UK-Germany Bilateral Collaborative R&D: Round 5

Key facts

About this grant

Summary from the official listing on Find a Grant (GOV.UK):

Description

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), will work with The Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie (BMWE), (The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy), to invest up to £2.4 million in innovation projects.

This is subject to a sufficient number of high quality applications being received.

The aim of this competition is to fund business-led collaborative research and development (CR&D) projects focused on industrial research.

Your proposal must focus on one of the following sectors:

• Clean Energy
• Life Sciences
• Engineering Biology

UK registered SME’s must collaborate with at least one German registered non-linked registered business applying under the equivalent German ZIM funding programme.

UK registered organisations must apply through the Innovation Funding Service (IFS) portal to Innovate UK.

Your German partner will not receive any funding from Innovate UK.

German partners must apply to and will be funded by AiF Projekt GmbH (AiF), acting as an agent for BMWE for the German component of the project set out in this application.

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.

Our experience from similar competitions suggests that you could have 10% chance of success.

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.

The project must be independently selected by both Innovate UK and AiF to be awarded funding.

Project size

UK partners grant funding request can be between £100,000 and £350,000 per project.

Accessibility and Inclusion

We welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds and are committed to making our application process accessible to everyone. This includes making reasonable adjustments for people who have a disability or a long-term condition and face barriers applying to us.

You can contact us at any time to ask for guidance.

We recommend you contact us at least 15 working days before this competition’s closing date to allow us to put the most suitable support in place. The support we can provide may be limited if you contact us close to the competition deadline.

You can contact Innovate UK by email or call 0300 321 4357. Our phone lines are open from 9am to 12pm and 2pm to 5pm UK time, Monday to Friday (excluding bank holidays).

Eligibility

Text update 8 October 2026: project end by date corrected.

Who can apply

Your project

Your project must:

• have a grant funding request of between £100,000 and £350,000
• last between 12 and 24 months
• start on 1 August 2027
• end by 30 June 2029

The majority of the project work must be undertaken in the UK and Germany. UK project partners must carry out the majority of their project work in the UK and intend to exploit the results from or in the UK, and spend most of the funding within the UK.

The consortium must include at least one business registered in Germany that is a separate legal entity and not linked to the UK partners. This is to ensure that projects encourage genuine international collaboration, not internal company research. Linked companies are considered a single entity under the parent company.

Your project must demonstrate a balanced technological contribution by the participants from both countries and must be equally significant to all participants.

No one country or project partner can represent more than 70% of the total project cost.

Your proposal must demonstrate a clear intention to commercially exploit the results of the project domestically or globally.

You must only include eligible project costs in your application. See our overview of eligible project costs.

If your project does not meet our criteria and you have not requested justification approval, your application will be made ineligible and it will not be sent for assessment.

UK lead organisation

To lead a collaborative project you must:

You must:

• be a UK registered micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)
• collaborate with at least one Germany registered SME applying to the German ZIM programme, which must be a separate legal entity, not linked to the UK partners

More information on the different types of UK organisations can be found in our Funding rules.

UK Project team

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:

• business of any size
• academic institution
• research and technology organisation (RTO)

Only UK registered partners must be listed in the Project Partner section of your application on the Innovation Funding Service (IFS). Your German partner will not receive any of this UK competition funding. German partners will be funded by the German ZIM programme following a parallel application.

Each organisation in your consortium will receive funding from its respective national funding body.

Each UK partner o

Details are copied from the official source and can change. Check the official listing before you apply. Grant Writing Company is not affiliated with this funder.