Innovate UK Smart Grants — July round
The UK's open, sector-agnostic R&D grant. Closes tomorrow at 11:00 UK time.
- Amount
- £500,000
- Issuer type
- Government
- Decision time
- ~12 weeks
- Effort
- Heavy — 10–15 days of work
Key facts
| Amount | £500,000 — projects of £100K–£500K over 6–18 months |
| Funding type | Grant — covers up to 70% of project costs |
| Issuer | Innovate UK (UKRI) |
| Who can apply | UK-registered businesses of any size, project delivered in the UK |
| Sectors | Deep tech · AI/ML · Climate · HealthTech |
| Payout | Quarterly reimbursement in arrears |
| Deadline | Closes 30 Jul 2026 |
Eligibility criteria
6 criteria · 5 are hard requirements
- UK-registered businessRequired
- Project carried out in the UKRequired
- Able to fund 30% of project costs yourselfRequired
- Disruptive rather than incremental R&DRequired
- Project not started before the decision dateRequired
- Collaboration allowed but not requiredPreferred
Rewritten from the official page into yes/no checks. Nothing here is summarised away — if the source states it, it is on this list.
What you have to submit
- —Application form (10 questions, 400 words each)
- —Project finance form
- —Two-page appendix
Odds, as reported by the issuer
~1,100 applications per round · ~90 funded
Update history
Source: apply-for-innovation-funding.service.gov.uk ↗
✓ checked 2 hours ago
- 2 hours agoagentFull re-crawl of the official page — no changes detected
- 11 days agoagentDeadline and amount confirmed against the issuer's page
- 01 Jul 2026humanHuman review — criteria rewritten into yes/no checks
Related
| SBIR Phase I — America's Seed Fund (NSF) | $275,000 | Closes 06 Aug 2026 |
| EIC Accelerator — deep tech scale-ups | €2,500,000 | Closes 08 Oct 2026 |
| Startup Qatar Investment Program — START track | $1,100,000 | No fixed deadline |