R&D funding roundup – June 2026

A roundup of recent funding opportunities for businesses, creative practitioners and researchers.

Closing soon

BFI Expanded Screen: Grants of between £25,000 and £150,000 for producers with a track record in successfully delivering immersive work to support the development and production of non-fiction immersive projects (closes 22 June).

Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP): 2026 – 2027 Round 2: A share of up to £10 million for UK registered academic institutions, RTOs or Catapults to support innovation projects with businesses. Priority will  be given to projects that align with one of the six Industrial Strategy’s sectors prioritised by Innovate UK (closes 24 June).

WomenTechEU: Grants of up to €75,000 to support women-led early-stage deep tech startups from Europe (closes 30 June).

ESRC Good Digital Network: Up to £40,000 for an artist working alone or with others to create an artwork or visualisation representing ESRC research and findings to open up new ways for audiences to engage with ESRC activities (closes 1 July)

Arts Council England: Developing Your Creative Practice (round 24): Grants of between £2,000 and £12,000 for creative practitioners working in combined arts, dance, digital arts, libraries, literature, museums, music, theatre and visual arts. The programme encourages development by allowing participants to learn, innovate and take creative risks (closes 2 July).

Medium to long application windows

Innovate UK Accelerated Knowledge Transfer Partnerships 6 (AKT 6): A share of £2.5 million for UK registered academic institutions, RTOs or Catapults to fund innovation projects with businesses. Applications must be for a specific, strategic innovation project that tackles one or more challenges faced by the Business Partner. Projects can be open in scope but must consider how it will align with one of the Industrial Strategy’s six prioritised sectors by Innovate UK (closes 15 July).

Northern Ireland Screen Games Development Call: Up to £15,000 funding for Northern Ireland–based games companies to develop new narrative games intended for commercial release through the Screen Fund (closes 15 July).

CoSTAR Live Lab Intelligent Venues Call: Grants of between £20,000 and £50,000 for consortia led by a UK-based company, including creative technology companies, live events producers, hardware or software developers, and performance innovators to prototype, test, and showcase technology focused on Intelligent Venues (closes 21 July).

UKRI Translation: Impact Acceleration Accounts 2027: A range of different awards by UKRI councils for institutional-level, flexible, early-stage funding that helps research organisations eligible for UKRI funding to accelerate the impact of their research into real world benefits, by supporting a wide range of strategic impact activities (closes 15 September).

Open calls

AHRC responsive mode: Catalyst awards: Awards to support researchers without prior experience of leading a significant research project to accelerate their trajectory as independent researchers, to unlock their potential, build leadership and convenor experience (open – no end date).

AHRC responsive mode: Curiosity awards: Flexible awards to fund fundamental research that leads to new research agendas, networking activity and idea generation, which enables the development of further research opportunities and new research agendas (open – no end date).

Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grants: Grants of between £1,000 and £100,000 to support individual practitioners, community and cultural organisations working on arts, libraries and museums projects. Priority is currently given to Museum Unlocking Collections and Universal Library Offers projects (open call). 

British Film Council Film Festival XR Showcase Travel Grants: Grants to help Short and Feature filmmakers, and XR creatives, travel to international events where their work is being screened (open call).

BFI Filmmaking Fund – Impact feature funding: Awards of up to £1.25 million to support original live action and animated feature filmmaking for projects with experienced directors with production budgets above £1,000,000 or debut directors with production budgets above £3,500,000 (rolling applications). 

Creative UK Creative Growth Finance Fund: Loans of between £100,000 and £1 million for post-revenue businesses operating in the Creative Industries. Businesses must present promising growth potential and have a minimum annual turnover of £300k (open call).

Creative UK Enterprise Business Builder: Grants of up to £2,500 from Creative UK to support companies who work in moving images for storytelling, spanning film television, games, animation and immersive industries (open call).

Daphne Jackson Fellowship Grants: Fellowships for those looking to return to a research career after a break of two or more years for family, health or caring reasons. The aim is to give participants the confidence and skills they need to make a successful return to research (open call).

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships: Funding to help businesses to partner with an academic organisation, research organisation or a Catapult, or to employ a graduate with the skills and knowledge that can help the business to innovate and grow (open call).

UK Games Fund – Prototype Fund: Expressions of Interest (EoI) for Round 21. Grants of up to £100,000 for established companies with a track record and video game project at an early stage. Eligible EoI applicants will be invited to submit a full written application, including a video pitch upload (no closing date provided).

UK Games Fund – Content Fund: Expressions of Interest: Grants of between £100,000 and £250,000 for UK-registered SMEs with a prototype in place for a commercial game for entertainment focus with potential to secure a commercial audience at scale (no closing date provided)

Viverse Creator Grants: Funding and tools for indie developers, small teams, studios, and innovators working across interactive storytelling, marketing, or education from the Viverse platform for open world games, developed by HTC (no closing date provided).

Coming soon

BFI FIlmmaking Fund – Discovery feature funding: Challenge One — Increasing opportunities for UK creatives to attend feature film and immersive project development programmes. Grants of between £12,000 and £150,000 for organisations to design and run development programmes for UK creatives who have narrative, documentary or animation feature film projects or narrative immersive media projects (opens 13 July).

Published on 16 June 2026