Deadline: 11-Jun-25
UK registered organisations can apply for the development of regional demonstrators of drone, electric take off and landing (eVTOL) or zero emission conventional take off and landing (CTOL) aircraft operations in the UK.
Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will work with the Department for Transport (DfT) to invest in new innovation projects.
Aims
- The aim of this competition is to accelerate the transition from trials of cutting edge innovations to real world commercial operations at a regional scale. This will unlock high value, socio-economic benefits for UK communities and meet the objectives of the DfT Future of Flight programme.
Specific Themes
- Your project must focus on one or more of the following:
- use cases that deliver economic and social benefit
- regional drone, eVTOL or zero emission CTOL services (living lab, business case, proof of concept or concept of operations)
- local community integration and planning
- development of stakeholder relationships for regional deployment of operations
- distributed network of take-off and landing spaces, for example, vertiports, airports, airfields, emergency landing spaces
- multi-modal transport system integration
- airspace integration and management
Research Categories
- They will fund industrial research projects and experimental development projects, as defined in the guidance on categories of research.
Funding Information
- Up to £600,000 has been allocated to fund innovation projects in this competition. Funding will be in the form of a grant.
- Your project’s total eligible grant funding request must be between £150,000 and £200,000.
Ineligible Projects
- They are not funding projects that:
- have no engagement with a local government authority, operator, end user or customer
- are reliant on any regulatory approvals that are either not already granted or obtainable by a clear and supported route through the regulator within the project timeline
- are repetitions of work already carried out within industry
- do not have a specific geographical focus
- focus solely on defence, space applications or High Altitude Platform Stations (HAPS)
- They cannot fund projects that are:
- dependent on export performance, for example, giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of bread to another country
- dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example, giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it uses 50% UK flour in their product
Eligibility Criteria
- Your project must:
- last between five and seven months
- carry out all of its project work in the UK, unless specifically stated and pre-approved by Innovate UK
- intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
- start on 1 September 2025
- end by 31 March 2026
- To lead a project your organisation must:
- be a UK registered business of any size, academic institution, research and technology (RTO), charity or public sector organization
- collaborate with other UK registered organizations
- involve at least one micro, small or medium sized enterprise (SME)
- involve at least one local government authority
- involve at least one operator, end user or customer
- To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:
- business of any size
- academic institution
- charity
- not for profit
- public sector organisation
- research and technology organisation (RTO)
- To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must:
- apply for funding when entering their costs into the application.
- include rationale for the collaboration and describe the structure in your application
- ensure any one partner does not account for more than 70% of the total grant requested
For more information, visit GOV.UK.
