Innovation funding opportunities
Looking for funding and support to develop your idea? At Innovate UK Business Connect, we connect businesses, researchers and innovators with the right opportunities they need to grow.
Explore opportunities for funding and expert guidance, to help turn your innovation into a commercial success.
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EIT Urban Mobility: SME Market Expansion Open Call 2027
Opens: 09/10/2026
Closes: 01/12/2026
The Call is designed to promote business growth and market expansion, encouraging the replication and scaling of successful solutions in new regions or sectors. It offers a strategic platform for SMEs with ambitions to scale by expanding into new markets.
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Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP): 2026 - 2027 Round 4
Opens: 19/10/2026
Closes: 27/01/2027
UK registered academic institutions, RTOs or Catapults can apply for a share of up to £12.5 million to fund innovation projects with businesses.
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iX Challenge: Smart control solutions for domestic hybrid heating systems
Opens: 20/10/2026
Closes: 01/12/2026
Hybrid heating systems could offer the benefits of both electric and gas heating. Cadent and Innovate UK seek a safe, customer-centred and interoperable hybrid heating system to help reduce customer bills, network costs and carbon emissions.
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UK Defence Innovation: Tactical Power Challenge
Opens: 16/10/2026
Closes: 10/11/2026
This UK Defence Innovation (UKDI) challenge seeks proposals that will help the Army meet the demand for electricity, with a total of £2.45m available.
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EIT Culture & Creativity: New Ventures in Creative Tech (Spark Incubation)
Opens: 06/10/2026
Closes: 16/11/2026
Up to €30k per project for innovators with business concepts in Materials & Built Environment (fashion & architecture).
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iX Challenge: Developing cost-effective polyols from UK waste-carbon for digital mass manufacturing
Opens: 20/10/2026
Closes: 11/12/2026
This challenge is supporting Photocentric in seeking a scalable, cost effective solution to develop clean polyols from suitable waste-carbon sources.
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European Space Agency: Space-Enabled Solutions For Resilient Grids
Opens: 02/11/2026
Closes: 29/01/2027
ESA invites proposals for services addressing selected challenges relevant to the resilience and operational continuity of European electricity transmission systems.
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HMGCC Co-Creation Challenge: Smart glasses for mapping
Opens: 12/10/2026
Closes: 12/11/2026
The aim of this project is to develop an edge device that can process video and audio and has the ability to stitch together and create high fidelity 3D maps from off the-shelf smart glasses.
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HMGCC Co-Creation Challenge: Multi-Terrain Micro Robotic Systems
Opens: 12/10/2026
Closes: 12/11/2026
Can you develop a miniature and highly agile uncrewed robotic system capable of operating seamlessly across water, land and air? This is the latest 12-week, funded challenge launched by HMGCC Co-Creation.
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BridgeAI Deployment Catalyst: AI for Assurance and Compliance
Opens: 21/10/2026
Closes: 08/12/2026
UK registered SMEs can apply for a share of up to £5 million to deploy Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning solutions that monitor, test, verify or evidence compliance with requirements, standards or controls.
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BridgeAI Deployment Catalyst: AI for Decision Critical Systems
Opens: 21/10/2026
Closes: 08/12/2026
UK registered SMEs can apply for a share of up to £5 million to deploy Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning solutions that support consequential judgements, recommendations or decisions.
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BridgeAI Deployment Catalyst: AI for Operational Systems
Opens: 21/10/2026
Closes: 08/12/2026
UK registered SMEs can apply for a share of up to £5 million to deploy Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning solutions that perform, control or coordinate operational activity.
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iX Challenge: Accelerating Digital Engineering Through MBSE Simulation
Opens: 09/10/2026
Closes: 06/11/2026
The iX programme is supporting openSPDM to find innovators who can provide a software engineering capability to industrialise and further develop the openSPDM solution for interfacing to Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) solutions, extracting the system architecture definition (system element structure), define key parameters and values as Innovator Items, rolling up the executable models attached to the system structure, launching a 1D simulation code and recovering the results to openSPDM.
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Full ADOPT Grant: Round 10
Opens: 08/10/2026
Closes: 02/12/2026
Farming, growing or forestry businesses based in England can apply for a share of up to £5 million for on-farm trial and demonstration projects, to improve adoption of new ideas or solutions in the agricultural sector.
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iX Challenge: Repeatable Adversarial Evaluation of Physical Tamper Protection for Defence Electronics
Opens: 09/10/2026
Closes: 06/11/2026
The iX programme is supporting Ethicronics to find innovators who can develop a reusable test capability that applies controlled physical and cyber-physical interference to protected electronic assets, captures reliable ground truth and enables repeatable, quantitative assessment of tamper resilience during transit and storage.
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iX Challenge: Next-Generation Electronics for UK Bathymetric Sonar
Opens: 07/10/2026
Closes: 06/11/2026
The Innovation Exchange programme is supporting a bathymetric sonar manufacturer, to identify innovators capable of developing a modern replacement for a critical electronics assembly used within its GeoSwath interferometric bathymetric sonar systems. The challenge is to create a next-generation acquisition and signal-processing platform using currently available and supportable technology, while maintaining or improving the performance of the existing sonar system.
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iX Challenge: Reducing blood-cell loss and measurement variability in field-deployable microfluidic diagnostic cartridges
Opens: 05/10/2026
Closes: 06/11/2026
Beyond Blood Diagnostics seeks innovative solutions to reduce particle loss during flow stage process within a micro channel.
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iX Challenge: Secure, Cost-Effective Use of Cloud-Based AI Tools in the Defence Supply Chain
Opens: 05/10/2026
Closes: 06/11/2026
The challenge holder is seeking an innovative, secure and commercially viable way to use cloud-based, AI-enabled engineering and manufacturing tools while protecting sensitive customer and defence-related data.
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iX Challenge: Distributed Smartphone-Based Detection and Mapping of PNT Signal Interference
Opens: 05/10/2026
Closes: 06/11/2026
A NW based company is seeking an Android based innovative, scalable capability to detect, geolocate and map deliberate radio-frequency interference affecting positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) services, including GPS jamming, in near real time.
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iX Challenge: Resilient High-Altitude Communications, Navigation and Mission Connectivity for Persistent Autonomous Aircraft
Opens: 05/10/2026
Closes: 06/11/2026
Innovate UK Business Connect is supporting Advanced Integrated Technologies Ltd (AiT) to identify innovative technologies capable of providing reliable, resilient and low-SWaP command, control, navigation and mission-data connectivity for a persistent autonomous aircraft operating in the stratosphere.
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What Works Centre for a climate resilient UK
Opens: 01/10/2026
Closes: 15/12/2026
Apply for funding to establish and lead a What Works Centre for a climate resilient UK to transform how the UK adapts, and builds resilience to the impacts of climate change.