Funding Opportunities

ESA funding applications: ESA’s Business Applications offers funding and support to businesses from any sector who intend to use space (satellite navigation, earth observation, satellite telecommunication, space weather, space technologies) to develop new commercial services.

UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund: An £8m fund is available to space businesses at the pre-seed and seed stages, with investments between £100k to £500k. Unlike most funding programmes, this fund is a publicly-funded, privately managed, venture capital fund. It aims to address a critical funding gap faced by start-ups, and enables them to scale and thrive in the competitive space industry. In addition to financial investment, UKI2S will offer strategic and operational support through expert guidance and mentoring, giving each business the greatest opportunity to succeed. Any profits made by the UK Space Agency, which oversees the fund, are reinvested back into the fund.

UKRI funding finder: all the latest funding opportunities available across a range of UK funding councils and funding types.

Horizon Europe: Horizon Europe is an opportunity for all types of UK organisations (including businesses and academia) to get funding for research and innovation. For UK businesses this is an opportunity to collaborate with partners with the right expertise to expand markets and accelerate innovation across Europe and internationally.

Proposal grant for SMEs: Horizon Europe Pump Priming: If you are an SME, up to £6,000 is available to support participation in a collaborative, Horizon Europe proposal. Registration for the grant can be done through Innovate UK Business Growth or the National Contact Point, Catherine.Holt@iuk.ukri.org.

SpaceCraft: this initiative to help small and medium enterprises and colleges who want to create their own space-flight equipment, space experiments and to access specialist training. It is co-funded by the UK Space Agency and the University of Surrey, and run from Surrey Space Centre.