The HRC Explorer Grant is a seed-funding scheme run by the Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC) within its Ideas funding category, alongside HRC’s larger Project and Programme Grants. It is a small, short, high-risk instrument: it exists specifically to back transformative, unconventional, or exploratory health-research ideas that would struggle to compete under conventional, ranked peer review, and it uses an application, assessment, and selection process that is deliberately different from the HRC’s other Ideas-funding schemes. This page covers the Explorer Grant specifically; for the HRC’s overall structure, governance, and the other funding streams it sits alongside, see the HRC funding overview guide.
Funding value and duration
An HRC Explorer Grant provides NZ$150,000 for a term of up to 24 months. That is a fixed ceiling and term for the scheme as currently structured, not a range negotiated per application — the HRC’s own current guidelines state this figure directly. As with any funder-set figure, confirm the current value on the HRC Gateway before budgeting, since the HRC periodically revises scheme parameters between funding rounds.
The 2026 guidelines also clarify that salary and overhead costs are claimable against the grant, a change from earlier iterations of the scheme — applicants should check the current year’s application guidelines on HRC Gateway rather than assume prior-round budget rules still apply.
What makes the Explorer Grant distinct
Within the HRC’s Ideas funding category — open, investigator-initiated funding where the research question originates with the applicant rather than the HRC — the Explorer Grant is the smallest, shortest, and highest-risk-tolerant instrument, distinguished from HRC Project Grants and Programme Grants in three ways:
- Purpose. Project and Programme Grants fund research built on an established evidence base and track record. The Explorer Grant exists specifically for ideas that are transformative, exploratory, or unconventional — proposals that might be judged too high-risk, too early-stage, or too far outside the mainstream to score competitively under conventional peer review, but that could represent a genuinely revolutionary change in how New Zealand manages a health issue if they work.
- Application format. Explorer Grant applications are short and fully anonymised — no identifying information about the applicant, their institution, or their track record is permitted in the application itself. This is a deliberate design choice: it shifts assessment weight onto the idea rather than the applicant’s seniority or publication history, which is part of how the scheme tries to reach proposals a track-record-weighted process would filter out.
- Assessment and selection process. This is the scheme’s most distinctive feature, covered in full below: independent online scoring against three criteria, followed by random selection among all applications that clear the bar, rather than a ranked-list cutoff.
All of the Explorer Grant’s own eligibility, budget cap, and term details are specific to this scheme and do not apply automatically to HRC’s other Ideas-funding instruments; see the HRC funding overview guide for how Project Grants, Programme Grants, Priorities funding, and People-focused funding are structured.
Eligibility criteria
Per HRC’s published guidelines, to apply for an Explorer Grant as the first named investigator or co-first named investigator, you must:
- Have New Zealand as your principal domicile and place of employment at the time of application.
- Have the support of your host organisation, which must be confirmed as part of the application.
- Submit only one Explorer Grant application in the capacity of first named investigator or co-first named investigator in a given round — the 2026 guidelines cap co-first investigator status at one grant as well.
- Propose research addressing a genuine health outcome — reducing disease or symptom burden, improving healthcare access, extending life expectancy, or improving quality of life — rather than research with no health-relevance pathway.
The Explorer Grant is open across any health-related field: basic, clinical, behavioural, social, and public health research, kaupapa Māori and Māori health research, Pacific health research, and translational sciences are all explicitly in scope. This breadth is itself a distinguishing feature relative to HRC’s targeted Priorities-funding calls, which are scoped to specific issues the Council has identified rather than open to any health topic an investigator proposes.
How to apply
Explorer Grant applications are submitted through HRC Gateway, the HRC’s online applicant portal, using the current round’s dedicated application form and guidelines document (a new PDF is published each year, e.g. the “20XX Explorer Grant Application Guidelines”). Applicants need an up-to-date HRC Gateway profile before they can create an application. Because the application itself is anonymised, applicants need to plan for identifying information — author names, institutional affiliations, prior publications, track record — to be excluded from the submitted document itself, which is a different discipline from writing a conventional, CV-anchored grant narrative.
Assessment and selection: how it differs from ranked peer review
The Explorer Grant’s assessment process is the feature that most sets it apart from HRC’s other funding instruments. Per HRC’s current guidelines:
- Independent online scoring only. There is no pre-scoring committee meeting stage before assessment, unlike the multi-stage review typical of larger HRC schemes.
- Three assessment criteria: the transformative nature of the idea, its viability, and how it advances Māori health — reflecting the HRC’s statutory and Vision Mātauranga commitments to Māori health research.
- Random selection among eligible applications. Rather than producing a single ranked list and funding down it until the budget runs out, HRC’s own guidelines state that “all applications that meet the criteria are equally eligible to receive funding” — eligible applications are then randomly ordered, and funding is awarded down that randomised order until the available budget is exhausted.
In practice, this means an Explorer Grant application first has to clear a quality bar (transformative, viable, and contributing to Māori health outcomes) to become “eligible,” and only after that does chance decide which eligible applications actually receive funding within the available budget. This two-stage design — merit-based eligibility, then randomised allocation among equally-eligible proposals — is HRC’s explicit response to evidence that conventional ranked peer review struggles to reliably distinguish between proposals clustered near a funding cutoff, and that fine-grained ranking near the margin can carry more noise than signal. It is not the same model HRC uses for its Project Grants or Programme Grants, which are assessed and ranked in the more conventional way; see the HRC funding overview guide for how those larger schemes are structured.
Key dates
HRC runs the Explorer Grant as an annual, dated funding round, and exact dates shift year to year. For the 2026 round, HRC Gateway listed applications opening 20 November 2025 and closing 30 January 2026, with results available around 30 June 2026. Do not rely on these specific dates for a future round — confirm the current round’s open and close dates directly on the “Ideas funding” section of HRC Gateway (gateway.hrc.govt.nz) before planning an application, since HRC publishes a new dated guidelines document and portal listing for each year’s round.
Frequently asked questions
How much funding does an HRC Explorer Grant provide?
NZ$150,000 for up to 24 months, per HRC’s current guidelines. This is a fixed scheme ceiling, not a negotiated range.
Who can apply for an HRC Explorer Grant?
Researchers whose principal domicile and place of employment is New Zealand, applying as first named investigator or co-first named investigator, with their host organisation’s support. Applicants may submit only one Explorer Grant application per round in that capacity.
How is an Explorer Grant application different from a standard grant application?
It is short and fully anonymised — no identifying information about the applicant or their institution is included — and it is assessed purely online against three criteria (transformative nature, viability, and advancement of Māori health) rather than through a multi-stage panel process.
Is funding guaranteed if my Explorer Grant application scores well?
No. Applications that meet the assessment criteria become “eligible,” but HRC then randomly orders all eligible applications and funds down that random order until the available budget is exhausted. Meeting the bar makes an application eligible for the random draw; it does not guarantee funding, since eligible applications will typically outnumber the available budget.
How does the Explorer Grant differ from an HRC Project Grant?
The Explorer Grant is smaller, shorter, and designed specifically for high-risk, transformative, or unconventional ideas, using anonymised applications and a merit-then-random selection process. Project Grants fund research built on an established evidence base and track record, assessed through HRC’s more conventional ranked review process. See the HRC funding overview guide for how Project Grants and the HRC’s other Ideas-funding instruments are structured.
Can Explorer Grant funding cover salary and overhead costs?
Per the 2026 guidelines, yes — salary and overhead costs became claimable against the grant as of the 2026 round, a change from earlier iterations of the scheme. Always check the current year’s application guidelines document on HRC Gateway for the applicable budget rules, since these have changed between rounds.
Sources
- Health Research Council of New Zealand, HRC Gateway, “Ideas funding – 2026 Explorer Grants,” gateway.hrc.govt.nz.
- Health Research Council of New Zealand, “2026 Explorer Grant Application Guidelines” (PDF), gateway.hrc.govt.nz.
- Health Research Council of New Zealand, hrc.govt.nz.
