CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: ukri fellowships

  • UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships: Round 11 vs 10 — Eligibility, Timeline and What Changed

    UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships Round 11 opened on 2 February 2026, with an application deadline of 16 June 2026, 4:00pm UK time for academic-hosted applicants, and 4 November 2026, 11:00am UK time for non-academic hosts. Round 11 keeps the core scheme structure intact but removes the explicit “early career” gating language used in Round 10’s eligibility criteria, pauses the disabled-applicant support pilot introduced in Round 10, and adds Medical Research Council (MRC) funding to expand clinical fellowship capacity. Institutions should update internal screening guidance accordingly before their own EOI deadlines.

    The UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships (FLF) scheme is UK Research and Innovation’s personal-award programme that funds researchers and innovators transitioning to, or establishing, independent leadership of their own research or innovation programme, hosted at an eligible UK organisation for up to seven years.

    What is the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships scheme?

    Future Leaders Fellowships are personal awards, not project grants: the funding follows the fellow, not the institution’s existing programme. UKRI states the scheme aims to “develop, retain, attract and sustain research and innovation talent in the UK” across academic, business and interdisciplinary boundaries, spanning the arts, humanities, social sciences and the five critical technologies named in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s Science and Technology Framework.

    Awards run for up to four years in the first instance, with the option to apply for a further three years of renewal, giving a maximum programme length of seven years. There is no minimum or maximum project cost, and UKRI funds 80% of the full economic cost (FEC), with the host organisation expected to commit an increasing share of the fellow’s salary as the award progresses.

    Who is eligible to apply for Round 11?

    Round 11 eligibility centres on career stage relative to independence, not job title or contract type. Applicants must be researchers or innovators who are either transitioning to, or establishing, independence, based at, and supported by, a UK organisation eligible for UKRI funding. There are no eligibility rules tied to permanent or open-ended contract status.

    • Applicants are not required to hold a PhD, provided they can demonstrate equivalent research or innovation experience.
    • Applicants from outside the UK are eligible if supported by an eligible UK host organisation; the Global Talent visa “exceptional promise” category applies to incoming fellows.
    • Job-share applications are permitted, with both applicants listed as “fellow”.
    • Applicants are not eligible if they have already achieved research or innovation independence — for example, by holding funding aimed at that career stage, or already managing a significant programme of work within a business — or if they are a senior academic or innovator.
    • Academic host organisations face a fixed cap on the number of applications they can submit; the Medical Research Council (MRC) is providing additional funding for Clinical FLFs, letting hosts nominate additional clinical applicants above their existing cap.

    Academic-hosted applicants apply through the UKRI Funding Service; non-academic-hosted applicants, including charities, apply through the Innovation Funding Service. Neither route uses the legacy Je-S system.

    Round 11 timeline: key dates

    UKRI runs Future Leaders Fellowships on separate tracks for academic and non-academic (business, charity, Catapult) hosts, each with its own opening and closing date. The table below sets out the confirmed Round 11 dates alongside the equivalent Round 10 deadlines for comparison.

    Milestone Round 10 Round 11
    Call opens Not separately published 2 February 2026
    Academic-hosted deadline 18 June 2025, 4:00pm UK time 16 June 2026, 4:00pm UK time
    Non-academic (Innovation Funding Service) opens Not separately published 22 June 2026
    Non-academic (Innovation Funding Service) deadline 5 November 2025, 11:00am UK time 4 November 2026, 11:00am UK time
    Host diversity-monitoring return deadline Aligned to application deadline 16 June 2026

    According to the funding competition listing on GOV.UK, Round 11 makes up to £110 million available for UK-registered organisations to deliver research and innovation and develop future leaders. Individual awards have historically ranged from £300,000 to over £2 million; UKRI asks applicants to notify the FLF team by email if a proposal is expected to exceed a £1.4 million soft cap, used to monitor application costs across the scheme.

    Host institutions set their own internal expression-of-interest and shortlisting deadlines well ahead of the UKRI dates above — research offices should confirm these locally, as UKRI cannot accommodate late submissions.

    What changed between Round 10 and Round 11

    Three substantive changes distinguish Round 11 from Round 10, based on UKRI’s published funding-opportunity pages for each round.

    • “Early career” language dropped from the headline eligibility test. Round 10’s “Who is eligible to apply” section opened with “you must be an early career researcher or innovator”. Round 11’s equivalent section drops that qualifier, framing eligibility around the transition-to-independence test and the “not eligible” exclusions (already independent, or a senior academic/innovator). UKRI’s aims section still references supporting “the best early career researchers and innovators”, so this is a change in explicit gating language rather than a wholesale redefinition — but it removes a phrase institutions used as a first-pass screening filter, and research offices should re-read the full eligibility text rather than screen on career stage alone.
    • Disabled-applicant support pilot paused. Round 10 ran a pilot, introduced following a Careers Research and Advisory Centre (CRAC) review, providing structured support to disabled applicants. UKRI has paused this pilot for Round 11 “while we review the scheme and our future approaches”; applicants requiring adjustments are directed to their host organisation and, for interview adjustments, to the FLF team directly.
    • MRC clinical funding expansion. The Medical Research Council is providing additional funding for Clinical Future Leaders Fellowships in Round 11, letting host organisations nominate additional clinicians above their standard demand-management cap — capacity that did not exist in the same form in Round 10.

    Two features carried over unchanged: there is still no outline-proposal stage (applicants submit a full proposal directly, as first introduced ahead of Round 10), and the funding model — up to 80% FEC, tapered host salary contribution, four-plus-three-year duration — is unchanged.

    Answer-first Q&A

    Who is eligible for the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship?

    Eligibility rests on career transition to independence, not job title: applicants must be researchers or innovators either establishing or transitioning to independent leadership of their own programme, based at an eligible UK host organisation. Applicants who have already achieved independence, or who are senior academics or innovators, are excluded.

    What is the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship?

    It is a personal award scheme run by UK Research and Innovation that funds individual researchers and innovators — rather than institutional projects — for up to seven years, covering salary, research costs and career-development support at 80% of the full economic cost.

    How long is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship?

    Fellowships are funded for four years initially, with fellows able to apply to renew for a further three years during the award’s final year, giving a maximum total duration of seven years, subject to satisfactory progress review.

    What is the Future Leaders Fellowships programme in 2026?

    In 2026 the programme is running Round 11, which opened 2 February 2026, closes for academic hosts on 16 June 2026 and for non-academic hosts on 4 November 2026, and offers up to £110 million in total funding across the round, per the GOV.UK Innovation Funding Service listing.

    Implications for research offices

    Research offices administering internal FLF shortlisting should update screening documentation to reflect the removal of the explicit “early career” gate, rather than filtering candidates on career stage alone. Institutions running disability-support processes need to substitute local reasonable-adjustment provision for the paused UKRI pilot, and should brief clinical departments early on the MRC-funded expansion to clinical application caps, since additional clinician nominations sit outside the standard demand-management cap.

    The £1.4 million soft cap requires direct email notification to the FLF team rather than a form field, so research offices should build that step into costing sign-off workflows for large proposals ahead of the 16 June 2026 deadline.

    What happens next

    UKRI has signalled continuing scrutiny of value for money and Trusted Research and Innovation compliance across Round 11 assessment. Institutions preparing for Round 12 should treat Round 11’s eligibility wording, and the outcome of the paused disability pilot review, as the most likely areas for further change, and monitor UKRI’s published updates log on the Round 11 page ahead of the 16 June 2026 deadline.

  • UKRI Fellowship Investment Framework: 3 Types Reshape Funding Routes

    UKRI’s fellowship investment framework, launched 14 October 2025, sorts every UKRI fellowship — postdoctoral, new investigator and Future Leaders Fellowship routes included — into three outcome-focused types. The change removes time-since-PhD eligibility limits and applies to new funding opportunities from late 2025 onward, reshaping how research organisations plan fellowship applications.

    The UKRI fellowship investment framework is a classification and eligibility system introduced by UK Research and Innovation to standardise the purpose, structure and access rules of every fellowship it funds across its seven research councils, Research England and Innovate UK.

    What Is the UKRI Fellowship Investment Framework?

    UKRI announced the framework on 14 October 2025 as the next stage of its transition to collective talent funding, a programme direction first set out in May 2022. The framework does not replace individual fellowship schemes; it imposes a shared classification, eligibility and characteristics layer across all of them.

    UKRI states the framework exists to make fellowship funding easier to understand and manage, help the organisation respond faster to emerging research priorities, and reduce bureaucracy in application and delivery. Fellowships remain, in UKRI’s own description, “prestigious funding awards for individuals to enable challenging transitions or targeted capability development,” typically requiring 0.5 to 1.0 full-time-equivalent commitment over at least 12 months.

    UKRI funds around 350 new fellows each year and supports a community of more than 2,000 fellows across the UK, according to UKRI’s own published figures. That scale is precisely why a common framework matters: without it, fellowship purpose and eligibility drifted independently across seven councils.

    What Are the Three Fellowship Types Under the Framework?

    Every UKRI fellowship opportunity — including those managed within individual councils — is now categorised as one of three types. Each type targets a distinct career-stage transition rather than a single discipline or funding envelope.

    Type Purpose Example route
    Type 1: Career transition Supports a defined career-stage move — combining professional duties with a doctorate, establishing independence, or moving into leadership Future Leaders Fellowships, Early Independence Fellowships, Professional PhD routes
    Type 2: Capacity building and discipline transition Builds capacity in a specific research area, supports movement between disciplines, or reskills researchers for priority areas Postdoctoral fellowships aimed at skills development or discipline change
    Type 3: Sector transition Temporary, fixed-term mobility that transfers knowledge and skills across sectors, e.g. industry into academia Policy fellowships, sector-transition fellowships such as UKRI’s 2026 Policy Fellows opportunity

    This typology is deliberately outcome-focused rather than discipline-focused. A postdoctoral fellowship and a Future Leaders Fellowship can both sit under Type 1 if their underlying purpose is the same career transition, even though their scale and duration differ substantially.

    How Does the Framework Change Postdoctoral and New Investigator Routes?

    Postdoctoral and new investigator fellowships are most directly affected by two structural changes: standardised eligibility criteria and the removal of time-bound individual eligibility rules.

    UKRI’s published guidance is explicit that the framework will “not use time-bound individual eligibility criteria, such as placing limits on the time since completing a doctorate before applying for a fellowship.” This is a material shift for postdoctoral and new-investigator-type schemes, which have historically used years-since-PhD windows to define eligibility. The framework instead directs councils toward standardised criteria that are open to a wider diversity of research and innovation staff, and that explicitly embed support for career breaks and non-traditional career paths.

    Practically, this means:

    • Existing postdoctoral and new investigator schemes are not changed retrospectively — the framework applies only as each scheme’s next funding opportunity opens.
    • Where UKRI funds longer-term investments with multiple intakes of fellows, the framework may not apply until a new funding investment is made.
    • Applicants and research offices should expect eligibility wording to change scheme-by-scheme over 2026 and beyond, not in a single cutover.

    For research administrators, this means eligibility checking cannot be done from memory of a scheme’s prior rules; each new call needs to be checked against its own, possibly newly aligned, criteria.

    What Does the Framework Mean for Future Leaders Fellowships?

    Future Leaders Fellowships (FLF) sit explicitly within Type 1: Career Transition, alongside Early Independence Fellowships and professional-doctorate routes. The framework does not change FLF’s core purpose — funding researchers and innovators to establish themselves as independent leaders — but it does two things that matter for the wider fellowship landscape.

    First, it formally widens access to leadership and development support, including the Future Leaders Fellows Development Network (FLF DevNet), beyond FLF holders alone. Second, by placing FLF inside a shared Type 1 category with earlier-stage career-transition fellowships, UKRI is signalling a continuous pipeline logic: a researcher can trace a route from an early independence or postdoctoral Type 1 award through to FLF-level leadership funding, evaluated against comparable underlying criteria rather than scheme-specific idiosyncrasies.

    The framework was applied to new UKRI fellowship opportunities, including council-managed ones, from late 2025 — so recent and forthcoming FLF rounds are launching under the new categorisation even while the scheme’s headline objectives are unchanged.

    What Are the Implications for Research Organisations and Administrators?

    The framework’s biggest practical effect is on how research offices triage fellowship opportunities. Instead of tracking each council’s fellowship scheme as a bespoke product, offices can now map opportunities against three consistent purpose categories, which simplifies internal advice to prospective applicants and cross-council comparison.

    It also has a strategic funding-mix implication. By explicitly separating career-transition, capacity-building and sector-transition purposes, UKRI is making it easier to see where its own investment is concentrated — and where gaps exist between, for example, early independence support and full future-leader-level funding. Institutions building fellowship pipelines can use the typology to identify which transition stage they are under-supporting internally, rather than reacting only to individual scheme announcements.

    UKRI has stated the framework will not be applied retrospectively, and that councils retain the ability to launch fellowship opportunities according to their own strategic needs — so the level of framework adoption will not be uniform across councils in the short term. Research organisations should treat 2026 as a transition year in which fellowship eligibility text needs re-checking scheme-by-scheme rather than assumed unchanged.

    Answer-First Q&A

    What is UKRI’s fellowship investment framework?

    It is a classification system UKRI introduced in October 2025 that sorts every fellowship it funds — across all seven research councils, Research England and Innovate UK — into three outcome-focused types: career transition, capacity building and discipline transition, and sector transition.

    Does the framework change existing fellowships I already hold?

    No. UKRI has confirmed the framework is not applied retrospectively. It applies to new funding opportunities opening from late 2025 onward; existing multi-intake investments follow the new rules only once a new funding round is launched.

    What happens to time-since-PhD eligibility rules?

    The framework removes time-bound individual eligibility criteria, such as limits on years since completing a doctorate, in favour of standardised eligibility criteria designed to be open to a wider range of research and innovation staff, including those returning after a career break.

    Are Future Leaders Fellowships still available under the new framework?

    Yes. Future Leaders Fellowships continue under the framework, categorised as a Type 1: Career Transition fellowship, with FLF holders also gaining wider access to leadership development support through the FLF Development Network.

    Looking Ahead

    UKRI’s fellowship investment framework is a structural change to how fellowship funding is organised and communicated, not a one-off scheme redesign. Because it is being phased in scheme-by-scheme through 2026, its full effect on the postdoctoral, new investigator and future-leader funding mix will only become visible as each council’s next fellowship call is published under the new typology. For research administrators tracking UKRI opportunities, the practical task for the next 12–18 months is re-verifying eligibility text call-by-call rather than assuming continuity with prior fellowship rounds.