R&D funding roundup – October 2025

A roundup of recent funding opportunities for researchers, companies and creatives.

CoSTAR Evolve: An intensive six-month CoSTAR Enterprise and Commercialisation (E&C) access programme offering funding, resources and industry mentorship available to established scaling UK companies (closes 28 October 2025).

Expressions of interest: artificial intelligence humanities sandpits: Canada, UK and US: Funding for up 60 participants from UK, Canadian and US research organisations to take part in a humanities-led, interdisciplinary research sandpit putting humanities insights and methodologies at the heart of artificial intelligence (AI) tech design. £625,000 is available for UK-based team members (£156,250 per project), of which AHRC will pay 80% (expressions of interest close on 30 October 2025).

Future Leaders Fellowships: round 10, business and non-academic: UK registered organisations can apply for a share of up to £110 million for ambitious research and innovation projects in any sector, and tailored support to develop careers for future leaders (closes 5 November 2025).

Responsible AI UK collaboration grants (via UKRI): Grants of up to £50,000 are available to support collaboration in the domain of Responsible Artificial Intelligence to ensure society deploys and uses AI in a responsible way (deadline for pre-registration is 7 November 2025 and the opportunity closes 27 November 2025).

Responsible AI UK enterprise fellowships (via UKRI): Grants of up to £100,000 to support university-based researchers with an entrepreneurial mindset to commercialise a product or service for responsible and trustworthy artificial intelligence to ensure society deploys and uses AI in a responsible way (outline submission deadline 8 November 2025).

British Academy Early Career Researcher Network Seed Fund 2025-26: Funding of up to £5,000 for proposals from members of The British Academy Early Career Researcher Network (BA ECRN) for unique and innovative nine-month research projects, either as joint collaborations or individual efforts (closes 19 November 2025).

The Agentic AI Pioneers Prize: UK registered organisations can apply for the Pioneers Prize to develop Agentic AI solutions tackling sector challenges in the Creative Industries, Health & Life Sciences, and Advanced Manufacturing. Compete for a share of a £1 million prize pot and receive expert mentorship from the Catapult Network (closes 19 November 2025).

Early career fellowships in cultural and heritage institutions: 2025: Funding for projects of up to £312,500 to enable early career postdoctoral (or equivalent) researchers to gain research and career experience in the galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM) sector (closes 10 December 2025).

Local Innovation Partnerships Fund – Earmarked Strand: A minimum of £30 million of funding is earmarked to 10 regions to unlock regional economic growth. This is an invitation-only funding opportunity for triple helix partnerships between civic leadership institutions, businesses and universities in ten regions identified by the UK Government (closes 6 February 2026).

Local Innovation Partnerships Fund – Competed strand: Triple helix partnerships across the UK, excluding places in receipt of an Earmarked Award can apply for a maximum of £20 million to drive economic growth, deliver impact at scale and build long-lasting innovation capacity to support places to increase their competitive advantage. Projects must have a distinct focus on near-to-market research and innovation with strong potential for commercial application, industry adoption and scalable impact (closes 12 February 2026).

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).

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 – no end date).

Creative Growth Finance Fund: Scale-up loans for UK businesses in the Creative Industries (open – no end date).

Creative UK: Creative Enterprise Business Builder: Grants of up to £2.5k to support companies who work in moving image for storytelling, spanning film television, games, animation and immersive industries (open – no end date).

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 – no end date).

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 – no end date).

Arts Council 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 Supporting Grassroots Music, Museum Unlocking Collections and Universal Library Offers projects (open call – no end date). 

Creative 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 – no end date).

Coming soon

BFI Doc Society Features and R&D Funds: As part of the BFI National Lottery Funding Plan 2026-2029, the BFI has committed to invest £7.2m in documentary funding and talent development over three years. Doc Society is working with the BFI on a proposal for this funding and expects details of funding opportunities to be communicated from early 2026.

Published on 21 October 2025