Opportunity status:
Open
Funders:
UK Research and Innovation,, ,, ,,, ,
Funding type:
Fellowship
Total fund:
£110,000,000
Publication date:
2 February 2026
Opening date:
2 February 2026 9:00am UK time
Closing date:
16 June 2026 4:00pm UK time
Last updated: 2 February 2026 -
Apply for funding to support ambitious research and innovation across UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)’s remit.
You must be a researcher or innovator who is either looking to establish or transition to independence.
You must be based at, and have the support of, a UK organisation eligible for UKRI funding.
There is no minimum or maximum project cost. UKRI will fund 80% of the full economic cost (FEC).
Who can apply
This opportunity is open to organisations with standard eligibility. .
Fellowships must be held at a UK-based organisation that meets the following criteria:
* a UK-based organisation currently registered as eligible to apply for funding from UKRI
* any non-academic organisation eligible to receive subsidies from the UK government that will provide an innovation or research environment of international standing
* academic-hosted applicants (including NHS trusts) should apply via the UKRI Funding Service and non-academic hosted applicants (including charities) via Innovation Funding Service. Catapults should apply through the Funding Service if eligible, if not they can apply via the Innovation Funding Service
UKRI has introduced new role types for funding opportunities being run on the new UKRI Funding Service.
For full details, visit .
Who is eligible to apply
Researchers and innovators who are either transitioning to or establishing independence or developing their own original and ambitious plans within a commercial setting. There are no eligibility rules based on whether you currently hold a permanent or open-ended position or job role.
To assess and justify your suitability, go to supporting documents in the ‘Additional information’ section and read the person specification annex in the ‘Round 11 Guidance for Academic-hosted Applicants’.
For applicants based in academic organisations, there is a fixed cap on the number of applicants who can apply from each institution. Full details are provided in the ‘Additional information’ section. Please ensure you notify your host organisation of your intention to apply and allow time for internal shortlisting processes.
UKRI cannot confirm eligibility prior to submission.
Who is not eligible to apply
You are not eligible to apply if:
* you have already achieved research or innovation independence, for example, by securing funding aimed at this career stage or by already managing your own significant programme of work within a business
* you are a senior academic or innovator
Equality, diversity and inclusion
for all funding applicants. We encourage applications from a diverse range of researchers.
We support people to work in a way that suits their personal circumstances. This includes:
* career breaks
* support for people with caring responsibilities
* flexible working
* alternative working patterns
* from diverse career backgrounds
* coming to the UK from abroad. Researchers and innovators are eligible for a under the ‘exceptional promise’ category for future research leaders. They must have the support of their host organisation
for UKRI applicants and grant holders during the application and assessment process.
For this funding opportunity, joint applications on a job-share basis are permitted. If your application is a proposed job share, please state this where relevant in your application and set out your proposed arrangements in the Applicant capability to deliver and Career development sections. Both applicants for any joint applications will be able to list themselves as the ‘fellow’.
What we're looking for
Aim
This funding opportunity aims to:
* develop, retain, attract and sustain research and innovation talent in the UK
* foster new research and innovation career paths including those at the academic, business and interdisciplinary boundaries, and facilitate movement of people between sectors
* provide sustained funding and resources for the best early career researchers and innovators
* provide long-term, flexible funding to tackle difficult and novel challenges, and support adventurous, ambitious programmes
In your application, you must clearly demonstrate and articulate the following:
* what you are hoping to achieve with and how will you deliver your proposed work
* why you are the right individual to successfully deliver the proposed work
* why this fellowship is the right way to develop your career and how will you use it to benefit others
* how the host organisation will support your fellowship
* what ethical or RRI implications and issues are relating to the proposed work
* what you will need to deliver your proposed work and how much will it cost
Scope
Applications are encouraged from the entirety of the UKRI remit. We welcome and encourage applicants from remits including the arts, humanities and social sciences and the five critical technologies as set out in the Department for Science and Innovation’s .
Fellowships can also lead and develop innovation. We define innovation as the practical translation of disruptive ideas into novel, relevant and valued products, services, processes, systems or business models, making them readily available to markets, government and society, creating economic or social value from ideas.
Future Leaders Fellowships (FLF)’s are personal awards to support fellows to develop as impactful and influential research or innovation leaders.
You are encouraged to think broadly about the type of activities you may pursue as part of your research or innovation objectives. This could include:
* time for work in other environments
* developing international links
* developing new skills (for example, in policy or commercialisation)
You should also consider what career development support opportunities are appropriate. This could include mentoring and professional training and development, and relevant training courses that will underpin your future career ambitions and learning. A clear programme of skills development is an essential component of this fellowship.
The fellowship may be made up of a single programme of work, or multiple consecutive or concurrent interlinked projects, led by the fellow (known as a ‘Portfolio Fellowship’).
There is flexibility to alter the programme once a project is underway to ensure you can:
* react to the changing research landscape
* capitalise on advances in understanding
* react to changing business needs
In all cases, the work must allow you to fully develop your leadership potential and result in high quality research or innovation, or both.
Duration
The duration of this award is up to seven years.
Fellowships will be funded for four years in the first instance (or equivalent length of time extended pro rata for part-time applicants), with the option to apply to renew for a further three years during the last year of the fellowship.
Time commitment
FLF awards allow fellows protected time to concentrate fully on their research or innovation, training and development and establishing an independent position by the end of the award. In most cases a fellow is expected to spend 100% of their working time on their fellowship (which includes all activities associated with the fellowship).
If you are hosted by an academic organisation, you may spend up to six hours a week (pro rata for part-time applicants) on other commitments or related activities, provided they enhance career development.
Clinically active applicants (including veterinarians) can work up to 20% of their time on average, over the lifetime of the grant, on their clinical commitments. Exceptions are made for applicants undertaking patient-oriented research as part of their fellowship, who may undertake up to 40% of their time on these duties. This is not in addition to the six hours per week.
If you hold substantial ongoing research commitments as a result of participation in other grants, you must relinquish these in order to hold a UKRI FLF award.
Awardees will have the flexibility to develop a breadth of experience and partnerships, and secure further research or innovation funding later in the award. However, they should ensure that these other activities do not compromise their focus or achievement of the aims of the fellowship.
What we will fund
There is no limit to the amount of funding you can request under this scheme. Requests must be appropriate to the project, and you must be able to justify the amount you need to meet the objectives of your proposal. The FLF scheme has funded fellowships from £300,000 to over £2 million, and there is no preference for lower or higher cost proposals as long as the requested value is fully justified.
The fellowship will provide salary support. This is tapered throughout the fellowship, with host organisations required to commit to funding an increasing percentage of the applicant’s salary as the fellowship progresses.
The host organisation’s support should commit to the salary of the fellow. For academic applicants, the host should confirm an open-ended UK-based independent research or innovation position to be taken up during or on the completion of the fellowship (in line with organisational employment policies and practices).
Number of applications from academic host organisations
The FLF scheme is highly competitive. Increasing numbers of applications in previous rounds led to the extension of timelines and an increased peer review burden on our research and innovation community. To administrate this funding opportunity in a timely manner, the number of applications which can be submitted by each academic host organisation is capped. Read the section on application caps in the host organisation guidance available in the ‘Additional information’ section for more information.
It is the academic host organisation’s responsibility to ensure that applicants and research support staff have adequate time to work on their full submissions.
Inclusive selection process
Host organisations are asked to provide statements describing the inclusive process they used to select their chosen candidates. These statements contributed to an external review undertaken by the Careers Research and Advisory Centre (CRAC) titled
The includes the implementation of a pilot, where academic host organisations wishing to submit applications to round 11 of the FLF scheme must complete diversity monitoring templates. Providing anonymised information on the number of prospective applicants by sex and gender, ethnicity, disability, and broad disciplinary groupings.
Hosts will also be asked to highlight any updates to their inclusive selection statements.
Further details of this requirement by host organisations for round 11, and questions to consider for updates to inclusive selection statements, are contained within the host organisation guidance available in the ‘Additional information’ section. The deadline for hosts to submit this information is 16 June 2026.
Information provided will not be used in the assessment or outcome of this funding opportunity. UKRI reserve the right to reject proposals submitted by host organisations that have not reported on this process.
Supporting skills and talent
We encourage you to follow the principles of the and the .
International collaboration
If your application includes international applicants, project partners or collaborators, visit for more information on effective international collaboration.
Find out about
Trusted Research and Innovation (TR&I)
UKRI is committed in ensuring that effective international collaboration in research and innovation takes place with integrity and within strong ethical frameworks. Trusted Research and Innovation (TR&I) is a UKRI work programme designed to help protect all those working in our thriving and collaborative international sector by enabling partnerships to be as open as possible, and as secure as necessary. Our TR&I Principles set out UKRI’s expectations of organisations funded by UKRI in relation to due diligence for international collaboration.
As such, applicants for UKRI funding may be asked to demonstrate how their proposed projects will comply with our approach and expectation towards TR&I, identifying potential risks and the relevant controls you will put in place to help proportionately reduce these risks.
, including where you can find additional support.
How to apply
We are running this funding opportunity on the UKRI Funding Service for academic-hosted applicants and the Innovation Funding Service (IFS) for non-academic hosted applicants. You cannot apply on the Joint Electronic Submissions (Je-S) system.
The fellow is responsible for completing the application process on the Funding Service, but we expect all team members and project partners to contribute to the application.
Only the lead research organisation can submit an application to UKRI.
To apply
Select ‘Start application’ near the beginning of this Funding finder page:
1. Confirm you are the fellow.
2. Sign in or create a Funding Service account. To create an account, select your organisation, verify your email address, and set a password. If your organisation is not listed, email
Please allow at least 10 working days for your organisation to be added to the Funding Service. We strongly suggest that if you are asking UKRI to add your organisation to the Funding Service to enable you to apply to this opportunity, you also create an organisation Administration Account. This will be needed to allow the acceptance and management of any grant that might be offered to you.
3. Answer questions directly in the text boxes. You can save your answers and come back to complete them or work offline and return to copy and paste your answers. If we need you to upload a document, follow the upload instructions in the Funding Service. All questions and assessment criteria are listed in the How to apply section on this Funding finder page.
4. Allow enough time to check your application in ‘read-only’ view before sending to your research office.
5. Send the completed application to your research office for checking. They will return it to you if it needs editing.
6. Your research office will submit the completed and checked application to UKRI.
Where indicated, you can also demonstrate elements of your responses in visual form if relevant.
When including images, you must:
* provide a descriptive caption or legend for each image immediately underneath it in the text box (this must be outside the image and counts towards your word limit)
* insert each new image on a new line
* use files smaller than 5MB and in JPEG, JPG, JPE, JFI, JIF, JFIF, PNG, GIF, BMP or WEBP format
Images should only be used to convey important visual information that cannot easily be put into words. The following are not permitted, and your application may be rejected if you include:
* sentences or paragraphs of text
* tables
* excessive quantities of images
A few words are permitted where the image would lack clarity without the contextual words, such as a diagram, where text labels are required for an axis or graph column.
For more guidance on the Funding Service, see:
* * *
You can find advice on completing your application in the round eleven guidance in the Additional information section.
Unlike earlier rounds of the Future Leader Fellowship scheme, there is no outline proposal stage required.
You should ensure you are aware of and comply with any internal institutional deadlines that may be in place. We recommend you start your application early, liaising with your host organisation who may also be able to provide additional advice and guidance.
Inclusion and accessibility
We welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds and are committed to making our application process accessible to everyone. For round 10, UKRI ran a pilot programme to provide support to disabled applicants applying to the scheme. This has been paused for round 11 while we review the scheme and our future approaches.
If you require any support in writing your application, please contact your host organisation who should be able to provide some reasonable adjustments.
If you require any reasonable adjustments to help support your attendance at interview, please get in touch with the team at .
References
References should be included within the word count of the appropriate question section. You should use your discretion when including references and prioritise those most pertinent to the application.
Hyperlinks can be used in reference information. When including references, you should consider how your references will be viewed and used by the assessors, ensuring that:
* references are easily identifiable by the assessors
* references are formatted as appropriate to your research
* persistent identifiers are used where possible
General use of hyperlinks
Applications should be self-contained. You should only use hyperlinks to link directly to reference information. You must not include links to web resources to extend your application. Assessors are not required to access links to conduct assessment or recommend a funding decision.
Generative artificial intelligence (AI)
Use of generative AI tools to prepare funding applications is permitted, however, caution should be applied.
For more information see our policy on the .
Deadline
UKRI must receive your application by 16 June 2026 4:00pm UK time
You will not be able to apply after this time.
Make sure you are aware of and follow any internal institutional deadlines.
Following the submission of your application to the funding opportunity, your application cannot be changed, and applications will not be returned for amendment. If your application does not follow the guidance, it may be rejected.
Personal data
Processing personal data
UKRI will need to collect some personal information to manage your UKRI Funding Service account and the registration of your funding applications.
We will handle personal data in line with UK data protection legislation and manage it securely. For more information, including how to exercise your rights, read .
Sensitive information
If you or a core team member need to tell us something you wish to remain confidential, email .
Include in the subject line: [the funding opportunity title; sensitive information; your Funding Service application number].
Typical examples of confidential information include:
* individual is unavailable until a certain date (for example due to parental leave)
* declaration of interest
* additional information about eligibility to apply that would not be appropriately shared in the ‘Applicant and team capability’ section
* conflict of interest for UKRI to consider in reviewer or panel participant selection
* the application is an invited resubmission
For information about how UKRI handles personal data, read .
Institutional Matched Funding
There is no requirement for matched funding from the institutions hosting the project lead, project co-leads or other staff employed on the application, beyond the standard 20% FEC. Expert reviewers and panels assessing UKRI funding applications must not consider levels of institutional matched funding as a factor on which to base recommendations. Direct and in-kind contributions from third party project partners are encouraged.
This policy does not remove the need for support from host organisations who must provide the necessary research environment and infrastructure for award-specific activities funded by UKRI. For example, research facilities, training and development of staff.
Publication of outcomes
UKRI will publish the outcomes of this funding opportunity at .
If your application is successful, we will publish some personal information on the .
Summary
Word limit: 550
In plain English, provide a summary we can use to identify the most suitable experts to assess your application.
We usually make this summary publicly available on external-facing websites, therefore do not include any confidential or sensitive information. Make it suitable for a variety of readers, for example:
* opinion-formers
* policymakers
* the public
* the wider research community
Guidance for writing a summary
Clearly describe your proposed work in terms of:
* context
* the challenge the project addresses
* aims and objectives
* potential applications and benefits
Core team
List the key members of your team and assign them roles from the following:
* fellow
* research and innovation associate
* visiting researcher
* specialist
* technician
* professional enabling staff
Only list one individual as the fellow, unless you are applying on a job-share basis.
UKRI has introduced a new addition to the ‘Specialist’ role type. Public contributors such as people with lived experience can now be added to an application.