Funding

Women founders or co-founders with UK registered businesses at the late stage start-up phase can apply for a grant of up to £75,000 and bespoke business support, to further their ambitious growth plans.

• Competition opens: Wednesday 26 November 2025
• Competition closes: Wednesday 4 February 2026 11:00am

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), is offering up to 60 Women in Innovation Awards to women founders and co-founders of micro, small or medium sized enterprises (SMEs) across the UK. This is subject to a sufficient number of high quality applications being received.

Successful projects will receive up to £75,000 of grant funding and bespoke business support for 12 months.

A proportion of highly commended applicants who have not been awarded grant funding in this competition will be offered bespoke business support for 12 months.

The aims of this competition are to support Women in Innovation Award winners:

• whose innovation is aligned to one of the following three high growth sectors defined in the Government’s Industrial Strategy; Advanced Manufacturing, Digital and Technologies and Life Sciences
• who have a late stage start-up with ambitions to grow a scalable business which will involve raising considerable investment in the next 12 to 24 months

As a late stage start-up we would expect you to:

• have built a basic version of the idea or product, service, solution, for example a prototype or Minimal Viable Product
• have received early interest from users, customers, or made some money
• know who the product is for and have started testing how the business will work
• have an understanding of realistic market opportunity
• have started forming a team, going beyond original founders

In applying to this competition, you are entering into a competitive process. This competition has a funding limit, so we may not be able to fund all the proposed projects. It may be the case that your project scores highly but we are still unable to fund it.

In the Women in Innovation Awards 2024/25, 3.4% of applicants were successful. Following feedback from the community we have ensured the scope for this competition is more defined and we have included a suitability checker as an initial step in the application process. This is to ensure women founders and co-founders at the right business stage, in specific growth sectors, are applying. You must complete the suitability checker before starting an application.

We consider a range of factors when determining whether to provide funding to applicants. This includes an assessment of prior conduct, such as any outstanding payments owed to Innovate UK or UKRI. Such factors may influence the funding decision, potentially resulting in a refusal of funding or an award subject to additional scrutiny.

We also reserve the right to adjust funding allocations for any of our competitions. This may be in response to changes in policy, portfolio funding considerations or broader government funding decisions.

This competition closes at 11am UK time on the deadline stated in this Innovate UK competition brief. We cannot guarantee other government or third party sites will always show the correct competition information.