Refer to the Water4All websitefor full details on the scope of the call and the specific funding organisation eligibility rules for UKRI before applying.
Scope
The Water4All 2026 joint transnational call focuses on sustainable water management (excluding extreme events and circularity). It invites proposals that address critical challenges related to:
- integrated water resource management
- river basin management
- groundwater management
- water resilience
- data monitoring and use
- water-positive solutions
The call topics are overlapping and non-exclusive. Thus, proposals must address at least one of the following topics and may integrate multiple topics where relevant. It is not compulsory to address all subtopics within a topic in the proposals.
This call addresses four topics with the UK only funding projects within Topics 1, 2 and 3. Projects are welcome to address one or several of these topics:
Topic 1: Integrated monitoring and assessment for sustainable water management: This topic addresses the need for integrated monitoring, data (cross)analysis and sharing, and assessment frameworks that enable a holistic understanding of surface and groundwater, and that facilitate robust, evidence-based decision-making.
Topic 2: Nature-based approaches for resilient water management at hydrological: This topic focuses on nature-based approaches to enhance groundwater resilience, improve water retention and storage, and support adaptive river‑basin and groundwater management. and hydrogeological system scale
Topic 3: Smart, secure and adaptive water infrastructures for sustainable water management: This topic focuses on enhancing the performance, resilience, and security of water infrastructures across scales, from local systems to river basins.
Topic 4: Resilient water systems through systemic change, policy coherence and inclusive governance: This topic aims to strengthen the resilience of river basins, groundwater systems, and coastal waters by integrating systemic approaches with coherent policies and inclusive governance and improved understanding of water’s strategic value.
Duration
The duration of this award is a maximum of 36 months.
The latest grant start date for UK awards of Water4All projects is 31 March 2028.
Funding available
We anticipate supporting a minimum of 8 projects involving UK research partners across a range of UK budget sizes. UK budget requests exceeding £312,500 at 100% FEC (£250,000 at 80%FEC) should provide additional justification.
The budget applied for shall be stated in Euro. You must include the total UK budget in British Pound Sterling and the exchange rate used within your justification of resources narrative. This should be included in the application form under the section on Explanation and remarks concerning the proposed budget.
What we will fund
You can request standard UKRI eligible costs. In addition you can request costs for NERC non-ship marine facilities and equipment. These costs need to be included in the application and will count towards the funding limit.
We will not fund
PhD studentship costs:
- Project Co-leads (International) costs
- NERC ship-time costs
- requests for equipment of £25,000 and over. You should request smaller items of equipment (under £25,000 individually) under ‘Consumables (other directly incurred costs)’ in your application
Programme governance and reporting
Consortium Coordinators will be required to submit:
- reporting required by UKRI
- a mid-term progress report
- final report
- deliverables needed to monitor the progress
These will be sent to the Central Steering Committee according to common templates, which will be provided. All partners will have to deliver input for these reports. The monitoring will be conducted during the life span of the project. Further details can be found in the Water4All call document.
Services and facilities
You can apply to use a facility or resource in your funding application.
You should discuss your application with the facility or service as soon as possible before you submit your application, to:
- ensure the details of the proposed work are feasible
- receive confirmation that they can provide the services required within the timeframe of the funding
You should ensure you have prior agreement from the facility before submitting to the funding opportunity and indicate this within your application.
The facility will provide a technical assessment that includes the calculated cost of providing the service. NERC services and facilities must be costed within the limits of the funding.
You should not submit the technical assessment with the application, but you must confirm you have received it.
Check the relevant section of the NERC Facilities and resources page for the latest information on how to apply for these services including whether a technical assessment is needed.
High Performance Computing (HPC)
If you require High Performance Compute (HPC) services, please refer to the HPC section of the NERC facilities and resources for the latest information on how to apply.
Additional provisions available to UK researchers include those listed here facilities and supercomputers (EuroHPC JU).
Ship-time and marine facilities
Applications may require non-ship marine facilities. If you wish to use NERC’s marine facilities, then you must complete an online ‘ship-time and marine equipment (SME) or autonomous deployment (ADF) application form’ available from Marine Facilities Planning. Include the SME or ADF number on the ‘Facilities’ section of your application.
SMEs or ADFs must be submitted to and approved by NERC Marine Planning by the time your funding application is submitted. A PDF of the SME or ADF can be attached as a facility form to your application. If you do not do this, your request may not be included in the NERC Marine Facilities Programme.
If you intend on using NERC marine facilities, then see facility availability from 2025 to 2030. You should also contact marineplanning@nerc.ukri.org as soon as possible to allow for talks, approval and costs.
Supporting skills and talent
We encourage you to follow the principles of the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers and the Technician Commitment.
Trusted Research and Innovation (TR&I)
UKRI is committed in ensuring that effective international collaboration in research and innovation takes place with integrity and within strong ethical frameworks. Trusted Research and Innovation (TR&I) is a UKRI work programme designed to help protect all those working in our thriving and collaborative international sector by enabling partnerships to be as open as possible, and as secure as necessary. Our TR&I Principles set out UKRI’s expectations of organisations funded by UKRI in relation to due diligence for international collaboration.
As such, applicants for UKRI funding may be asked to demonstrate how their proposed projects will comply with our approach and expectation towards TR&I, identifying potential risks and the relevant controls you will put in place to help proportionately reduce these risks.
See further guidance and information about TR&I, including where applicants can find additional support.
Data management
You must adhere to UKRI open research policy and NERC data policy and complete the ‘Data management and sharing’ question.
For details of data centres, see the NERC Environmental Data Service.
We will pay the data centre directly on behalf of the programme for archival and curation services. However, you should ensure that you request sufficient resource to cover preparation of data for archiving by the research team. Additional services from the data centres will need to be discussed with the relevant data centre prior to submission. Costs for additional services will need to be funded from your grant.
Responsible research
Through our funding processes, we seek to make a positive contribution to society and the environment. This is not just through research outputs and outcomes but through the way in which research is conducted and facilities managed.
All NERC grant holders are to adopt responsible research practices as set out in the NERC responsible business statement.
Responsible research is defined as reducing harm or enhancing benefit on the environment and society through effective management of research activities and facilities. Specifically, this covers:
- the natural environment
- the local community
- equality, diversity and inclusion
You should consider the responsible research context of your project, not the host institution as a whole. You should take action to enhance your responsible research approach where practical and reasonable.
