-risking work that could justify a larger Translational Award or follow-on investment.
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The scheme supports pre-clinical and clinical development of novel therapeutics (small molecules or biologics), drug repurposing, devices, diagnostics, imaging technologies, digital solutions, and cell therapy and regenerative medicine.
Activities can include prototype development, validation studies and advancing a technology to the next stage of the translational pathway. Funding can be spent on research consumables, outsourced project work to contract research organisations and regulatory consultation fees. Explicitly not funded are equipment, staff salaries, professional training, patent filing, animal research licences, travel and public engagement.
More information here.
Research grant: applicant-led
Funder: MRC
Opened: 7 April 2026
Ongoing
Sector: Healthcare & Life Sciences
​Funding Level: Typically 80% of Full Economic Cost (FEC); project values vary
Project Duration: Usually up to 5 years
Eligibility: UK-based researchers at eligible research organisations; projects must fall within MRC remit (human health and disease). Industry partners can collaborate but a UK academic institution must lead.
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The MRC Research Grant (Applicant-Led) is one of MRC's flagship discovery research awards, supporting ambitious, researcher-driven projects that transform understanding of human health and disease, accelerate diagnosis, advance treatment, and prevent illness. The programme re-opened on 7 April 2026, with applications submitted in April and May 2026 expected to be considered in a shortlisting process concluding in July 2026.
Grants support high-quality basic and translational research across the full MRC remit, including infection and immunity, neuroscience, population health, mental health, and biomedical data science. Projects involving novel digital health approaches, computational medicine, or AI-driven biomarker discovery are particularly encouraged where they address fundamental biological questions.
Applications can involve more than one research group or organisation, making this an excellent vehicle for academic-industry partnerships. Shortlisted applications from the first phase are invited for interviews during November–December 2026, with award decisions anticipated in December 2026.
More information here.
Pre-announcement: Experimental medicine to define mechanisms of gambling disorder
Funders: Medical Research Council (lead), with AHRC, ESRC and UKRI; assessed jointly with DCMS
Opened: 8 October 2026
Closes: 4pm, 14 April 2027
Sector: Healthcare & Life Sciences
​Funding level: £10 million total fund. The full economic cost of each project can be up to £3 million, of which MRC funds 80 per cent.
Project duration: Three years
Eligibility: To lead an application you must be based at a UK research organisation eligible for MRC funding. Businesses and charity or third sector organisations cannot lead but can join as project partners; charities that are UKRI-approved Independent Research Organisations can lead. International researchers can be included as project co-lead (international).
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This two stage competition sits within the new Research Programme on Gambling, funded from the statutory levy on gambling operators that commenced in April 2025. Twenty per cent of levy income flows to UKRI and the Gambling Commission for research, and this £10 million call is one of the first substantial deployments of that money.
The scientific framing is deliberately mechanistic. UKRI wants academically led experimental medicine studies in humans that generate causal insight into how gambling disorder develops, progresses and responds to treatment. Projects must focus on a clearly articulated mechanistic hypothesis, must include an experimental intervention or challenge in humans, and must move beyond identifying correlates and behavioural endpoints to test causal pathways. Studies that simply observe or describe will not be competitive.
The scope note is explicit that modern gambling products and environments are evolving rapidly and incorporate features engineered to maximise engagement by leveraging human reward, learning and attentional processes. Applications may explore intersections between gambling, gambling products and addiction across biopsychosocial domains, identify opportunities to modify trajectories, or enable future therapeutic and diagnostic development.
Meaningful public and patient involvement is described as essential, and lay summaries will be reviewed by public contributors recruited through partner gambling harms charities. Successful projects must also coordinate with the GHR-UK evidence centre.
More information here.
AI Futures Fund
Funder: Google
Ongoing
Sector: ALL
Google has launched its AI Futures Fund, a new initiative that seeks to invest in startups that are building with the latest AI tools from Google DeepMind, the company’s AI R&D lab.
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The fund will back startups from seed to late stage and will offer varying degrees of support, including allowing founders to have early access to Google AI models from DeepMind, the ability to work with Google experts from DeepMind and Google Labs, and Google Cloud credits. Some startups will also have the opportunity to receive direct investment from Google.
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“The AI Futures Fund doesn’t follow a batch or cohort model,” a Google spokesperson told TechCrunch. “Instead, we consider opportunities on a rolling basis - there’s no fixed application window or deadline. When we come across companies that align with the fund’s thesis, we may choose to invest. We’re not announcing a specific fund size at this time, and check sizes vary based on the company’s stage and needs - typically early to mid-stage, with flexibility for later-stage opportunities as well.”
More information here.
Apply here.
Rolling opportunity seeds
Funder: ARIA
Ongoing
Sector: Mathematics for Safe AI
Breakthroughs require finding people who think differently about what’s possible – and empowering them to follow their vision. To support scientific and technological breakthroughs, ARIA Programme Directors can award funding to small but highly ambitious projects, “opportunity seeds”, to support ambitious research aligned to their opportunity spaces. To understand how opportunity seeds work within ARIA's broader funding model and complement its programme funding, see ARIA's research model.
For opportunity seed projects, ARIA's Programme Directors are looking for bold ideas that could change the conversation about what is possible or valuable and provide steps towards new capabilities. If you have an important idea you’re obsessed with, but you don’t currently have the resources or support to take it forward, ARIA would like to hear from you. Ideas could come from anywhere, so they welcome proposals from individuals and teams who are early in their career or who have atypical backgrounds. They care more about your idea and your intrinsic motivation than they do about your CV.
More information here.
Impact in Healthcare Fund
Funder: Peter Sowerby Foundation
Ongoing
Sector: Healthcare
Initial discussions with prospective organisations will take place before an invitation to submit a formal application is made. If you believe that you have an idea for a project that is closely aligned with the Foundation's aims and recent grants, please submit a brief synopsis, including a summary budget and proposed timeline, using the form here. The Foundation cannot respond to all the ideas it is sent, but they do read all proposals and get in touch with those they feel could be a good fit.
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The Foundation is currently seeking to fund projects which:
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Tackle a clear and demonstrable need* across a range of health condition
AND
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Are proven to be impactful and where additional funds could EITHER increase the scale or depth of impact OR sustain projects ‘at risk’.
The Foundation will prioritise applications which focus on:
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outreach and delivery in the community, as opposed to formal healthcare settings OR
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work with a digital or data focus OR
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preventative health care to improve patient well-being.
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The Foundation is seeking projects where:
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there is clear evidence of the need for a specific health intervention OR
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there is a gap in the availability of treatment or support OR
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the quality of support available is not up to a required standard.
Applicants may look to evidence need in different ways. This might include empirical evidence, academic or sector-led research or consultation (for example, with beneficiary groups or health professionals).
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There are two strands of grants:
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Grant 1
Grants of up to £500,000, potentially over multiple years - for projects which are (projects must fit all of the below):
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proven
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ready to scale
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run by organisations with compelling track records and an established leadership team.
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backed by clear evidence of need.
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sustainable in the long-term following the Foundation’s investment.
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Grant 2
Substantial Grants ~£2-3million over multiple years.
From time to time, the Foundation will invite organisations to develop projects which are impactful in a specific area of the Foundation’s interest, and which align with the aims and objectives of the Impact in Healthcare Fund.
It is envisaged that funds could be spent in a range of different ways for example:
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supporting infrastructure OR
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core staffing posts OR
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existing impactful initiatives and which could be sustained over a long-term period thanks to funds from the Foundation OR
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scale-up of pilot activities which show proven impact OR
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other means suggested by the applicant.
Impact Jersey Innovation Programme
Funder: Impact Jersey
Open
Closes: Ongoing
Sector: Healthcare
Whether you’re developing a pilot, a proof of concept, or a scalable solution, the programme offers:
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Applications open all year round
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Flexible funding aligned to Jersey’s strategic priorities
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1-to-1 support to shape stronger proposals
From application guidelines to funding info and FAQs, everything you need is now live on the application page.
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Up to £500,000 will be available per quarter (with a maximum of £1 million available in 2025 and £2 million during 2026).
Impact Jersey focuses on funding a range of technology solutions to key issues and addressing strategic priorities defined by the Government of Jersey. To delve deeper into Ministerial Priorities click on pages 6 & 7 of the Impact Jersey Strategic Programme Proposal.
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Key health ones are:
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Ageing Population - How can we help people live independently for longer?
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Health & Wellbeing - How can we monitor and identify hazards to health and provide interventions at the earliest opportunity?
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Global Innovation Fund- Grants
Funder: Global Innovation Fund
Open, no closing date
Sector: All
The Global Innovation Fund is a non-profit, impact-first investment fund headquartered in London with offices in Washington, D.C. and Nairobi. It invests in the development, rigorous testing, and scaling up of new products, services, business process, or policy reforms that are more cost-effective than current practice and targeted at improving the lives of the world's poorest people.
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It accepts applications from organisations working in any sector in any developing country. Any type of organisation may apply. This includes social enterprises, for-profit companies, non-profit organisations, government agencies, international organisations, and research institutions in any country. It is recommended that individual innovators, entrepreneurs, or researchers apply through an affiliated organisation.
Big Ideas
Funder: CW+
Open, no closing date
Sector: Healthcare & Life Sciences
If you're an employee of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, then you can apply for this grant.
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The programme is designed to: promote innovation, transformation and new service development; support staff in the delivery of front line patient care. Awards are usually up to £50,000.
More information here.
Pre-Seed Challenge Fund
Funder: Lyva Labs
Ongoing
Sector: Healthcare & Life Sciences
Businesses and start-ups working in the Diagnostics/Med Tech/Health Tech/Digital Health space can apply for funding to support idea development and commercialisation.Innovative businesses and start-ups across the region (Liverpool City) can apply for investment of £25,000 to £250,000 for idea development and commercialisation. Total fund of £6m. Businesses must be based or willing to relocate to Liverpool City Region.
More information here.
Catapult/RTO Grants
Funder: Innovate UK Business Growth
Open, no closing date
Sector: All
Up to £15,000 grants available for:
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Sector specific advice on expertise;
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Testing and/or development work;
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Market analysis, cost modelling etc;
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Identifying opportunities for R&D, partnership building & collaboration, and more.
More information.​
Partnership Grant (Applicant-Led)
Funder: MRC
Opened: 7 April 2026
Closes: No closing date
Sector: Healthcare & Life Sciences
Funding level: not stated, but historically varies (typically £300,000 – £2 million+; industry co-investment required). Funding is available for between 18 months and five years.
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The MRC Partnership Grant supports biomedical and health sciences research conducted in partnership with industry or other non-academic organisations. The scheme is designed to enable translation and application of basic research insights, with industry or commercial partners contributing to project costs. Like the Research Grant, applications are accepted on a rolling basis from 7 April 2026, with shortlisting in July 2026 and decisions in December 2026.
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Eligibility: Lead applicant must be a UK-based researcher at an eligible research organisation. A confirmed non-academic partner (industry, NHS, charity, or other) is required, with the partner contributing to project costs. Falls within MRC scientific remit.
More information here.