Introduction
This statistical publication releases the latest figures on UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) investments and outputs covering an 11-year period (financial years April 2015 to March 2026). It provides a comprehensive view of how demand for funding, allocation decisions and research and innovation outputs have evolved over time, supporting transparency and evidence-based decision making across the UK research and innovation system.
The data presented here underpins key highlight figures reported in the UKRI annual report. While this publication offers a detailed quantitative view of investments and outputs, the annual report provides richer context on investments, outcomes and impact.
This publication is structured in two main sections:
- Funding investments: covering applications, funding decisions and active awards
- Outputs: covering studentships and outputs collected on awards using UKRI outcome collection surveys
The statistics are derived from administrative data held in UKRI’s Databank, the central repository for UKRI operational data. All figures are based on a data snapshot taken on 2 April 2026. A full account of data sources, methodology and limitations is provided in the accompanying data quality statement, including assessments of accuracy, completeness and reliability.
While coverage of applications and awards is near complete, this publication does not capture all UKRI funding. Approximately 15% to 20% of total UKRI expenditure is currently excluded, primarily relating to funding that sits outside core administrative systems. As a result, figures on outputs and downstream impacts should be interpreted with this limitation in mind.
The figures presented here include revisions to previously published figures. The data are available as an MS Excel file to support further analysis and use.
Key findings
As set out in a UKRI budget allocations 2025 to 2026 explainer, several policy funding decisions were made this year. These include:
- a shift away from later 2025 to 2026 towards committing less funding upfront to retain greater budget flexibility towards the end of the next Spending Review period
- adjustments to over-profiling to mitigate the risk of underspend
- pauses to specific funding opportunities, as outlined in Professor Sir Ian Chapman’s open letter to the community in February
As a result, the data reflects a decrease in awards made in the latest financial year. The key findings are:
- funding commitments decreased: total award committed values fell to £5.1 billion in 2025 to 2026, the lowest level since 2019 to 2020
- award volumes declined: the number of awards fell to 3,567 in 2025 to 2026, down from a peak of 9,078 in 2020 to 2021, when UKRI issued a substantial number of awards in response to the COVID-19 pandemic
- award rates also declined: the UKRI overall award rate for 2025 to 2026 was 19%. This figure is similar to 2024 to 2025 (21%), but below historical levels
- further funding: between 2017 to 2018 and 2023 to 2024 an average of 30% of UKRI awards benefited from at least one instance of further funding
- intellectual property (IP): between 2017 to 2018 and 2023 to 2024 an average of 7% of UKRI awards reported at least one instance of IP
- full time equivalent (FTE) jobs: between 2017 to 2018 and 2023 to 2024 Innovate UK awards have created an average of 2,996 FTE jobs per year
How to interpret these figures
These statistics cover an 11-year period and describe different stages of the UKRI funding process and should be interpreted with the following considerations in mind.
Financial year reporting and interpretation
All figures are reported on a financial year basis (1 April to 31 March). The funding lifecycle of an award, application submission, funding decisions, delivery of the actual research and innovation activity, and the reporting of outputs, typically spans multiple financial years. As a result, information relating to a single award may appear across different financial years and sections of this publication.
Use 2019 to 2020 onwards for trend comparisons
Complete and consistent data for all constituent parts of UKRI (research councils, Innovate UK and Research England) are only fully available from 2019 to 2020.
COVID-19 impacts
UKRI response to the COVID-19 emergency significantly affected funding activity, particularly during 2020 to 2021 and 2021 to 2022.
Innovate UK data coverage
Complete application data for Innovate UK is only available from 2017 to 2018 onwards. As Innovate UK accounts for a substantial proportion of applications and organisations in recent years, timeseries comparisons for Innovate UK should only be made from 2017 to 2018 onwards.
Stages of the funding process
Stages of the funding process are allocated to financial years as follows:
- applications are recorded in the year they are submitted
- awards are recorded in the year the funding decision is made and,
- outputs are attributed to the year of the funding decision, even if they are reported in later years
For example, an application submitted in 2021 to 2022 may be awarded in 2022 to 2023, with its outputs also attributed to 2022 to 2023, regardless of when those outputs are delivered or reported. This approach provides a consistent view of the funding pipeline. However, it also means that figures across financial years cannot be directly compared to track progress from application through to impact, and year-on-year changes may reflect timing effects rather than underlying changes in performance.
Training grants
Training grants frequently show an award rate by value exceeding 100%. This reflects our administrative data, where most training grant applications record an applied value of zero, while awarded values are recorded in full at the point of decision. To address this and avoid distortion in totals and median values, application values and award rate by value for training grants have been excluded.
Output data
Output data are collected for awards with a funding decision date between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2026, using UKRI outcomes collections systems.
Innovate UK output data are collected through Project Completion Forms (PCF) and from 2023 to 2024 onwards submissions through the Impact Management Framework (IMF). During the transition, award holders are asked to complete either a PCF or IMF, with the PCF being phased out.
For 2015 to 2016 and 2016 to 2017, output collection for Innovate UK awards is only available for awards that were still active in 2017 to 2018 onwards, as a result figures for these years are not directly comparable with later years.
Outputs for research councils are routinely collected for at least five years beyond the end of the award, awards funded earlier in the period have therefore had more time to generate outputs.
Awards, starting in more recent years are expected to continue producing outputs, meaning that figures for recent years should be considered as provisional. Comparisons over time should take this into account. To mitigate these effects, most commentary focuses on earlier years within the 11-year time series and excludes 2015 to 2016 and to 2016 to 2017 when Innovate UK data is included:
- outputs are not reported for UKRI-managed programmes
- output coverage for Innovate UK rose from around 55% to 80% in 2025 to 2026, reflecting the inclusion of IMF data, while research council coverage remains stable at around 80%
Changes in this publication
This publication includes several methodological and coverage changes compared with previous releases. These reflect improvements in data availability, classification, and reporting practices.
Expanded coverage of UKRI funding
This publication includes Research England Quality Related (QR) block funding for the first time. This increases coverage of UKRI investment to an estimated 80 to 85% of total expenditure in each financial year.
As QR funding data is not available prior to 2019 to 2020, figures before this date exclude QR funding and are not directly comparable with subsequent years.
Improved identification of UKRI-managed programmes
Improvements in the identification of UKRI-managed programmes have enabled clearer separation between funding from UKRI’s own budget and funding delivered by UKRI on behalf of other organisations. As a result, some applications and awards, primarily within Innovate UK, have been reclassified from UKRI totals to UKRI-managed programmes.
This leads to lower counts attributed directly to UKRI in this publication (tables 1 and 2) compared with previous releases. This approach to UKRI-managed programmes has been applied to the entire time series for this publication ensuring the figures were produced under the same basis. Here is the full list of the managed programmes:
- Advanced Propulsion Centre
- Aerospace Technology Institute
- Ayrton Fund
- Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles
- Department for Business and Trade
- Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
- Department for Culture, Media and Sport
- Department for Energy Security and Net Zero
- Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
- Department for Science, Innovation and Technology
- Department for Transport
- EU
- Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office
- Global Challenges Research Fund
- Horizon Europe Guarantee
- International Science Partnership Fund
- National Physical Laboratory
- Office for Life Sciences
- Office for Zero Emission Vehicles
- Office of Gas and Electricity Markets
Innovate UK methodological changes
Applications to Innovate UK that do not meet eligibility criteria are now excluded prior to assessment. These were previously included. This reduces application counts and applied for values compared with previous publications.
This change has been applied consistently across the full time series.
Student data portal
A new studentship data portal was launched in autumn 2025. At present, new studentship records and any subsequent amendments captured in the portal are not yet available in UKRI Databank. As a result, figures for 2025 to 2026 are not included in this year’s publication.
Spin-outs data
UKRI is currently reviewing its spin-outs data to assess its completeness, representativeness and comparability with other published sources. As a result, figures are not included in this year’s publication and will be revised in the future. Additionally, users should note that spin-outs data reported in previous publications will be revised and should not be used.
Changes to outputs reporting
This publication introduces new tables presenting outputs:
- by the year outputs are reported and
- by the year the award started
Previously, outputs were primarily attributed to the start year of the award. This often resulted in lower apparent output levels in recent years, as outputs take time to be produced and reported.
Presenting outputs by reporting year provides a more complete and up-to-date view of output activity. This new approach should be used alongside existing measures to better understand trends over time. However, reporting by year the output was reported currently excludes Innovate UK awards. For some output types, reporting-year breakdowns are limited to Researchfish-reported outputs because corresponding data for Innovate UK awards is unavailable.
As part of UKRI’s drive to minimise undue burden when reporting outcomes, UKRI made enhancements to our data collection system to prioritise collecting data that is of most use to evidence impacts and actionable for policy development. From the 2026 submission, UKRI no longer requires their research award holders to provide information on engagement activities. They could still choose to submit this data, but UKRI would no longer make systematic use of it.
Analytical quality assurance and data cleaning
The analysis presented in this publication has undergone a structured quality assurance (QA) process to ensure that the statistics are robust, internally consistent, and suitable for interpretation.
Analytical quality assurance
Given the methodological and coverage changes introduced in this publication (see Project partner contributions on awards (tables 4.1 and 4.2), additional quality assurance was undertaken to assess their impact on the time series and ensure consistency with previous releases.
Quality assurance focuses on the analytical methods and outputs derived from UKRI administrative data. This included:
- reviewing patterns and trends across the full time series to identify discontinuities
- cross-checking key aggregates (such as total award values and counts of awards) against previous publications
- validating the impact of reclassification and methodological changes (including managed programmes and Innovate UK applications)
- independent review of outputs by other analysts
These steps ensure that the analysis is coherent, reproducible, and consistent with prior releases where appropriate.
This QA process applies to the analysis rather than the underlying administrative data. Further information on the quality of input data is provided in the accompanying data quality statement.
Data cleaning and standardisation
Across UKRI source systems there is no single authoritative list of organisation names, and the same organisation may appear under different names or identifiers.
Data cleaning focused on improving the consistency of organisation identifiers. This included:
- standardising organisation names
- resolving known duplicates
- aligning naming conventions across datasets
This improves the accuracy of organisation counts by reducing duplication, although some duplicate organisations remain. As a result, figures by organisation and organisation type may differ slightly from previous publications, reflecting improved consistency rather than changes in underlying funding activity.
Limitations
These processes improve the reliability of the analysis but do not fully resolve limitations in the underlying administrative data. In particular:
- inconsistencies between source systems may remain
- some data fields may be incomplete or subject to reporting lags
Users should consider these limitations when interpreting detailed breakdowns and recent-year data. Further information is provided in the accompanying data quality statement.
Summary
Overall, the combination of analytical quality assurance and targeted data cleaning provides confidence that the statistics are robust at an aggregate level and suitable for monitoring trends over time, within the limitations described.
Related publications and analytical outputs
This publication forms part of a wider suite of UKRI data releases providing complementary perspectives on funding and outcomes. These include:
- Gateway to Research, which publishes award-level details on UKRI funding from 2006, including project descriptions, people and organisations involved
- UKRI equalities monitoring, which publishes data on the diversity characteristics of applicants and award holders
- geographical distribution of funding, which publishes UKRI investments using financial data and breaking this down by different geographical regions (please note that the figures in this publication are different from figures shown here as the data source is not the same, but UKRI is working to resolve this discrepancy and we will expect this data to align in the future)
- Research England Quality Related (QR) funding, which publishes block-grant funding to higher education providers to support research excellence, strategic priorities, and long-term research capability
- UKRI doctoral studentships and fellowships 2015 to 2025, annual spend on studentships and fellowships alongside associated starts and stock at both aggregate and council level
Results
Applications (table 1)
Growth in UKRI application volumes has been accompanied by a broadening of participation across organisations. Between 2019 to 2020 and 2025 to 2026, applications increased by 35% (from 17,925 to 24,172), while the number of lead organisations applying grew by 51% (from 5,138 to 7,744), indicating that demand is becoming more widely distributed across the system.
Over the same period, the number of applications to managed programmes increased from 810 to 3,057, increasing their share of total applications from around 4% to 11%.
Funding decisions (tables 2, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 and 3)
The number of funding decisions between 2019 to 2020 and 2025 to 2026 are similar but hide the fact that the trend shows increases to 2023 to 2024 and subsequent decreases since. Thus, in this section we will focus on the trends from 2023 to 2024 up to 2025 to 2026.
The number of applications assessed for funding in 2025 to 2026 was 19,082. This figure shows a decline of over 30% from the previous two years (27,669 in 2024 to 2025 and 28,177 in 2023 to 2024).
The number of awards in 2025 to 2026 was 3,567 declining from a peak of 7,606 in 2023 to 2024 (a decline of 53%). This faster decline in the number of awards (53%) compared with applications assessed (32%) has meant that the award rate by number fell to 19% in 2025 to 2026 from 27% in 2023 to 2024.
The total award commitment values reduced from £9.4 billion in 2023 to 2024 to £5.1 billion in 2025 to 2026, reflecting both lower award volumes and reduced funding commitments. At the same time, applied for values also decreased from £19.6 billion in 2023 to 2024 to £15.3 billion in 2025 to 2026, while the median applied value increased from £0.25 million to £0.41 million. Over the same period the median award value increased from £0.21 million to £0.3 million.
Taken together the reduction in number of awards and total commitment values is consistent with policy funding decisions, including a shift by UKRI from late 2025 to 2026 towards committing less funding up front to retain greater budget flexibility towards the end of the Spending Review period. It also reflects the cyclical nature of Spending Reviews, with major programmes from the previous period winding down ahead of the launch of new programmes.
Consistent reductions in award volumes and total commitments are observed across all subsequent breakdowns, including by UKRI decision owner (table 2.2), lead organisation (table 2.5), and country and English regions (table 3 and 3.1).
Table 2.3 presents the number of awards by Funder. Funder, refers to the budget holder responsible for the award, allowing attribution to a specific council, cross-cutting funds or strategic programmes. Trends should be interpreted in the context of changes to funding structures, including a shift from traditional council-led funding towards a more diverse portfolio.
Project partner contributions on awards (table 4.1, 4.2)
A project partner contributes directly or indirectly to the award funded, and these contributions are used as an indicator of co-investment alongside UKRI funding. Estimates reflect pledged contributions reported at the application stage, based on applicant’s assessments of their financial value both in terms of direct cash and in-kind benefits. They should be interpreted as indicative rather than precise measures of co-investment.
Between 2019 to 2020 and 2025 to 2026, the number of awards reporting at least one project partner increased from 2,597 to 2,763 awards, a 6.4% increase. Over the same period, the number of reported partnerships decreased by 3%, from 7,595 to 7,370, while the number of project partner organisations increased by around 12%, from 4,646 to 5,179 organisations.
However, this longer-term growth masks a more recent shift in the trend. Between 2023 to 2024 and 2025 to 2026, the number of awards reporting at least one project partner decreased by 43%, from 4,826 to 2,763, in line with an overall reduction in the number of awards being made. However, over the same period the proportion of awards involving at least one project partner increased from 63% to 77%, indicating a shift toward more partnership-focused awards. At the same time, the total number of partnership organisations declined from 7,480 to 5,179, suggesting fewer organisations contributing overall.
In contrast, the total reported value of project partner contributions decreased over the period, from £1 billion in 2019 to 2020 to £661 million in 2025 to 2026, following a peak of £1.6 billion in 2024 to 2025. This trend should be considered in the context of the Spending Review cycle and the reduction in both award volumes and total UKRI funding commitments, where a decrease in co-investment would be expected. There is also a known data lag affecting co-investment for 2025 to 2026.
The share of awards with project partners involving international partners was 26% in 2025 to 2026 with a total contribution value of £132 million.
Active awards (table 5)
This section presents the number of active awards during a financial year, with a breakdown by category, people, organisations, and organisation sector.
The total number of active awards in 2025 to 2026 was 18,089 awards. This is 3% higher than 2019 to 2020 but 14% lower than the peak of 21,116 in 2023 to 2024. Fellowship awards have increased by 23% from 1,654 in 2019 to 2020 to 2,033 in 2025 to 2026. Over the same period the number of training grants has fallen by 31% from 2,369 to 1,631. The number of people supported decreased by 12% from 2,860 to 2,526, indicating that training grants are supporting more people on average.
The total number of people supported in 2025 to 2026 was 32,045, an increase of 11% from 2019 to 2020. This indicates, on average, more individuals are supported per award. These figures include individuals recorded across a range of roles, including:
- Project co-lead (UK and international)
- Researcher co-lead
- Fellow
- Grant manager
- research and innovation associate
- specialist
- technician
- doctoral student
- professional enabling staff
The number of organisations supported in 2025 to 2026 was 3,145. This is an increase of 42% from 2019 to 2020 but a decrease of 29% from the peak in 2023 to 2024 of 4,409. This overall pattern is driven by changes in private sector participation. The number of private organisations increased from 1,781 in 2019 to 2020 to 3,916 in 2023 to 2024, an increase of 120%, before declining to 2,681 in 2025 to 2026, which is 50% higher than 2019 to 2020.
Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are behind the majority of this trend and now account for 85 to 90% of private organisations supported by UKRI. Their numbers increased by 137% between 2019 to 2020 and 2023 to 2024, 1,500 to 3,563, before reducing in 2025 to 2026 to 2,393, still around 60% higher than in 2019 to 2020. This pattern reflects Innovate UK’s strategic shift in 2019 to support high growth potential SMEs. Innovate UK’s plan for action reiterated this commitment to helping highly innovative SMEs grow at scale and continues in Innovate UK’s new prospectus, Turning breakthrough ideas into the UK’s next industry giants.
Awards reporting outputs (table 6)
This shows the number of awards starting in each financial year that are selected for output collection. For research council awards, this refers to those sent for output collection. For Innovate UK awards this includes those with a returned Project Completion Form (PCF) and from 2023 to 2024 onwards, data collected through the IMF.
Historically, almost 80% of non-Innovate UK awards are selected for output collection. For Innovate UK awards, the proportion with a returned PCF has typically been around 55%.
Collaborations (tables 7, 7.1 and 8)
Collaborations may take the form of joint funding, the exchange of expertise, access to wide ranging facilities and equipment, accessing datasets, working across different sectors, and bringing together interdisciplinary teams. The data presented here includes Innovate UK collaborations for the financial year of the decision to fund the application, which were not included in previous publications. However, collaborations for Innovate UK do not have a date and cannot be attributed to a particular financial year; as a result, data on Innovate UK collaborations is excluded from table 7.1 and 8
The number of non-Innovate UK collaborations in 2025 to 2026 has decreased to 7,651 from an average of 11,095 in the past five years, a decrease of 31%.
Knowledge outputs (tables 9, 9.1, 10 and 10.1)
Knowledge outputs describe the ways in which the awards are disseminated. Table 10 provides a breakdown by book, book chapters, journal article or any other publications (for example a conference paper or a policy briefing).
The number of non-Innovate UK knowledge outputs in 2025 to 2026 has decreased to 56,026 from an average of 70,650 in the past five years, a decrease of 21%. The number of non-Innovate UK awards reporting at least one knowledge output in 2025 to 2026 has increased to 13,262 from an average of 12,137 in the past five years, an increase of 1%.
Further funding (table 11 and 11.1)
This section shows figures on instances where an award’s funding has been extended or enhanced.
The number of instances of non-Innovate UK further funding instances in 2025 to 2026 has decreased to 4,926 from an average of 6,032 in the past five years, a decrease of 18%. The number of awards reporting at least one non-Innovate UK further funding instance in 2025 to 2026 has decreased to 3,358 from an average of 3,844 in the past five years, a decrease of 13%.
Intellectual property (table 12 and 12.1)
Table 12 and 12.1 show figures on the instances of IP outputs arising from UKRI awards. Table 12 reports IP by the year in which the award started, while table 12.1 reports them by the year in which the IP was reported.
In this context, IP refers to outputs such as inventions, designs, processes or tools that result from the award. Researchers and innovators are asked to report on any IP arising from the award such as patents or patent applications. Data from Innovate UK outcomes data are not included in table 12.1, therefore the figures are likely to underrepresent the overall level of IP generation across UKRI.
The proportion of awards reporting at least one instance of IP is relatively low when compared to other outputs, typically between 5% and 10% of awards reporting at least one instance of IP.
Spin-outs (table 13)
UKRI is currently reviewing its spin-outs data to assess its completeness, representativeness and comparability with other published sources. As a result, the analysis on this data is not included in this year’s publication. Additionally, users should note that spin-outs data reported in previous publications will be revised and should not be used.
Studentships (table 14 and 14.1)
Table 14 presents the number of active studentships. Studentships are supported through UKRI training grants (excluding Innovate UK), which are allocated to organisations that in turn fund and recruit students.
The total number of active studentships and people supported through them has remained stable since 2015 to 2016. The number increased from 26,326 in 2015 to 2016, to a peak of 29,762 in 2021 to 2022, before declining slightly to 26,595 in 2024 to 2025. A similar pattern is observed in the total number of people involved in active studentships. The number of organisations supported has also remained consistent, hovering around 120.
Data for the 2025 to 2026 financial year is not yet available. These figures will be updated in the next release.
Studentship PhD submissions are collected via the PhD Submission Survey. This survey collects the thesis submission and completion of degree data for PhD students who were due to submit by the preceding September. The number of PhDs submitted remained broadly stable, averaging around 4,600 between 2015 to 2016 and 2023 to 2024, with a peak in 2021 to 2022 of 5,252 submissions.
Figures for years prior to 2024 to 2025 have been updated to reflect the latest available data. Data for 2024 to 2025 and 2025 to 2026 is not yet available. All figures therefore remain as reported in the previous release and will be updated in the next publication.
Jobs created and new products (tables 15 and 16)
For Innovate UK awards we also get the number of FTE jobs created due to a project funding. For these, project participants provide an estimate of the number of jobs created or retained during the project. Between 2017 to 2018 and 2023 to 2024 the average number of FTE jobs created is 2,996. To reduce the influence of implausibly high values resulting from data entry errors or reporting anomalies, retained jobs have been capped at 10 per PCF response. This is consistent with the approach used in previous funding investment and outputs publications.
The average number of new products, services, and processes arising from Innovate UK awards between 2017 to 2018 and 2023 to 2024 is more than 1,700 for planned production within five years.