Key Features
UK registered businesses can apply for a share of up to £5 million for Engineering Biology pilot scale and validation projects. This funding is part of UKRI’s Engineering Biology Programme and funded by BIST.
Programme: Innovate UK
Award: Share of up to £5 million
Opens: 7th Sep 2026
Closes: 21st Oct 2026
Innovate UK alongside the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade are investing up to £5 million to scale engineering biology innovations.
The aim of this competition is to support projects that enable scaling of lab proven engineering biology innovation.
Projects must focus on developing or applying engineering biology solutions to one or more of the following specific themes:
To be eligible for this competition, projects must have total costs between £200,000 and £750,000 and a duration of up to 24 months. Projects must start by 1 February 2027 and end by 31 January 2029, and must include, either as a partner or subcontractor, a UK-registered organisation with the facilities or capabilities required to support technology scale-up.
Lead Organisation: To lead a collaborative project or work alone your organisation must be a UK registered micro, small or medium sized enterprise. Academic institutions cannot lead or work alone.
Project team: To collaborate with the lead, organisations must have the facilities or capabilities to support technology scale up and validation at scale for Engineering Biology innovations. Organisations must be a UK registered business of any size, academic institution, charity, not for profit, public sector organisation or research and technology organisation.
Non-funded partners: Projects can include organisations that do not claim funding for their work on the project. These costs will be covered by their own resources and can include UK, EU and other non-UK organisations. Non-UK partners are permitted to carry out project work from within their home countries and exploit results outside the UK.
Subcontractors: Subcontractors are allowed in this competition and can be from anywhere in the UK. Overseas subcontractors can be used, but you must state by UK subcontractors could have be used in your application.
Number of applications: Eligible organisations can only lead on one application. If leading an application, eligible organisations can be included as a collaborator in two further applications. If not leading, they can collaborate in any number of applications.
Previous applications: Previous applications cannot be used in this competition.
Innovate UK are not funding the following projects:
Innovate UK have allocated up to £5 million to fund innovative Engineering Biology scale-up projects in this competition. Funding will be in the form of a grant.
Under the Research, Development and Innovation Streamlined Route rules, no more than £3 million can be awarded in the form of a grant to any one enterprise in any one competition.
If your organisation’s work on the project is commercial or economic, your funding request must not exceed the limits below. These limits apply even if your organisation normally acts non-economically but for the purpose of this project will be undertaking commercial or economic activity.
Category 2: Industrial research projects
For industrial research you can get funding for your eligible project costs of:
Research participation
The research organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can share up to 50% of the total eligible project costs. If your consortium contains more than one research organisation undertaking non-economic activity, this maximum is shared between them. Of that 50% you can get funding for your eligible project costs of up to:
Eligibility criteria for claiming 80% of FEC funding
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