The latest grant opportunities for UK businesses and research organisations.
Summer slump? What summer slump? As we enter July, the supply of fresh grant competitions looks as healthy as ever, with major bodies and their funding partners announcing exciting new opportunities that will run throughout the summer.
As always, you can find a quick and easy breakdown of these opportunities here, in the latest instalment of Grants Watch, curated by GrantTree’s experts.
In this edition:
- Sector-specific grants for automotive, sustainability, agriculture, nuclear and materials projects
- Large, sector-agnostic schemes offering over £3 million per project
- A scheme supporting innovation leaders of the future
Not sure what to apply for? Let us tell you!
If you want to know what grants you should be applying for, you can book in a free, 30-minute Eligibility and Competitiveness Assessment. After getting to know your company and your R&D roadmap, my colleagues and I will tell you:
- What grants you’re eligible for
- Which ones you have the best chance of winning
- What other types of government funding you’re eligible for
Get started on your grant funding journey now by booking your Eligibility and Competitiveness Assessment here.
Contents
- ADOPT Round 2
- Agri-tech and food technology, Mid and North Wales
- Contracts for Innovation: Shield Materials and Technologies for Fusion
- Contracts for Innovation: Resource Efficient Impacts
- DRIVE35 Scale-Up: Feasibility Studies
- DRIVE35 Innovation Fund
- EIC Accelerator
- EIC Pathfinder
- EIC Transition
- Future Leaders Fellowships: Round 10
- Innovation Loans
- Material Focus Circular Electricals Fund
ADOPT Round 2
Funding available: Up to £80,000
Deadline: 20 August at 11 am
Sectors: Agriculture and Food
The Accelerating Development of Practices and Technologies (ADOPT) grant provides funding for businesses to showcase solutions that address farm or immediate post-farmgate challenges and opportunities.
Your project must address one of the following areas: agriculture, horticulture, or agro-forestry.
This Defra-funded competition is only open to consortia, i.e. groups of two or more companies working together. Your consortia must be led by an established farming, growing or forestry business based in England.
To qualify for this competition, your project must:
- Cost £50,000 – £100,000
- Last 6 to 24 months
- Start by 1 January 2026 and end by 31 December 2027
Agri-tech and food technology, Mid and North Wales
Funding available: Up to £500,000
Deadline: 20 August at 11 am
Sectors: Agriculture and Food
Delivered in partnership with the Welsh Government, Growing Mid Wales and Ambition North Wales, this Innovate UK competition is offering grants to agriculture and food technology companies in North and Mid Wales.
You must apply as part of a consortium led by a UK-registered micro, small, or medium-sized enterprise (SME).
Learn more about the Agri-tech and food technology, Mid and North Wales competition.
Contracts for Innovation: Shield Materials and Technologies for Fusion
Funding available: Up to £250,000
Deadline: 15 August 2025 at 12 pm
Sectors: Nuclear, Materials
Funded by the UK Atomic Energy Authority, this competition supports organisations developing cutting-edge shielding materials for nuclear fusion.
Qualifying materials must deliver on one or more of the following areas:
- Reducing the carbon footprint of fusion power plants
- Improving the economic prospects of fusion, e.g. through lower costs
- Reducing the external dose and increasing component survival through improved shielding
This scheme funds feasibility studies, with no restrictions on technology readiness level.
Grants Eligibility Quiz
Find out if you’re eligible for a game-changing innovation grant by answering just five simple questions.
Contracts for Innovation: Resource Efficient Impacts
Funding available: Up to £250,000
Deadline: 15 August 2025 at 12 pm
Sectors: Nuclear, Materials
This competition offers funding for you to deliver an impact validation report for a resource efficiency solution in the automotive, chemical or construction sectors.
Eligible projects must start no sooner than 1 November 2025, last three to five months, and have total costs of £50,000 to £300,000, inclusive of VAT.
This competition has three strands:
- Resource Efficiency Automotive Impacts
- Resource Efficient Chemicals Impacts
- Resource Efficient Construction Impacts
Your solution must align with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s (DESNZ) Unlocking Resource Efficiency research.
This competition is open to organisations of any size in the UK, EU, EEA or further afield. Demonstrations must take place in a suitable industrial environment in the UK. Contracts are awarded to a single legal entity; subcontractors can be used, but only for specialist skills.
DRIVE35 Scale-Up: Feasibility Studies
Funding available: Up to £750,000 million
Deadline: 3 September 2025 at 11 am
Sectors: Automotive
The Driving Research and Investment in Vehicle Electrification programme, ‘DRIVE35’, provides funding for zero-emission vehicle technology innovation.
The scale-up: feasibility studies competition provides grants for feasibility studies into deploying UK manufacturing facilities for new technologies.
You can apply for a grant covering up to 50% of your costs if you’re a large business and up to 60% if you’re an SME.
DRIVE35 is delivered by Innovate UK, the Department for Business and Trade, and the Advanced Propulsion Centre UK (APC).
Learn more about DRIVE35 scale-up: feasibility studies.
DRIVE35 Innovation Fund
Funding available: Up to £25 million
Deadline: 1 October 2025 at 11 am
Sectors: Automotive
Also part of the DRIVE35 programme, the Innovation Fund competition offers substantial grants to help companies develop and demonstrate cutting-edge zero-emission vehicle technologies.
This competition is split into two strands:
- Collaborate – Supports collaborative projects (involving more than one organisation) that design and develop technologies leading to commercialisation. Offers grants of £2.5 million to £25 million.
- Demonstrate – Funds the development of products or process ‘demonstrators’, which showcase the benefits of your project work. Offers grants of £500,000 to £1.5 million.
Your project must be at least 50% match-funded. That means that your grant will only cover up to half of your project costs. You must fund the remainder of your costs with other sources, like equity investment or revenues.
EIC Accelerator
Funding available: Up to €2.5 million
Deadline: 1 October 2025 for stage 2 of the application
Run by Europe’s leading innovation funding agency, the European Innovation Council, the Accelerator scheme offers generous grants for UK startups and scale-ups looking to fund late-stage R&D to take mature innovations to market.
Accelerator has two strands:
- Open – Open to all fields of science and technology, but more competitive
- Challenges – For innovations focused on specific areas of technology
The areas are:
- Acceleration of advanced materials development and upscaling along the value chain
- Biotechnology-driven low-emission food and feed production systems
- GenAI4EU: Creating European Champions in Generative AI
- Innovative in-space servicing, operations, robotics and technologies for resilient EU space infrastructure
- Breakthrough innovations for future mobility
UK companies are eligible for all EIC competitions as the UK is associated to Horizon Europe, under which the EIC was established.
Learn more about the EIC Accelerator.
EIC Pathfinder
Funding available: Up to €4 million
Deadline: 21 May 2025 for the Open strand and 29 October 2025 for the Challenges strand
EIC Pathfinder offers grants to UK startups and scaleups looking to perform R&D to validate early-stage, potentially ground-breaking innovations (TRL 1-2).
Like Accelerator, Pathfinder has two strands:
- Open – Grants of up to €3 million for consortia featuring at least 3 independent organisations from different EU member states and associated countries
- Challenges – up to €4 million for single applicants and small consortia whose R&D aligns with specific themes
The themes are:
- Biotech for climate resilient crops and plant-based biomanufacturing
- Generative-AI-based agents to revolutionise medical diagnosis and the treatment of cancer
- Towards autonomous robot collectives delivering collaborative tasks in dynamic, unstructured construction environments
- Waste-to-value devices: Circular production of renewable fuels, chemicals and materials
The deadlines are 21 May 2025 for the Open strand and 29 October 2025 for the Challenges strand.
EIC Transition
Funding available: Up to €2.5 million
Deadline: 17 September 2025
Unlike Pathfinder and Accelerator, EIC Transition is only open to companies that have already received grant funding from one of the following competitions and organisations:
- EIC Pathfinder
- European Research Council proof of concept grants
- Horizon Europe research and innovation actions
- European Defence Fund (EDF)
Transition funds development work that is designed to take transformative innovations from “lab to market” and is open to both single organisations and small consortia.
Transition has just one strand, Open, which accepts applications from all areas of technology.
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Future Leaders Fellowships: Round 10
Funding available: Up to £3 million
Deadline: 5 November 2025, 11 am
This UKRI-funded programme offers large grants, covering up to four years of project work, to early-career innovators looking to tackle difficult and novel challenges.
The competition is designed to support excellence in innovation and develop the next generation of research and innovation leaders.
Highlights:
- Up to four years of project work funded
- Applicants can apply from any sector
- Open to people working at a range of non-academic organisations, including businesses, catapults and charities
If you’re applying from an eligible research organisation, you need to apply through the UKRI Funding Service.
Innovation Loans
Funding available: Up to £2 million
Deadline: 27 August for Round 22
Sectors: Any
Innovate UK’s underutilised Innovation Loans Future Economy scheme offers £100,000 to £2 million in debt financing for startups and scaleups looking for funding to commercialise a late-stage technology.
Innovation Loans have a range of favourable features, such as below-market interest rates and repayment terms of up to 7 years. They also cover up to 100% of project costs, more than most Innovate UK competitions, which generally max out at 70%.
Innovation Loans are especially well-suited for companies that have already received grant funding, as they are designed to support innovations that have reached the stage of development typically achieved after a grant-funded project.
Material Focus Circular Electricals Fund
Funding available: Up to £150,000
Deadline: 14 August
Sectors: Electronics, Sustainability
Launched by the not-for-profit organisation Materials Focus, this £1 million fund supports projects that look to reduce E-waste by keeping electrical devices and their materials in use for longer.
Three types of projects are eligible:
- Business models – developing new services that promote reuse, sharing and waste reduction
- Materials – using and recycling materials more efficiently
- Product design – making electical products more durable, repairable and upgradable
This competition is open to UK-registered organisations.
Let GrantTree find you funding
Looking for grant funding for your business or research organisation? GrantTree can help.
Over the last 15 years, we’ve secured more than £100 million in grants for innovative projects. Calling on that unmatched experience, we can help you understand which competitions you are not only eligible for but have a good chance of winning, helping you make the most of the time you invest in your application.
We can also help you understand what other types of government funding you might be eligible for, like R&D Tax Relief.
To find out what funding you should apply for, just get in touch. My colleagues and I will be right with you.
