Research England funding allocations, 2026-27

A principal aim of Research England funding right now is stability. With research performing organisations under financial pressure it is vital that it is possible to plan ahead, and the latest set of funding allocations offer that sliver of reliability that has been hoped for

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If you’ve been following the discourse you won’t be surprised by the headline numbers – a small but significant increase in the main QR streams, a small cut to knowledge exchange funding overall but with HEIF preserved. That’s because there has been no significant changes to allocation formulae, but the pool of HEIF recipients has been slightly widened and the maximum allocation caps increased with inflation. Formula-based capital funding is down overall.

If your allocation has changed this year it is more than likely due to a change in the underlying data that affects the formula in question: for research funding that includes PGR numbers, research staff numbers, and OfS financial data – for knowledge exchanging funding that’s the information in HE-BCI, the knowledge transfer partnerships data and the financial returns.

The big approaching change is the ongoing review of strategic international research funding which runs through to 2030. This is the long and meticulous attempt to operationalise the priorities set up in section three of the Skills white paper. While nobody likes the idea of a review hanging over us, it at least means we can be reasonably confident there will be no major changes before it reports.

Here’s last year’s data if you wanted to compare.