Most funding asks you to describe your idea and persuade someone it matters. Contracts for Innovation works the other way round. A public body, such as an NHS health board, a police force or a government department, starts by describing a problem it has, and then pays businesses to develop a solution.
For a small company this is often the most accessible public money there is. The problem is defined for you, the buyer is a real organisation with a real need, and the work is usually funded in full.
This guide explains how these competitions work, who can apply and five that are open as this is written.
What Contracts for Innovation is
Contracts for Innovation is the programme run through Innovate UK that used to be called SBRI, the Small Business Research Initiative. Wales runs its own version, Contracts for Innovation Cymru, for Welsh public bodies.
The key word is contract. Legally, this is not a grant. The public body is buying research and development services, under an exemption in procurement law that allows R&D to be bought this way. That difference has practical consequences, and almost all of them work in your favour:
It is usually 100% funded. Grants normally cover a percentage of your costs and leave you to find the rest. A contract pays for the work, so there is no match funding to raise.
It is not subsidy control. The limits that cap how much grant support a business can receive do not apply in the same way.
The challenge is set for you. You don't have to invent a project and justify why it matters. The brief has already done that, often with the buyer's own figures on what the problem costs them.
A buyer is in the room. The organisation that wrote the challenge is the organisation that might buy the finished product. For a company without public-sector customers yet, that is often worth more than the money.
How the phases work
Most challenges run in two phases.
Phase 1 is feasibility. Short projects, often two to six months, testing whether an approach can work. Several businesses are usually funded in parallel, each with a modest contract.
Phase 2 is development and demonstration. Fewer businesses, larger contracts, longer projects, and the aim is a working solution tested in the buyer's real environment. Phase 2 is often only open to those who completed Phase 1, though some challenges go straight to Phase 2 for technologies that already exist.
Read which phase a competition is before anything else. Applying to a Phase 2 call with a Phase 1 idea is the quickest way to waste an application.
Who can apply
Usually, any organisation of any size, and often including businesses based outside the UK, although the work itself must mostly be done in the UK. Contracts go to a single legal entity, so you lead alone and bring in others as subcontractors if you need their skills. In practice the programme is designed with small businesses in mind, and most briefs say so.
There is usually a minimum share of the contract that must be genuine R&D. Exploring, designing, prototyping and field-testing all count. Selling an existing product unchanged does not.
Five open right now
All five were open when this was written, with the closing dates shown. Deadlines move, so confirm a competition is still open before you commit time to it.
Innovation in play to improve child outcomes — projects of £200,000 to £500,000 from a £3 million pot, closes 28 October 2026. Run by UKRI under its Breaking Down Barriers to Opportunity mission. It wants practical solutions that increase children's access to rich, real-world play, particularly where it is unevenly available. Twelve-month projects starting 1 February 2027.
Counter-drone demonstrations in prison environments — projects of £40,000 to £80,000 from a £900,000 pot, closes 28 October 2026. Flying a drone within 400 metres of a prison in England and Wales is an offence, and drones are still used to smuggle items in. This challenge wants low-cost systems, already well developed, that detect and track drones and deter or stop them. Two-month projects, with solutions tested at a UK facility in March 2027.
Modernising the Bowel Screening Pathway in Wales — £300,000, closes 20 October 2026. Around 12,000 people a year in Wales get a positive home screening test and then need a nurse-led assessment, mostly done by phone on a standard form. Bowel Screening Wales is looking for existing technologies that can be adapted to improve that assessment and triage. A Phase 2 competition, so built for products that already exist.
Reducing missed appointments and improving access to planned care — £200,000, closes 20 October 2026. Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board recorded around 64,000 missed outpatient appointments in a year, and estimates the lost value at roughly £9.6 million annually. Phase 1, so discovery, co-design and early prototypes are all in scope.
Transforming multi-agency safeguarding for high-risk domestic abuse in South Wales — £60,000, closes 20 October 2026. South Wales Police and partners manage more than 5,000 high-risk domestic abuse cases a year through a model designed over 20 years ago. This is an early discovery-stage challenge: they say plainly there is no agreed solution yet, which leaves real room for a new approach.
Note the range: £40,000 to £500,000, health, policing, justice and childhood, and three of the five set by a Welsh public body. Contracts for Innovation is not one sector, and the challenges are shaped by whoever has the problem.
Before you apply
Read the challenge background twice. The buyer has told you what the problem costs them and what they have already tried. An application that uses their numbers and answers their constraints reads very differently from one that pitches a product.
Check the dates. These contracts have fixed start and end dates, sometimes only a few months apart, and the work has to fit inside them.
And check whether there is a briefing event. Many challenges hold one, and it is the one chance to hear the buyer describe the problem in their own words.
Finding challenges like these on Grants Hub
Contracts for Innovation challenges come and go quickly, often with three or four weeks between opening and closing. Grants Hub lists them alongside 3,700+ live UK funding opportunities from 1,400+ funders, checked daily, so a challenge that fits your product is visible the week it opens. Search by what your business does rather than by funder name, and set an alert so the next one reaches you with time to write a proper application. We take 0% commission on anything you win.