To lead a project, you can:

• be an organisation of any size, including those based in the EU, EEA or internationally
• work alone or with the subcontracted skills and expertise of others from business, research organisations, research and technology organisations, or the third sector (charities, social enterprises and voluntary groups)

Contracts will be awarded to a single legal entity only. The majority of the project work and key deliverables must be completed by the applicant and be carried out in the UK. Subcontractors can be used, but only for specialist skills.

We expect you to include an integration partner in your project to help facilitate the demonstration of your technology. You must not add the integration partner in your Innovation Funding Service (IFS) application. The demonstration should be in a suitable railway environment to allow the effective evaluation of the solution.

Your project can involve, for example:

• an owner of railway assets, for example, stations, rolling stock or infrastructure
• an experienced railway organisation
• a rail organisation that has the potential to become a customer

We recommend approaching potential integration partners as early as possible during the application process or early stages of your project. This ensures your industry relationships are well established before delivering the project demonstration. We welcome projects that include an innovative startup supply company that is already delivering in another sector.

Projects must:

• start on 1 September 2026
• end by 31 March 2027
• last between three to seven months
• have total costs of no more than £210,000, inclusive of VAT

Innovate UK and the Department for Transport (DfT) are collaborating with the rail industry to accelerate and increase the adoption of innovation to improve UK railways. This is through the DfT’s First of a Kind (FOAK) Programme.

The FOAK Programme addresses industry challenges by running innovation competitions. The competitions focus on collaboration with industry and deliver high maturity demonstrations, enabling efficient integration into the railway system. This competition aims to support innovative suppliers for market readiness.

Your proposal must already be of high maturity at Rail Industry Readiness Level (RIRL) 5 or above. You must show evidence of this as part of your application.

The aim of the FOAK 2026 competition is to support innovative suppliers for market readiness, through developing solutions which address the challenges.

Your project must:

• show how your solution aligns with one or more of the competition challenges
• demonstrate that your solution can be integrated into an operational or construction railway environment as a ‘First of a Kind’
• prove the commercial benefits of your solution to railway stakeholders and customers
• provide a business case for commercial adoption, reducing risks and accelerating uptake of new technologies
• collect customer and performance feedback
• gather evidence about implementation challenges and explain how you will de-risk the implementation
• demonstrate how your solution integrates into larger complex systems and delivers the expected outcomes

Although software for mobile devices, also known as applications, may be in scope, only a limited number of these projects will be supported to ensure a range of solutions are developed.

You must demonstrate a credible and practical route to market, so your application must include a plan to commercialise your results.

Contracts will be given to successful applicants.

Demonstration event and trialling

A key project deliverable, that must be included in your milestones, is a demonstration event and trial. The demonstration and trialling must take place in an environment representative of where the solution will be deployed, allowing for effective evaluation.

You must invite potential customers from the railway industry, along with other industry representatives, to your demonstration event.

You will be expected to include an integration partner in your project to help facilitate the demonstration and trialling of your solution. In their role as potential future customers, they will be well placed to propose an appropriately representative environment.

The demonstration and trial must take place in a setting where railway customers and industry representatives can witness the solution as a compelling business proposition. It must be as close to a live railway environment as possible. You will be expected to collaborate with your integration partner to achieve this, securing all necessary permissions and approvals. Example environments include:

• within a railway station
• in rolling stock
• on railway infrastructure
• in the environment close to the railway

This list is not exhaustive, and other environments may be more appropriate to demonstrate certain types of solutions. Where necessary, the demonstration event may be held online to reach a wider range of stakeholders. However, in this case, it must be supplemented with evidence from a trial demonstrating the effectiveness of your solution.

You must de-risk all aspects of your project before submitting a bid to this competition, ensuring it can be delivered in line with the requirements of the DfT and Innovate UK.

Evaluation activity

Your project must include an evaluation activity at the end, measuring data to assess the anticipated impact of the solution on the railway network. The evaluation will compare baseline data related to the competition theme and outline the improvement from your solution using data from the demonstration or trial. This can be:

• a measurement of the time taken to complete a task
• the costs incurred before and after adoption of the technology

Alternatively, the activity might take the form of a survey of railway staff or customers to solicit feedback and to anticipate cost benefit. In all cases the collection of objective data where possible is preferred over the collection of subjective feedback.

The evaluation activity is a key deliverable and must be included as part of your milestones.

The competition focuses on specific challenges identified by the rail industry. The stakeholders and challenge holders include:

• Network Rail
• HS2
• Network Rail High Speed 1
• Transport for London
• GBRX
• Rail North Partnership
• Southern Renewals Enterprise
• Keolis Amey Docklands 2025 Ltd

Your project can focus on one or more of the following specific challenges, which are briefly summarised below: click on each title for a PDF with further details.

Grow the economy by enhancing the transport network, on time and on budget

• Challenge 1 – Safe Concurrent High-Speed Rail Installation in Constrained Environments. Stakeholder HS2
  • We need targeted, innovative solutions that enable multiple contractors to safely work in the same area at the same time, with potential consideration given to emerging technologies such as robotics and automation to reduce risk exposure and improve operational control. Proposals must demonstrate how their solution simultaneously manages at least two or more of the identified risk areas in an integrated way.
• Challenge 2 – UK Dark Skies – Drone Operations BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line of Sight) – Stakeholder Network Rail
  • To inspect track assets via drone today often requires line-of-sight operations. True automation (BVLOS) is currently stifled because operators cannot guarantee they can “see and avoid” other low-flying traffic. This lack of visibility prevents the scaling of drone operations. Network Rail seeks solutions for drone positioning accuracy, reliable control, and monitoring of low-altitude airspace.

Improve transport users’ experience, ensuring that the network is safe, reliable, and inclusive

• Challenge 3 – Improving Customer Experience in Isolated Spaces. Stakeholders TfL, DLR and Northern Rail Partnership
  • This challenge is aimed at making unstaffed stations feel safer for users and to improve the level of oversight by the operators. This includes monitoring, active communications to deter inappropriate activity and updating and expanding help point areas.
• Challenge 4 – Digital Hazard Log. Stakeholders Network Rail, Southern Renewals Enterprise
  • Transform hazard logs and risk assessments from flat, unstructured data formats into an interactive object-driven data system which can be managed and interacted with, and utilise digital AI technologies to enhance the identification and management of hazards.
• Challenge 5 – Scour Risks to Structures. Stakeholder Network Rail
  • Scour is the removal of material from the bed and banks of a channel and from around structure foundations by the action of water, leading to structural damage or failure. Scour is the leading cause of bridge failures in the last 100 years in the UK. The risk is increasing due to climate change. This challenge seeks innovating, noninvasive, cost effective, and accurate methods to determine the foundation depths of masonry and brick structures, particularly those built on timber piles, as one of the key factors in determining whether a structure is at risk of scour is foundation depth.
• Challenge 6 – Structures: Rapid Behaviour Verification to Support Assessment and Intervention Decisions. Stakeholder Network Rail
  • How can we rapidly and affordably demonstrate whether a structure is actually behaving adequately under representative loading? This challenge explicitly does not seek permanent or large-scale Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) solutions. Instead, it focuses on targeted, examiner-led behaviour verification, deployed during planned access. Examples may include (but are not limited to): temporary instrumentation to measure response under normal or controlled loading; tapid stiffness, deflection, vibration, or load-path inference methods; or techniques that exploit train passages or simple proof-loading concepts.

Reduce environmental impacts by tackling climate change and improving air quality by decarbonising transport

• Challenge 7 – Green Engineering Solutions for Earthworks Resilience and Biodiversity Net Gain. Stakeholders Network Rail and TfL
  • We need Green Engineering Solutions that marry up Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) with earthworks resilience, embed habitat creation and ecological function directly into the engineering fabric of slopes and drainage, and accelerate circular-economy practices through recycled and repurposed materials.
• Challenge 8 – Enhancing Rail Adhesion Through Intelligent Vegetation Management and Biodiversity-Positive Interventions. Stakeholders TfL and Network Rail
  • This FOAK challenge seeks innovative, scalable solutions that transform how the industry understands, predicts, and manages vegetation driven adhesion risks (“leaves on the line” and related issues) while enhancing biodiversity outcomes.

Select only one challenge per application to this competition. If a project covers multiple challenges, choose the one in which the majority of the work will be undertaken.

Full details of each challenge are available at the Innovation Funding Service.

DfT and Innovate UK will hold an online briefing event on Wednesday 20 May, 10am-1pm: click here to register for a place. A recording and slides will be available afterwards.

If you would like help to find an integration partner, or advice on which theme to apply for, contact Innovate UK Business Connect’s Transport team.