Future Offshore Wind Technologies Feasibility Studies 2026: Innovate UK Grant (Closed)

Future Offshore Wind Technologies Feasibility Studies 2026: Innovate UK Grant (Closed)

This page is a historical reference for Innovate UK’s Future offshore wind technologies: feasibility studies competition. The official UKRI opportunity page lists the competition as closed. Its closing date was 3 June 2026 at 11:00am UK time, so organisations cannot submit a new application to this cycle. The official pages checked for this refresh do not announce a later round. Treat this article as an archive of the 2026 call, not as an open funding listing.

At a glance

The headline amount needs a little care. Innovate UK allocated a maximum of £10 million across both strands of the wider competition, subject to receiving enough high-quality applications. The figure was not a guaranteed award for each project and was not a promise that every eligible application would be funded. The feasibility-study record also set a project-cost range of £50,000 to £250,000, which is different from the size of the overall competition fund.

What the competition was designed to support

The call targeted early-stage innovation in offshore wind, aligned with the Offshore Wind Industrial Growth Plan. The purpose was to examine whether a new idea, concept, or process could become a credible route toward development, demonstration, production, adoption, and future commercial deployment. A feasibility project was expected to reduce important technical, commercial, or delivery uncertainty rather than present a broad request for general research.

The Innovation Funding Service described a desired path from feasibility work to a suitably sized development and demonstration project, subject to future funding. It also asked applicants to consider how their innovation would anchor intellectual property and future UK content, capacity, and capability. Projects needed to show how successful delivery could support growth in the applicant organisation and an accelerated route from innovation to industrial adoption.

The scope covered five groups of themes:

• Advanced turbine technology: towers, blades, drivetrain components, and automation of manufacturing processes.
• Industrialised foundations and substructures for deepwater solutions greater than 50 metres: deepwater foundations, floating and hybrid designs, moorings and anchors, manufacturing improvements that reduce cost or improve durability, and novel materials applied to components.
• Future electrical systems and cables: array and export cables, including dynamic cables at 132kV or greater.
• Smart environmental services: autonomous environmental data collection and surveying, plus environmental-data analytics that integrate machine learning and artificial intelligence.
• Next-generation installation, operations, and maintenance: technologies intended to improve operational uptime or lifespan, and autonomous inspection or condition-monitoring solutions.

The detailed record also stated that proposals should focus on offshore wind involving hybrid and floating approaches. A project therefore needed a direct connection to the defined offshore-wind challenge, not merely a general clean-energy benefit.

Who was eligible

The competition accepted both single-applicant and collaborative projects, but the rules differed by route.

For a single-applicant project, the organisation had to be a UK-registered micro, small, or medium-sized enterprise. An academic institution could not lead a project alone. This made the solo route appropriate for an SME with the technical, commercial, and project-management capacity to carry out the study without a funded consortium lead.

For a collaborative project, the lead had to be a UK-registered business of any size. The consortium had to contain at least one UK-registered micro, small, or medium-sized enterprise claiming grant funding in the application. Each funded partner had to enter its own project costs and complete its Project Impact questions after being invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead.

Other UK-registered businesses, academic institutions, and research and technology organisations could collaborate with the lead. Non-funded partners could also be included; the official guidance allowed UK, European Union, and other non-UK organisations in that category, with their own costs covered from their resources. Overseas subcontractors were possible only with a detailed justification explaining why an appropriate UK subcontractor could not be used. A lower price alone was not sufficient justification.

The project work of funded organisations had to take place in the UK, and funded organisations had to intend to exploit the project results from or in the UK. The collaboration also had to be substantive: the lead and at least one other organisation had to apply for funding, explain why the collaboration was needed, describe its structure, and ensure no single partner represented more than 70% of total eligible costs.

Funding rates and project boundaries

For eligible commercial or economic project costs, the feasibility-study category allowed funding of up to 70% for a micro or small organisation, 60% for a medium-sized organisation, and 50% for a large organisation. These were maximum rates, not automatic award percentages. Applicants still had to provide the balance of eligible costs and demonstrate that the requested amount was appropriate.

The competition record set total eligible project costs between £50,000 and £250,000 and a duration of 6 to 18 months. Projects had to start by 1 October 2026 and end by 31 March 2028. Projects had to start on the first day of a month, and no project work could begin until Innovate UK had approved the Grant Offer Letter. A delay during project setup could move the start date.

The official record also capped the grant that could be awarded to one enterprise in the competition at £3 million under the Research, Development and Innovation Streamlined Route rules. That cap does not turn the call into a £3 million-per-project opportunity: the project-cost band and the applicable funding percentage remained the practical limits for this feasibility strand.

Work that was outside the scope

The exclusions matter because a promising offshore-wind idea could still be rejected if its central work fell into a listed category. The competition would not fund:

• novel turbine design or redesign under advanced turbine technology;
• foundation designs that were neither floating nor hybrid, or novel-material development not tied to component applications;
• onshore transmission systems, onshore or offshore substations, energy-storage development, or energy-storage integration with the grid;
• data collection, surveys, or environmental studies for a specific lease area;
• vessel build or modification, routine service, planned preventative maintenance, or systems requiring integration with an original equipment manufacturer’s turbine-control software.

The competition also excluded proposals dependent on export performance or on the use of domestic inputs. These boundaries made the call a poor fit for routine service delivery, a standalone lease-area survey, a general battery project, or a conventional vessel-construction proposal. Applicants needed to frame the work as a feasibility study for a novel, in-scope offshore-wind technology or process.

What a strong feasibility study needed to answer

The official research category defined a feasibility study as an objective evaluation and analysis of a project’s potential to support decision-making. In practical terms, an application needed to identify the uncertainties that stood between the concept and a credible next stage, then show how the proposed work would address them.

A well-formed study would normally connect several kinds of evidence:

1. Technical feasibility. What has to work, what evidence already exists, what tests or modelling will be carried out, and what result would change the decision to proceed?
2. Commercial feasibility. Who could use or buy the eventual result, what problem would it solve, and what evidence would show that the proposed solution has a route into the value chain?
3. Delivery feasibility. Which people, facilities, equipment, partners, and subcontractors are required, and how will the team manage access to them?
4. UK growth and adoption. How could the project strengthen UK intellectual property, capability, supply chains, productivity, or future commercial deployment?
5. Next-stage planning. If the study supports the concept, what development or demonstration project would follow, what resources would it require, and what barriers might prevent adoption?

The Innovation Funding Service suggested useful outputs such as a detailed feasibility report covering the business and technology pathway, the investment needed to move toward scale, customer or future-collaboration evidence, findings shared with Innovate UK, outline funding requirements and timescales for later development, and an assessment of barriers to UK or international market adoption. These outputs make the difference between a study that produces a decision and a collection of disconnected investigations.

How applications were submitted

This cycle was handled through the Innovation Funding Service. The official process required applicants to read the guidance on applying for a competition before starting. The lead organisation then had to decide which organisations would work on the project and invite relevant people or partners into the application.

The application was divided into four sections:

1. Project details — project title, start date, duration, research category, project summary, public description, and scope fit.
2. Application questions — the scored and unscored questions used to assess the proposal.
3. Finances — project costs and the funding request for each participating organisation.
4. Project Impact — the expected growth, market, wider, and organisational effects of the work.

Applicants had to complete every question and mark all sections complete. In a collaboration, partners had to accept the terms and conditions and complete the sections assigned to them. The lead was responsible for checking that the information was correct, that the proposal met the eligibility and scope rules, and that the team had supplied all required details. A submitted application could be reopened before the closing time, but it had to be resubmitted before the deadline.

The application record imposed an important practical restriction: applicants were not to include website addresses or links in their answers. The project summary, public description, scope response, and scored answers needed to stand on their own. The public description also had to be written in a form suitable for publication if the project received funding, without commercially sensitive information.

The scored material asked applicants to explain the need or opportunity, how the innovation responded to it, how it improved on comparable innovations, the freedom to operate, fit with current product or service lines, expected outputs, team roles, resources, target markets, route to market, productivity and growth, protection and exploitation of results, wider economic and environmental impacts, and project management. Appendices were permitted for some questions, subject to the official PDF page and file-size limits.

Because the competition closed at 11:00am UK time on 3 June 2026, a new applicant cannot now use these instructions to submit. If Innovate UK announces a later offshore-wind call, applicants should use that new competition’s own record and requirements rather than assume that the 2026 rules carry over.

Archived timeline

The official records give this cycle’s timeline as follows:

• 7 April 2026: competition opened.
• 13 April 2026: online briefing event was listed.
• 3 June 2026 at 11:00am UK time: competition closed.
• 8 July 2026: applicants were notified.
• 1 October 2026: funded projects were required to start by this date.
• 31 March 2028: funded projects were required to end by this date.

The UKRI opportunity page now labels the call closed. No replacement deadline is placed in this page’s metadata because the official sources checked for this refresh do not announce a new cycle. The front matter therefore keeps the real 2026-06-03 closing date and sets historicalReference = true, so this entry can function as an archive rather than suggesting that applications remain open.

What to check if a new round is announced

If Innovate UK publishes a successor, begin with the new official UKRI opportunity page and its Innovation Funding Service record. Check the funder, status, opening and closing times, total competition allocation, project-cost range, duration, eligible organisation types, funding percentages, themes, exclusions, and required application sections. Do not assume that a new round will retain the same budget or eligibility rules.

For a team preparing an eventual bid, the most useful groundwork is a narrow problem statement, a defensible feasibility question, a workplan linked to evidence, and a partner structure with real responsibilities. A proposal should show why the project belongs in one or more of the named themes, how the work relates to hybrid or floating offshore wind where required, and what decision the study will enable. It should distinguish a feasibility study from routine engineering services or a full product-development programme.

The team should also be ready to explain the market, the route to adoption, the UK benefit, and the next development step. Technical detail is valuable only when it helps a reviewer understand the uncertainty being tested. A compact, traceable budget is more useful than a large list of activities. Where a partner or subcontractor is essential, the application should show why that organisation is needed and how its work fits the evidence plan.

Official sources

The primary listing is the UKRI opportunity page, which identifies Innovate UK as the funder, records the £10 million total fund, gives the opening and closing dates, and summarises single-applicant and collaborative eligibility. The full Innovation Funding Service competition record supplies the project-cost range, duration, funding rates, themes, exclusions, timeline, and application instructions.

Those official records support the conclusion recorded here: the 2026 feasibility-study cycle has ended, and no later cycle is announced on the official pages checked. This page should remain a historical reference until an officially published successor can be researched and listed separately.