This information about STFC studentship awards is for supervisors, Training Grant Co-ordinators and administrative officers at research organisations (universities, institutions or other independent research organisations eligible to receive research council funding).
Students should read our information for students.
STFC postgraduate studentships enable promising scientists and engineers to continue training beyond a first degree. All studentship projects supported through STFC funding must fall within STFC remit.
Types of training
STFC fund studentships through an allocation model of Doctoral Landscape Awards and Centres for Doctoral Training through Doctoral Focal Awards.
Find out more about the types of studentship awards and summer schools for students.
Payments
Find out more about the payments made to students and research organisations.
Overseas fieldwork
STFC studentship training grants are awarded with unit costs for short term overseas fieldwork. In addition, departments can apply for Long Term Attachment funding.
Find out more about overseas fieldwork and LTA application process.
Rules and regulations
Training grants
Studentships will be awarded to research organisation (RO) departments in the form of a training grant.
Training grants are awarded under terms and conditions that have been agreed cross council. UKRI have issued a guide to training grants that you should read with the terms and conditions.
Acceptance of PhD studentships
STFC strongly recommends that prospective students should not be placed under undue pressure by departments to accept PhD places within short timescales. Therefore students should not be compelled to accept offers of PhD places prior to 4:00pm UK time on 31 March each year. Any prospective student subjected to pressure to accept a PhD place prior to the 31 March deadline is advised to email studentships at studentships@stfc.ukri.org
In the efficient matching of students to available PhD places it is unhelpful if students keep multiple offers open until the 31 March deadline. Students should therefore aim to decide promptly (within two weeks) when they receive more than one offer and reject all but the one most favoured at that point. The rejected studentships can then be offered by departments to other students without having to wait until the deadline.
Accreditation of training quality
STFC requires greater assurance over the quality of the training a department provides for their students before allocating studentships to the department.
The current method of allocating studentships is by algorithm. To be entered into the algorithm, departments are requested to apply for accreditation of their training provision ahead of each studentship allocation every second year.
An application for accreditation is assessed by the Education, Training and Careers Committee (ETCC) on a simple pass or fail basis against a set of criteria drawn from STFC’s current expectations of student training. Departments are asked to respond to a set of structured questions, derived from the criteria, to enable the assessment to be made. The ETCC assess each of the five categories:
- training environment
- quality of training
- quality of supervision
- careers advice
- recruitment
Departments passing accreditation are entered into the algorithm in the normal way. Any that do not pass accreditation will not receive an allocation that time.
STFC Doctoral Landscape Award allocation for 2026
Over the past 18 months, with the support of STFC’s Education, Training and Careers Committee and Science Board (PPAN), STFC has refreshed its studentship algorithm.
This was triggered by organisational changes taking place across UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), including systematic changes, such as the new UKRI Funding Service and a central analytical solution, now known as DataBank. As well as a move towards UKRI collective talent.
Key changes to the algorithm process
No non-UKRI administered funding will be considered as part of the volume measure. This means STFC will no longer ask for information about researchers being funded by the European Research Council, the Royal Society (University Research Fellowships) or other.
STFC will no longer ask departments, or ROs, to verify the data that we have. This data should have been accurate at the point of application. However, a grant list will be shared with ROs, enabling a cross check of the grants being used.
STFC is no longer able to allocate directly to departments. Allocations will now be at the RO level. Previously, departmental allocations and subject-based allocations were notional and departments retained the flexibility to allocate studentships to projects within any of the four areas as they wished. STFC will continue to make subject and area-based recommendations to ROs.
Eligibility is based on all active STFC awards, not consolidated grants only.
The overall allocation of studentships to each area will be proportional to the total budget assigned to each area by STFC. After which the formula will be run within each, with a further split in particle physics between Particle Physics Experiment (PPE) and Particle Physics Theory (PPT) to ensure that PPT isn’t unfairly impacted by the expense of PPE.
Read more about the STFC PhD Studentship quota allocations for 2026.
Contact us
If you need any more information you can ask us.
Email: studentships@stfc.ukri.org
Last updated: 12 November 2025