BBSRC Brazil Pump-Priming Award (FAPPA) 2026: Up to £35,000 for UK–São Paulo Bioscience Collaborations, Open With No Closing Date

BBSRC Brazil Pump-Priming Award (FAPPA) 2026: Up to £35,000 for UK–São Paulo Bioscience Collaborations, Open With No Closing Date

Most international research collaborations die in the gap between “we should work together” and the first joint grant application. Two labs meet at a conference, agree the science is complementary, and then discover that nobody has money for the three visits, the shared protocol trial, and the pilot dataset that would make a serious joint proposal credible. The BBSRC Brazil pump-priming award — FAPPA, the FAPESP–BBSRC Pump-Priming Award — is built precisely for that gap. It gives an existing BBSRC grant holder up to £35,000 at 100% full economic costing over a maximum of two years to build a working relationship with researchers funded by the São Paulo Research Foundation.

The current round was published and opened on 29 July 2026, and it carries no closing date. That is unusual for a UKRI opportunity and it changes how you should plan. There is no deadline scramble; instead there is a hard scheduling rule — you must submit at least twelve weeks before you intend to travel. Miss that window and the answer is not “you scored too low,” it is simply that your trip cannot be funded in time.

This guide is built from the official UKRI funding finder page for the opportunity. It covers what FAPPA pays for, the two eligibility gates that disqualify most people who read about it, how the twin UK–Brazil application actually works, what the six assessment areas are, and how to write a purpose statement that reads as a plan rather than an intention.

Key Details at a Glance

What the Award Actually Pays For

FAPPA is a mobility and collaboration award with a small research tail, and the wording on that point is deliberate. The headline use is travel and subsistence and other collaborative activities, such as workshops or exchanges. That is the spine of the budget.

BBSRC then allows a modest amount of direct research cost on top: consumables and access to specialist equipment, specifically to gather preliminary data that supports new applications under the FAPESP agreement with UKRI. But there is a ceiling and a character test attached. Direct research costs may not exceed 50% of the total value requested from BBSRC, and the page states plainly that the grant “must primarily have a non-research focus.” If your draft budget is 60% consumables and 40% flights, you have designed a small research grant, not a pump-priming award, and it will be rejected on scope before anyone weighs the science.

Three cost categories are excluded outright:

• Salary costs
• Overheads
• Equipment purchases

Note the distinction on the third one. You cannot buy equipment, but you can pay for access to specialist equipment as a consumable-style direct research cost. If a São Paulo partner has an instrument you need three days on, that access charge is arguable. Buying your own instrument is not.

There is one further cost line worth knowing about because applicants routinely leave it on the table. BBSRC explicitly permits additional care costs as part of a FAPPA proposal, covering the extra care requirements created by visits, meetings and overseas travel undertaken for the award. The boundary is that costs forming part of someone’s normal care arrangements must not be included, and organising the care itself is the carer’s responsibility. These costs sit in the directly incurred section and come out of the same overall budget envelope — they are not additional money. Separately, costs for reasonable adjustments that increase as a direct result of working on the project can be requested, and UKRI states that where a funding limit applies, reasonable adjustment costs may exceed the maximum funding amount.

Because 100% FEC is applied, you are asked to request the full value of the activities you want to undertake; the BBSRC allocation is calculated automatically. UKRI asks for a breakdown of the costs made at 100% FEC under “exceptions” in the justification of resources on the Funding Service.

Who Can Apply — Two Gates That Disqualify Most Readers

FAPPA is not an open call for UK bioscientists. It is a benefit attached to existing BBSRC funding, and there are two gates.

Gate one: you must already hold relevant BBSRC funding. You are eligible if you are a holder of a current BBSRC research grant, or a researcher at a BBSRC strategically supported institute working on projects funded through Institute Core Grant Awards — for example Institute Strategic Programme Grants, Core Capability Grants, or National Bioscience Research Infrastructures. Standard BBSRC eligibility rules apply, and your organisation must have standard UKRI eligibility.

Gate two: timing against that grant. You can only apply after your BBSRC grant has started, and there must be at least six months remaining on that project measured from the start of the FAPPA award. This trips up people in the final year of an award who see FAPPA as a way to extend a relationship past the end of the parent grant. Work the arithmetic backwards from your grant end date before you write anything.

Students are not eligible. The application must be made by a project lead, but — a genuinely useful flexibility — the project lead does not have to be the person travelling. A principal investigator can apply so that a postdoc or technician makes the visits. The page also emphasises early career scientist exchanges as something assessors want to see, so this flexibility is not a loophole; it is close to the intended use.

The application must set out the benefit of the collaboration on both sides: to the UK applicant’s BBSRC funding and to UK science generally, and to the São Paulo collaborators’ FAPESP funding and Brazilian science generally. A proposal that describes only what the UK lab gains is answering half the question.

The Brazilian Side: FAPESP, SAGe, and the Twin Submission

This is the part that most often goes wrong administratively, because it is two submissions of one proposal.

The Brazilian applicant must currently hold a FAPESP research grant as project lead or project co-lead. FAPESP funds researchers in the State of São Paulo, so a collaborator elsewhere in Brazil does not qualify under this agreement, however good the science. Brazilian counterparts should contact [email protected] directly for current eligibility advice rather than relying on the UK page.

The mechanics:

1. The UK applicants submit a single joint application to BBSRC through the UKRI Funding Service. This application contains a budget request to BBSRC for the UK partners and a budget request to FAPESP for the São Paulo-based researchers.
2. The São Paulo researchers submit the same proposal to FAPESP via the SAGe system, along with all other documents FAPESP requires. FAPESP publishes its own guidelines for São Paulo-based researchers.
3. The SAGe online form, which carries the FAPESP budget request, is downloaded and uploaded as a PDF attachment by the UK project lead into the BBSRC application.

That attachment has strict formatting requirements and the page is blunt about the consequence of getting them wrong: the file must be a single PDF no larger than 8MB, named with the unique Funding Service number the system generates when you create the application, followed by the words “FAPPA SAGe online form”. “If the attachment does not meet these requirements, the application will be rejected.”

One more structural detail: Brazilian applicants must be listed in the dedicated “Brazil team” section — name, institute, job title, project role, email address, with the lead Brazilian applicant clearly indicated so FAPESP can confirm eligibility. Do not put them in the UK “Core team” section, and do not add them under “Project partners” either.

BBSRC will share the application, including personal information it contains, with FAPESP so that FAPESP can take part in assessment.

The Rolling Deadline and the Twelve-Week Rule

“Open — no closing date” is genuinely how this opportunity runs, but there are two practical wrinkles.

First, the binding constraint is the twelve-week rule: you must submit at least twelve weeks before you intend to travel, and equivalently at least twelve weeks before your intended project start. Build your timeline from the first planned visit and count back — then add time for your research office, which has to check and submit on your behalf, and for your institution’s own internal deadlines, which UKRI reminds you to follow.

Second, do not be alarmed by a date that appears in the system. The page explains that “due to system requirements a closing date will appear on the Funding Service approximately a year from when this opportunity opened.” Given a 29 July 2026 opening, expect a system-generated date around mid-2027. Treat that as a technical artefact of the platform rather than a real call deadline, but do confirm current status on the official page before committing, since UKRI can and does close rolling opportunities.

Once submitted, the application cannot be changed and will not be returned for amendment. If it does not follow the guidance, it may be rejected. There is no correction cycle, which raises the value of a careful read-only review before you send it to your research office.

What You Actually Have to Write

The Funding Service application is compact by BBSRC standards. The word limits tell you where the effort belongs.

The Purpose question at 2,500 words carries the weight. It asks a single question — why is the travel and joint research needed? — and the assessors are told to look for eight specific things: added value to existing BBSRC and FAPESP research and innovation; promotion of UK–Brazil collaboration; the future joint research likely to come from it; skills acquisition and development for the individuals involved; opportunities for early career scientist exchanges; why these people are the best people for the collaboration; why these destinations are the best places to go in terms of access to people, expertise, skills and resources; and why the travel needs to happen now.

Write to that list. Eight headed paragraphs answering eight stated criteria is not inelegant — it is the format that makes an assessor’s scoring job easy, and on a small award with a fast internal review that matters more than narrative flair.

References sit inside the word count of the relevant section. Hyperlinks may be used for reference information only; the page states applications should be self-contained and assessors are not required to follow links. Generative AI may be used to prepare applications, with caution, under UKRI’s published policy.

How BBSRC and FAPESP Assess It

The process is deliberately light-touch. Experts from within BBSRC review the application against the specified criteria. BBSRC then contacts FAPESP, and a joint funding decision is made. There is no external peer review panel described and no interview stage. A decision is communicated following that internal review by both funders.

The six assessment areas are exactly the application sections that carry criteria:

1. The purpose
2. Resources and cost justification
3. Ethics and responsible research and innovation
4. FAPESP SAGe online form
5. Your organisation’s support
6. Project partners: letters of support

Two of those six are documents rather than prose — the SAGe form and the partner letters. That is worth sitting with. A third of your assessment surface is administrative material that is entirely within your control and requires no writing talent at all, only attention. Applications that fail here fail avoidably.

Demand management is not applied to this opportunity, meaning your institution’s submission quota is not affected. UKRI assesses in line with its published principles of assessment and decision making and supports the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, so the reputational weight of journals in your track record is not the intended basis for judgement. Reviewers may use generative AI only for language refinement of their own reviews, and must not enter any part of your application into an AI tool.

Preparation Strategy: Making a Small Award Look Inevitable

At £35,000 across two years and two countries, the winning argument is rarely ambition. It is specificity and timing.

Anchor it to the parent grant. FAPPA exists to add value to work BBSRC is already paying for. Name the grant, name the objective within it that the collaboration advances, and be concrete about what the São Paulo partnership supplies that your existing project cannot — a population, a climate, a pathogen, a germplasm collection, an analytical method, a cohort. “Complementary expertise” is not an answer; it is a placeholder for one.

Make the “why now” real. Assessors are explicitly asked why travel and collaboration need to happen at this time. Good answers are tied to something dated: a field season, a harvest, a trial cohort, a facility upgrade coming online, the remaining window on both parent grants, or a specific UKRI–FAPESP call you intend to apply to with the preliminary data.

Name the follow-on. Pump-priming is judged on what it primes. Say which joint application you intend to submit, to which scheme, and roughly when. A proposal that ends at the last flight home has not made its case.

Put early career people at the centre. Early career scientist exchange is a named criterion. Identify who travels, what specific skill they acquire or transfer, and how that capability persists in the lab afterwards.

Build both budgets together. The UK and FAPESP budgets are two halves of one plan and are read alongside each other. If the UK side funds three visits and the FAPESP side funds none, the reciprocity the scheme is designed to create is missing on the page.

Get the support statement written by someone senior. Assessors are told to look for a strong statement of support from the research organisation, approved for submission by an appropriate institutional authority, and it must include a named significant person, their position and department, and an office address or web link. A generic template signed by nobody in particular scores poorly on a criterion that costs nothing to satisfy properly.

Common Mistakes That Sink FAPPA Applications

• Applying without a live BBSRC grant, or with under six months left. The single most common disqualification, and it is checked, not negotiated.
• Letting research costs exceed 50%, or writing a proposal whose centre of gravity is a small research project rather than a collaboration.
• Budgeting salary, overheads, or equipment purchase. All three are excluded.
• Getting the SAGe attachment wrong. Wrong file name, more than 8MB, or not a single PDF means rejection. Use the Funding Service application number in the filename exactly as instructed.
• Listing Brazilian colleagues in the UK Core team section, or adding them under Project partners. They belong in the Brazil team section and nowhere else.
• Assuming a Brazilian collaborator outside São Paulo qualifies. FAPESP funds São Paulo State; the co-funding depends on it.
• Forgetting that FAPESP must submit too. A perfect BBSRC application with no matching SAGe submission is half an application.
• Submitting inside twelve weeks of travel. No amount of scientific merit fixes a scheduling breach.
• Treating the ethics and RRI section as a formality. It is one of six assessment areas, with mandatory sub-questions on animals and the 3Rs, human participation, and genetically modified organisms or genetic technologies — each of which may require additional downloads and uploads.
• Missing the internal institutional deadline. Only the lead research organisation can submit, and research offices and finance teams run their own checks on hosting arrangements and financial eligibility.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a real deadline? No fixed closing date. The operative rule is that you must submit at least twelve weeks before your intended travel or project start. A system-generated closing date roughly a year after the 29 July 2026 opening may appear in the Funding Service for technical reasons.

Can I apply if my BBSRC grant hasn’t started yet? No. Applications can only be made after the BBSRC grant has started, with at least six months remaining from the FAPPA award’s start.

Do I have to be the one travelling? No. The project lead makes the application but does not have to travel. Funding an early career researcher’s exchange is well within the scheme’s intent.

Can students apply? No. Students are explicitly ineligible.

Can I use the money for a postdoc’s salary while they are in Brazil? No. Salary costs cannot be funded, along with overheads and equipment purchase.

How much of the budget can be research costs? Up to 50% of the total requested from BBSRC, covering consumables and access to specialist equipment for preliminary data. The grant must still be primarily non-research in focus.

Does my Brazilian partner need their own funding? Yes. They must currently hold a FAPESP research grant as project lead or project co-lead, and they apply to FAPESP for the equivalent Brazilian funding.

Which system do I apply through? The UKRI Funding Service. Je-S cannot be used. Your organisation must be registered, and only the lead research organisation can submit.

Does this count against my institution’s quota? No. Demand management is not applied to this funding opportunity.

Can I revise after submitting? No. Applications cannot be changed after submission and will not be returned for amendment.

Can I use AI to write the application? UKRI permits generative AI for preparing applications but advises caution and points to its published policy on the use of generative AI in application and assessment.

Official Links and Contacts

• Funding opportunity page: BBSRC Brazil pump-priming award (FAPPA) — UKRI
• BBSRC international enquiries: [email protected] — include “FAPPA” in the subject line. Use the same address to flag confidential or sensitive information, with the funding opportunity title, “sensitive information”, and your Funding Service application number in the subject.
• FAPESP enquiries for São Paulo-based researchers: [email protected]
• UKRI Funding Service helpdesk: [email protected], 01793 547490. Opening hours are Monday to Thursday 8:30am–5:00pm and Friday 8:30am–4:30pm UK time.

If you hold a current BBSRC grant with more than six months to run and a credible São Paulo counterpart with live FAPESP funding, this is one of the least competitive routes available to convert a conference conversation into a funded partnership. The absence of a deadline is the trap and the opportunity at once: nothing forces you to act, and the twelve-week rule means the decision to apply has to be made a full quarter before the first flight. Confirm eligibility against your grant end date, email both funders’ contact addresses early, and start the SAGe form with your Brazilian partner well before you think you need to.