Ian Chapman maps the changes to UKRI’s budget between 2026 and 2030

Just before Christmas, UKRI published an explainer at a high level about how we will allocate our budget between April 2026 and March 2030.

Since then, the research community has understandably been seeking further detail about what those changes mean at a more granular level.

Today, in a video published on the UKRI website, and in this piece, I want to describe what this means for individual researchers and innovators and, in particular, the place for curiosity-driven research within that.

UKRI’s budget 2026-30

In this Spending Review period 2026-2030, UKRI’s overall budget is rising. That is a privileged position at a time of constrained public finances, and we should recognise it represents a vote of confidence in the potential of research and innovation.

As a result, the overall level of funding available to researchers and entrepreneurs from UKRI increases to almost £10 billion a year by 2029. As the public body entrusted with this public money, we are here to serve the public and make the biggest impact we can to their lives and their livelihoods. Alongside this vote of confidence, we have had clear direction from government that we need to do fewer things better.

Our mission may sound simple: to advance knowledge, improve lives and drive growth. But there is great intent in these eight words. The three parts of this mission are all equally important – any knowledge-driven economy must support curiosity-driven research to provide the novel ideas that underpin the application of research, which ultimately leads to innovative companies that deliver the products and services which change our lives. UKRI is at its best when we deliver mutual symbiosis between these three parts.

I am determined that we should demonstrate overtly how we go from our mission to our money, from strategy to spending, so we have reframed our budget against three priority ‘buckets’:

(1) Curiosity-driven research where we will back the most novel ideas, in any area of any field, that provide the biggest transformation in advancing our knowledge;

(2) supporting societal priorities, where we then apply research to make a tangible difference to people’s lives; and

(3) helping companies to start, to scale, and ultimately, to stay in the UK.

A fourth bucket underpins the other three: enabling and strengthening our R&I system, which includes investment in infrastructure, talent and international activity amongst other things.

Of course, we fully understand, as you do, that much of the research in which we invest cannot be attributed to one bucket alone – indeed, that’s a feature not a problem. But we need a simple way of accounting, and so we have chosen to put the whole of any given funding scheme into the bucket where it makes the biggest difference.

Let me illustrate this with two examples: the Laboratory for Molecular Biology is wholly in Bucket 1 since it makes the biggest difference to curiosity-driven research, though of course also does applied research and may spin out companies. Meanwhile, the catapults are wholly in Bucket 3, even though as well as helping companies to grow, they also do some discovery and applied research themselves.

Previously, if we were asked a question like “How much do you invest in AI?” it would be complex to answer. We would have had programmes in every thematic council, as well as STFC, Innovate UK, contributions from both Quality Research (QR) funding and Higher Education Innovation Funding from Research England, as well as separate investment in Skills, International and Infrastructure, representing around a dozen sources of money.

By aggregating much of this into one place, we can be clearer about the overall strategy of our investment in an area, how the pieces fit together, what the longer-term opportunities will be, and ensure we neither duplicate nor leave inadvertent gaps. It also means that we have clarity of accountability inside UKRI which enables decision-making and agility.

I hope that, in time, by developing concerted programmes with our partners and providing increased clarity for the forward programme, that we enable our partners to invest with confidence in areas of priority for them.

In this way, whilst our total budget increases by 8 per cent over this spending review period, I hope that we can make a much larger impact through clarity of programme priorities and accountability, meaning that our budget makes an even greater impact than the 8 per cent increase would suggest.

A diagrammatic explanation

Many of our partners have asked us to map our previous funding streams to the buckets that we will be using going forward. We have published an illustrative Sankey plot which shows this at a high level, illustrating the fundamental shift in how UKRI will invest.

There are a few things of particular note from this diagrammatic explanation. The first is that the new approach is much simpler. I hope it will be much easier for partners to interact with UKRI as a result.

The second is that we are increasingly clear about the outcomes we are trying to achieve through different schemes – this will allow us to be even clearer about what matters most to us. For instance, within Curiosity-driven research we will value novelty and excellence of research, whereas when addressing societal priorities we may take greater account for other factors such as social impact, additionality, and delivery track record, amongst many others.

The Sankey plot also shows clearly that curiosity-driven research is protected. Our budget for applicant-led research, what used to be called ‘responsive-mode’ grants rises from £737m this year to £815m next year. Furthermore, within curiosity-driven research we will continue to support the breadth of ideas that we always have, so it is protected in scope as well as scale.

In time UKRI will feel very different as a partner – we won’t be just a ‘funding agency’; we will care not only about the process, but even more about the outcomes we deliver together. We will be working more concertedly with partners to ensure we improve the lives of the UK public and maximise their economic prosperity. I hope that taken together, the information published today about how we map the old world to the new, alongside the explanation of budget attribution published in December, will show you a picture of our priorities and intentions. Within this framework there is now great opportunity to shape the specific scope that we address together and we want to work with you maximise the impact of our investment.