STEG Larger Research Grants 2026: Historical Call for up to £100,000 in Structural Transformation Research

The sixth STEG Larger Research Grants (LRGs) call is closed. The official call page set the deadline at 23:59 BST on 02 February 2026. The Growth Research Platform’s official STEG open-and-upcoming page does not announce another LRG round, so this page is an archive entry for the 2026 call, not a live invitation to submit. Do not send an application by email or assume that the old call form is available simply because the archived call page still contains some open-call wording.

STEG is the Structural Transformation and Economic Growth programme operated through the Growth Research Platform, a CEPR-coordinated research initiative. Its LRGs are intended for projects that need more time, research assistance, data work, or field activity than a Small Research Grant can support. The programme is concerned with how economies change over time: shifts between agriculture, manufacturing, and services; productivity differences between firms or sectors; movement of labour and production; and the policies and institutions that shape those changes.

At a glance

What the grant was designed to fund

The 2026 LRG call offered awards of up to £100,000. The official notice says that the money could support research assistance, data collection or data purchase, teaching buyouts, and relevant remuneration for a principal investigator or co-investigators from partner institutions. Travel to field sites was eligible even when the main project used secondary data. STEG presented field visits and conversations with policymakers as especially useful for researchers who did not already have experience in the countries they planned to study.

The headline amount was not an automatic entitlement. Applicants had to explain why their project required the extra time and resources associated with a Large Research Grant rather than an SRG. The budget also had to follow the LRG Budget Guidelines, and cost effectiveness and value for money were explicit evaluation considerations.

The sixth call added an important exception for data-intensive work. Projects studying structural transformation, productivity, or growth in low-income countries could request more than £100,000 when extraordinary data-collection costs made that necessary. STEG did not set a fixed upper limit for this exception, but the additional budget had to be reasonable and clearly justified. Projects centred on data collection were expected to make the resulting data publicly available by the end of the grant. A request for a larger amount therefore needed a defensible data plan, not just a larger list of expenses.

Research fit

STEG accepted proposals on broad systemic patterns and processes of structural transformation and growth in low-income countries, including comparative work across time or space. It also welcomed narrower projects tied to one or more of six research themes:

• Data, measurement, and conceptual framing.
• Firms, frictions and spillovers, and industrial policy.
• Labour, home production, and structural transformation at the household level.
• Agricultural productivity and sectoral gaps.
• Trade and spatial frictions.
• The role of the public sector.

The themes were a guide rather than a requirement to force every proposal into a single box. The call said that other work could be considered when it was centrally relevant to STEG. Research in middle-income countries could also fit when it informed growth processes or policies in low-income countries. A proposal focused on a middle-income setting therefore needed to make that policy connection explicit instead of assuming that the location alone established relevance.

Three cross-cutting issues received particular consideration when connected to structural transformation: gender; climate change and the environment; and inequality and inclusion. These issues could strengthen a proposal’s fit, but a mention in the introduction would not substitute for a clear question, credible method, and feasible work plan.

Eligibility and team design

Researchers from anywhere in the world were invited to apply. STEG encouraged collaboration between researchers from lower- and higher-income countries, especially where the partnership improved access to data, field relationships, interpretation, or policy engagement.

The principal investigator had to hold a PhD or be enrolled in a PhD programme. Co-investigators had no formal qualification requirement, although STEG noted that co-investigators on funded projects usually held a PhD or were enrolled in one. Reviewers considered the expertise and qualifications of the full research team, so the proposal needed to explain who would handle the substantive research, data work, project management, and engagement with local institutions.

PhD students could apply to regular LRG calls, but STEG warned that a student applying alone might find it difficult to demonstrate the experience required for research at this scale. A team including more senior co-investigators could help establish feasibility and credibility. When a PhD student acted as PI, a letter from the PhD supervisor was required no later than two weeks after the deadline. The letter was expected to address feasibility, intellectual support, the student’s ability to carry out the work, and longer-term research potential.

There was also a country and institution constraint. STEG said it could not accept proposals that included researchers or other research-team members based at Russian institutions, in view of sanctions and the political situation described on the official page. LRG contracts were designed to be held directly with an institution. The PI could select the contracting institution; it did not have to be the PI’s home institution.

An eligible institution had to be a legally registered entity in its home country and had to satisfy the programme’s legal, financial, tax, and compliance requirements. Consortia were allowed when they had an appropriate legal arrangement, one lead institution, and one PI. Partners were expected to sign a consortium agreement before the project started. The official funding page also notes that CEPR could exceptionally administer a project as host when the researcher was strong but the proposed host could not satisfy the relevant requirements.

How the 2026 application worked

The original call instructed applicants to use the LRG templates available on the official STEG funding page and submit through the LRG Application Form on CEPR Hub. The process was online; the deadline was not a rolling window. Because this round is closed and no next LRG deadline has been announced, these steps are useful as a record of the prior process and as preparation for a future call, not as a current submission route.

For a future LRG round, an applicant should first confirm that STEG has published an open call and that the active call page names the correct deadline. The programme’s official materials should be treated as controlling if templates, eligibility rules, or portal instructions change. The basic preparation sequence for the 2026 round was:

1. Read the active call notice, LRG Applicant Guide, LRG Budget Guidelines, eligibility and country criteria, and LRG FAQs.
2. Choose a contracting institution and confirm that it can meet the legal and financial requirements.
3. Register for or sign in to CEPR Hub and complete the researcher and institutional information requested by the form.
4. Prepare the LRG proposal summary, full proposal, and budget using the templates linked from the STEG LRG funding page.
5. Explain the research question, method, work plan, expected outputs, policy relevance, team responsibilities, and value for money.
6. Upload the required documents through the LRG application form and submit before the published deadline.

The official call page says that decisions were expected within five months of the deadline. An LRG was intended to finish within 24 months, and contracts were expected to be signed within one month of the final decision. These are programme-level planning points, not a promise of a current award or a reason to submit after a closed round.

What a strong proposal needed to show

A competitive application needed a research question that mattered for structural transformation and a method capable of answering it. The proposal should have identified the countries, population, firms, sectors, or institutions under study; explained what evidence would be collected or acquired; and shown how the research design addressed measurement and identification problems.

The budget had to connect directly to the work. A request for assistants should have described their tasks and time. A data purchase or new survey should have named the source, population, access conditions, and expected output. Travel should have had a research or policy purpose. A teaching buyout or remuneration request needed an explanation of how protected research time would change delivery. For a request above the normal cap, the justification needed to focus on the extraordinary data-collection requirement and the public value of the resulting data.

Policy relevance also had to be concrete. STEG’s official funding page says that policy relevance in low-income countries, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, was an important criterion. A proposal could therefore identify the ministries, regulators, local governments, firms, producer groups, or development organisations that might use the results and describe the decision the research could inform. Comparative or middle-income-country work needed to explain its relevance to specific low-income-country policy questions.

The evaluation criteria listed by STEG were quality of the proposed research, policy relevance, feasibility and credibility, value for money, and contribution to expanding the field. The programme also warned that fewer than 5% of STEG applications were accepted and that it could not provide feedback to unsuccessful applicants. That makes a focused scope, realistic access plan, and precise budget especially important.

Status and next steps

The 2026 call has ended. Its official deadline remains useful for researchers documenting the round, comparing grant calendars, or studying the scale and design of STEG funding. It should not be read as an invitation to apply now. The official STEG open-and-upcoming page lists other programme activity and a provisional future timeline, but it does not announce a next LRG call. Researchers interested in this funding should monitor the official STEG funding and open-calls pages for a new notice, then use the newly published deadline and templates rather than relying on this archived entry.

For the historical call itself, the authoritative record is the official sixth-call notice. The broader STEG Large Research Grants page explains the standing programme structure, eligibility, country relevance, contracts, evaluation criteria, and document set. Those pages are the right places to verify any future change in the award ceiling, applicant rules, portal, or timetable.