To: Heads of English higher education providers
Reference: RE-CL-2026-04
General enquiries to: kef@re.ukri.org
Dear Vice-Chancellor or Principal
Knowledge Exchange Framework
Research England (UK Research and Innovation) has today published the results of the sixth iteration of the Knowledge Exchange Framework, known as KEF6.
The KEF dashboards may be accessed from midday on 7 October 2026.
Universities have been able to continue, and in many cases enhance, their impactful work, by contributing to the key economic growth dimensions of:
- commercialising ideas
- partnering with a range of organisations
- driving workforce upskilling
- enabling local economic development
This is a commendable outcome, particularly considering that the amount of Research England’s Higher Education Innovation Funding (HEIF) distributed to the sector has remained relatively unchanged in recent years.
The KEF6 dashboards display the results of all English higher education providers that received an allocation of HEIF in 2025 to 2026 and those that submitted narrative statements to Research England for KEF3.
The KEF provides a nuanced tool for measuring and benchmarking performance across different types of institution and modalities of knowledge exchange, driving performance improvement across the sector.
A key trend from this year’s results was that cluster averages for all knowledge exchange perspectives either improved or maintained from last year in almost all cases.
There have been no substantive changes to the underlying methodology used for KEF6. The results can therefore be compared with those of previous iterations since KEF2, comprising a total of five years’ worth of comparable data. This strengthens the time series of results available to institutions and provides better insights to understand changes in knowledge exchange performance over time.
Full information about the design of KEF6 can be found in the June 2023 KEF3 decisions report.
Yours sincerely
Professor Dame Jessica Corner FMedSci, MAE, RN
Executive Chair, Research England