Future Flight: Regional Demonstrator

To lead a project your organisation must:

• be a UK registered business of any size, academic institution, research and technology (RTO), charity or public sector organisation
• collaborate with other UK registered organisations
• involve at least one micro, small or medium sized enterprise (SME)
• involve at least one local government authority
• involve at least one operator, end user or customer

If the lead organisation is an RTO it must collaborate with two or more businesses (one SME, and one business of any size).

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:

• business of any size
• academic institution
• charity
• not for profit
• public sector organisation
• research and technology organisation (RTO)

An applicant can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in two further applications.

If not leading any application, an organisation can collaborate in any number of applications.

We welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds and are committed to making our application process accessible to everyone. This includes making reasonable adjustments, for people who have a disability or a long term condition and face barriers applying to us.

You can contact us at any time to ask for guidance.

We recommend you contact us at least 15 working days before this competition’s closing date to allow us to put the most suitable support in place. The support we can provide may be limited if you contact us close to the competition deadline.

You can contact Innovate UK by email or call 0300 321 4357. Our phone lines are open from 9am to 12pm and 2pm to 5pm UK time, Monday to Friday (excluding bank holidays).

Your project must:

• have a grant funding request of between £150,000 and £200,000
• last between five and seven months
• carry out all of its project work in the UK, unless specifically stated and pre-approved by Innovate UK
• intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
• start on 1 September 2025
• end by 31 March 2026

Any one partner must not account for more than 70% of the total grant requested.

The aim of this competition is to accelerate the transition from trials of cutting edge innovations to real world commercial operations at a regional scale. This will unlock high value, socio-economic benefits for UK communities and meet the objectives of the Department for Transport (DfT) Future of Flight programme.

Your project must demonstrate the commercial viability of regional drone, electric take off and landing (eVTOL) or zero emission conventional take-off and landing (CTOL) aircraft operations or services in the UK. This will foster investment and catalyse commercialisation of future flight products and services.

Your project must deliver one or more of the following:

• a detailed pathway to transform demonstrations to real world commercial operations at scale in a selected UK geographical area
• a business case for commercial drone, eVTOL or zero emission CTOL aircraft services that deliver high value socio-economic benefits to a selected UK geographical area
• a proof of concept, or concept of operations, for commercial drone, eVTOL or zero emission CTOL aircraft services at scale across a selected UK geographical area
• a development plan for a living lab or test bed, representative of the future flight operating ecosystem, to accelerate regional scale regulatory, community and infrastructure readiness for commercial drone, eVTOL or zero emission CTOL aircraft operations
• acceleration of multimodal transport with drone, eVTOL or zero emission CTOL aircraft integrated into regional transport networks or regional transport hubs, including airports
• a commercial development plan for drone, eVTOL or zero emission CTOL aircraft services in a selected UK geographical area, based on identified commercially viable use cases that meet socio-economic needs for the region and customer demand

Note: the commercial development plan can include a study to determine decision-making authorities, roles and frameworks across the regulator, local government authorities and local community to accelerate safe, coordinated and socially accepted integration of commercial drone, eVTOL or zero emission CTOL aircraft services in a selected UK geographical area.

Projects must include at least one local government authority, and at least one operator, end user or customer.

Your project can include flight activities where you can demonstrate that any required approvals are either already granted or obtainable by a clear and supported route within your project timeline.

To support industry progress, and government and regulatory frameworks we ask that the key learnings from your project are shared openly.

Your project must focus on one or more of the following:

• use cases that deliver economic and social benefit
• regional drone, eVTOL or zero emission CTOL services (living lab, business case, proof of concept or concept of operations)
• local community integration and planning
• development of stakeholder relationships for regional deployment of operations
• distributed network of take-off and landing spaces, for example, vertiports, airports, airfields, emergency landing spaces
• multi-modal transport system integration
• airspace integration and management

An online briefing event will be held on Monday 19 May at 3:30pm: click here for the joining link.

If you would like help to find a collaboration partner, contact Innovate UK Business Connect’s Transport team or Place team.