Solution Development for Advanced Connectivity Technologies

Key Features

UK registered organisations can apply for a share of up to £25 million to develop secure, sustainable or sovereign connectivity technologies that support the UK’s Advanced Connectivity Technologies programme. This funding is from DSIT.

Programme:     Innovate UK

Award:     Share of up to £25 million

Opens: 1st Apr 2026

Closes: 13th May 2026

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Grant Funding

Innovate UK will invest up to £25 million from the ACT R&D programme, funded through DSIT.

Grant Scope

The aim of this competition is to accelerate the development, demonstration and commercialisation of next-generation communications technologies that strengthen the UK’s security resilience, sustainability and long-term competitiveness. Projects must focus on one of the following three challenge areas:

  • Secure and Resilient Networks
  • Sustainable Networks
  • Sovereign Telecoms Components and Applications R&D
    • Theme A: Assured ISCA Systems and Integration
    • Theme B: Advanced RF Architectures & Components
    • Theme C: RF enabled Applications with Civil Pull

Eligibility Criteria

When applying for funding, your project must have total costs of between £200,000 and £5 million. Projects must start by 1st September 2026 and end by 31st August 2028, lasting between 3-24 months.

Lead: To lead a collaborative project, organisations must be a UK registered small, medium or large business, research and technology organisation, academic institution, charity, not for profit or public sector organisation. If working alone, your organisation must be a UK registered micro, small or medium sized organisation.

Project team: To collaborate with the lead, organisations must be a small, medium or large business, 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 need to be covered from their own resources and can include UK, EU and other non-UK organisations. Non-UK partners are permitted to carry out project work within their home countries so long as results are exploited outside of the UK.

Subcontractors: Subcontractors are allowed in this competition. If using subcontractors from outside of the UK, you must state your case as to why non-UK subcontractors could not be used.

Previous applications: Previous applications can be used in this competition.

Grant Exclusions

The following projects cannot be funded:

  • Projects that purely focus on research with no realistic commercial opportunities
  • Projects aimed at commercialising or exploiting the technology outside of the UK

Grant Funding

Innovate UK are funding up to £25 million for innovation projects. Funding will be in the form of a grant.

If your organisations work on the project is commercial or economic, funding requests must not exceed the below limits:

For Industrial research projects

Funding available for your eligible project costs of:

  • up to 70% if you are a micro or small organisation
  • up to 60% if you are a medium sized organisation
  • up to 50% if you are a large organisation

For Experimental development projects which are nearer to market

Funding available for your eligible project costs of:

  • up to 45% if you are a micro or small organisation
  • up to 35% if you are a medium sized organisation
  • up to 25% if you are a large organisation

Research participation

Research organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can share up to 30% of the total eligible project costs. Consortiums containing more than one research organisation undertaking non-economic activity, the maximum 30% is shared between you. Of that 30%, you can get funding for eligible project costs of up to:

  • 100% of your eligible project costs if you are an RTO, charity, not for profit organisation, public sector organisation or research organisation
  • 80% of full economic costs (FEC) if you are a Je-S registered institution such as an academic

Eligibility criteria for claiming 80% of FEC funding

  1. Research organisations using the Je-S system must submit their costs through the Je-S system which calculates the 80% FEC figure.
  2. On IFS, only the 80% FEC output should be entered at 100% funding.
  3. Applicants do not need to show the remaining 20% on the finance table.

For further information on this competition, please see full details.

Full competition details

Interested in applying for this competition?

Book an appointment to speak to one of our advisors to discuss your eligibility to apply for this Grant Funding opportunity.