A circular letter from Research England to heads of its funded English higher education providers. Reference RE-CL-2026-02, dated 23 March 2026.
Payment profile adjustment
Research England has revised the profile of grant payments of QR funding to higher education providers (HEPs) across the remaining months of the academic year 2025 to 2026. This is due to changes to the profile of funding UKRI receives from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
We have adjusted the payment profile to bring forward some funding originally scheduled for payment in April and May 2026 into March 2026. This is in line with our usual practice at this time of year.
See the revised Grant payment profiles August 2025 to July 2026.
Impact of the changes for HEPs
This reprofiling of payments does not change the total allocation of 2025 to 2026 QR funding for any HEP. Only the timing of the payments is affected.
See Research England grant allocation data 2025 to 2026 for the allocations made to each HEP for the full year.
For a small number of HEPs the QR funding payments have not been reprofiled. This reflects the requirement on Research England not to fund in advance of need.
For the HEPs affected, these changes mean that:
- in March 2026, a QR funding payment has been made where there was no payment originally profiled
- in April 2025, no QR funding payment will be made
- in May 2025, a smaller QR funding payment will be made than originally profiled
Further information
If you have any questions about this payment profile change, please contact us at annualfunding@re.ukri.org
Yours sincerely
Professor Dame Jessica Corner FMedSci, MAE, RN
Executive Chair, Research England