UKRI’s confirmed minimum PhD stipend for the 2026/27 academic year is £21,805, a 4.9% increase on the 2025/26 rate of £20,780, effective from 1 October 2026. The minimum tuition fee UKRI pays providers rises to £5,238, and students with London weighting receive £23,805. Research offices should lock these figures into studentship budgets, award letters and multi-year cost models now, before the autumn intake.
UKRI stipend rates 2026/27 refers to the minimum annual maintenance payment that UK Research and Innovation requires providers to pay full-time doctoral students funded through its training grants, set out in the Support for UKRI-funded students guidance.
Contents
- What is the UKRI stipend rate for 2026/27?
- How does this compare to previous years?
- What else changes: fees, London weighting and exceptions
- How should research offices budget for this?
- Common questions from research administrators
- Implications for institutional planning
What is the UKRI stipend rate for 2026/27?
UKRI has set the minimum stipend for full-time, UKRI-funded doctoral students at £21,805 for the 2026/27 academic year, up from £20,780 in 2025/26. The increase, confirmed on UKRI’s Support for UKRI-funded students page (last updated 7 May 2026), takes effect from 1 October 2026 and applies across all seven research councils.
The rate is a floor, not a cap. Grant holders may pay more within their award budget, and award letters should be checked for any enhanced or discipline-specific stipend that supersedes the UKRI minimum.
How does the 2026/27 rate compare to previous years?
The 4.9% uplift for 2026/27 follows an 8% rise the previous year — described by UKRI as the largest real-terms stipend increase for its funded students since 2003. Viewed over a decade, the minimum stipend has grown by roughly 50%, while the minimum fee level has grown more slowly.
| Academic year | Minimum stipend (£) | Fee level (£) |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 to 2018 | 14,553 | 4,195 |
| 2019 to 2020 | 15,009 | 4,327 |
| 2021 to 2022 | 15,609 | 4,500 |
| 2023 to 2024 | 18,622 | 4,712 |
| 2024 to 2025 | 19,237 | 4,786 |
| 2025 to 2026 | 20,780 | 5,006 |
| 2026 to 2027 | 21,805 | 5,238 |
Source: UKRI, Guidance for training grant holders. Some universities are already publishing forward guidance for the year after next — the University of Glasgow’s studentship funding pages currently cite an indicative 2027/28 minimum stipend of £22,437, though institutions should treat any figure beyond 2026/27 as provisional until UKRI confirms it.
What else changes: fees, London weighting and exceptions
Three figures matter for a complete 2026/27 studentship cost model, and they do not move in lockstep. The minimum fee UKRI contributes rises 4.6% to £5,238; the London-weighted stipend rises to £23,805; and one discipline carries a materially different floor.
- Minimum fee (2026/27): £5,238, drawn by the provider from the UKRI grant and capped at the home fee rate — international students may need to cover any shortfall themselves.
- London weighting: £23,805, a £2,000 uplift on the standard minimum. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council does not apply this weighting, though EPSRC grant holders may still offer higher stipends within their own budget regardless of location.
- BBSRC veterinary exception: students on a recognised veterinary degree pathway funded through a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council training grant have a separate, substantially higher minimum stipend of £30,488 for 2026/27 — more than £8,600 above the standard floor.
Research Training Support Grant (RTSG) allocations, used for conference travel, fieldwork and equipment, are set separately by each council and are not part of the stipend calculation, but should be modelled alongside it for full studentship cost visibility.
How should research offices budget for this?
A UKRI studentship typically runs three to four years, so a single rate change touches multiple cohorts and award letters at once. Research offices should treat the 2026/27 uplift as a trigger to re-check every open and pending award, not just new intakes.
- Update stipend lines in all award letters issued for students starting from 1 October 2026, including any offers made before the rate was confirmed.
- Re-model multi-year studentship budgets for students who started in 2024/25 or 2025/26, since their stipend typically escalates to the current minimum in each subsequent year of study, not just at entry.
- Pro-rate correctly for part-time students — UKRI’s minimum applies to full-time study, with part-time stipends calculated pro rata to study intensity.
- Check discipline-specific exceptions before finalising BBSRC veterinary-pathway budgets against the standard minimum, as the two floors differ by over £8,600.
- Confirm which council’s terms apply, since terms and conditions for training grants and the statement of expectations for doctoral training set monitoring, leave and reporting obligations that sit alongside the stipend figure itself.
Award management and reporting for these grants runs through UKRI’s Funding Service (commonly referred to as TFS), which providers use to submit studentship data and manage award terms. Keeping Studentship Data System records current is a condition of training grant compliance, separate from but linked to the stipend obligation.
Institutional research administration teams should also budget for statutory leave entitlements that continue to accrue stipend payments — including at least 30 days’ annual leave and up to 28 weeks of medical leave in a rolling 12-month period — since these do not reduce or pause the stipend commitment.
Common questions from research administrators
What is the new stipend rate for UKRI?
UKRI’s new minimum stipend for 2026/27 is £21,805, a 4.9% rise on the £20,780 rate paid in 2025/26. It applies to full-time students on UKRI training grants from 1 October 2026 across all seven research councils.
How much will the UKRI 2026/27 fees be?
The minimum fee UKRI contributes towards tuition for 2026/27 is £5,238, up from £5,006 in 2025/26. This is drawn by the provider from the training grant and capped at the home fee rate, regardless of a student’s residency status.
How much is the PhD stipend in London for 2026/27?
Students with London weighting receive a minimum stipend of £23,805 for 2026/27 — £2,000 above the standard rate. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council does not apply this weighting to its funded students.
Is the PhD stipend going up each year?
Yes. UKRI’s minimum stipend has risen every year since 2017/18, including an 8% increase for 2025/26 and a further 4.9% for 2026/27, reflecting sustained pressure to keep doctoral funding aligned with the cost of living.
Implications for institutional planning
The 2026/27 uplift is confirmed, not provisional, which gives research offices a firm number to plan against for the coming intake. The harder planning problem is the multi-year tail: students who started under earlier, lower rates will typically see their stipend rise to the current minimum each October, which compounds across a three- or four-year training grant and can leave under-budgeted awards short by the final year.
Institutions that model studentship costs on entry-year rates alone risk understating total commitment. Building an escalating-rate assumption into every new studentship budget — rather than treating the entry-year figure as fixed — is the single most consequential adjustment research offices can make in response to this cycle of increases.
