Win UK Innovation Funding 2026-2027: Knowledge Transfer Partnership Grant Share of Up to £10 Million for University Business Collaborations

You know that maddening gap between “We have a brilliant idea” and “We have a product/process/service the real world will actually pay for”? That gap is where good research goes to die—unless you’ve got a sensible mechanism to move knowledge out of institutions and into companies without turning everyone involved into full-time paperwork monks.

That’s the point of a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP). It’s not a typical research grant, and it’s not a handout to industry either. Think of it more like a structured, funded collaboration where a business has a specific innovation challenge, an academic partner has the expertise to tackle it, and the project creates a bridge sturdy enough to carry ideas into market reality.

For round one of 2026 to 2027, UKRI is putting up to £10 million on the table for these partnerships. That figure isn’t “£10 million for one lucky winner.” It’s a pot to be shared across multiple projects, which is good news if you’re applying—because you’re not trying to out-muscle one mega-proposal so much as show that your collaboration is sharp, credible, and worth backing.

One more reason this opportunity matters: KTPs are designed for the messy middle of innovation. Not just blue-sky thinking, not just incremental tweaks. The kind of work where you need expertise, time, and a plan—and where both the academic partner and the business have skin in the game.

Key Details at a Glance

What a Knowledge Transfer Partnership Actually Offers (Beyond the Money)

A KTP is funding, yes—but it’s also a framework. If standard grants are like giving someone ingredients and wishing them luck, KTPs are more like paying for the chef, the kitchen time, and the recipe testing until something edible (and sellable) comes out.

Here’s what you’re really getting when you pursue a KTP-style project:

First, you get funding explicitly meant to support collaboration with a business. That sounds obvious, but it’s rare. Many innovation-adjacent schemes say they want impact and industry engagement, then quietly punish you for spending any serious time on it. KTPs are built for the “working together” part: translating know-how, embedding new methods, improving capability inside the company, and generating tangible outcomes.

Second, you get a model where the business contributes to costs, which changes the psychology of the partnership. When a company invests real money, it tends to show up to meetings, make decisions, unblock access to data and staff, and push toward implementation. In other words: fewer “great chat, let’s circle back” conversations.

Third, KTPs are often ideal for projects that are too applied for a pure academic call and too uncertain for a business to fund alone. That includes things like piloting an advanced manufacturing method, redesigning a supply chain using new analytics, validating a healthcare technology workflow, or creating a new digital product built on academic expertise the company doesn’t have in-house.

And finally, there’s the long-term benefit that doesn’t fit neatly into a budget sheet: relationship equity. A well-run KTP can become a repeat pipeline of student placements, consultancy, co-authored papers, follow-on grants, and future commercial partnerships. The first project is the proof. The next projects are the payoff.

Who Should Apply (And Who Should Probably Sit This One Out)

To lead the project, your organisation must be a UK registered:

• higher education institution (HEI) or further education institution (FEI)
• research and technology organisation (RTO)
• Catapult

But you can’t do it alone. You must collaborate with a UK registered business that has two or more full-time employees, and the business must contribute to project costs.

Now for the practical interpretation—because eligibility rules are the easy part. Fit is harder.

This opportunity is a strong match if you’re an academic team (or knowledge exchange office) that already has a business conversation in motion and can translate it into a real innovation project. For example, you might be an engineering department working with a regional manufacturer that wants to reduce waste and downtime, but needs help with sensors, modelling, and testing. Or a computing group partnering with an SME that has customer demand but lacks the machine learning expertise to build a reliable system. Or a materials lab collaborating with a product company that needs a credible route from prototype to scalable process.

It’s also a great fit for Catapults and RTOs who are built to do industry-facing work and can act as the “expert engine” while the company provides the market pull and the operational environment.

On the other hand, if your “business partner” is essentially a logo you plan to paste onto a proposal while you do the same research you were going to do anyway, reviewers will smell it from three postcodes away. KTPs reward genuine co-creation: access to the company’s constraints, data, staff time, and decision-making. If the business can’t commit attention (not just money), your project will wobble.

Also worth saying plainly: this is not best suited to a micro-company without operational capacity. The requirement for 2+ full-time employees helps screen for that, but you should still ask: do they have the bandwidth to participate properly?

Why This Is a Tough Grant to Get (And Why It’s Still Worth It)

A KTP proposal is persuasive only if it’s specific. “We’ll innovate together” is a slogan, not a plan.

The good news is that specificity is something you can engineer. If you can clearly define the business problem, the knowledge gap, and the route to implementation, you’re already doing what many applicants avoid because it requires actual thinking.

And yes—the business contribution requirement adds complexity. But it also makes your proposal more credible. A company willing to pay part of the bill is effectively saying, “We believe this will matter.” Reviewers tend to like that.

Insider Tips for a Winning KTP Application (The Stuff People Learn the Hard Way)

1) Start with the business pain, not the academic brilliance

Your research expertise matters, but the project should be anchored in a business-critical challenge. That challenge should be expensive, risky, or strategically important enough that the company won’t casually drop it when priorities shift.

A useful test: can the business partner quantify the pain? Lost revenue, long cycle times, high defect rates, regulatory friction, customer churn, carbon costs. Numbers aren’t everything, but vagueness kills.

2) Define the knowledge gap like a detective story

A strong KTP case makes the gap feel obvious: “The company can’t do X because it lacks Y capability; we will transfer Y into the business through Z activities.”

Avoid abstract claims like “enhance innovation capacity.” Instead, name the capability. For instance: “build an in-house validation protocol,” “implement a new modelling approach,” “develop a reproducible data pipeline,” “train staff to use a specific method,” “establish a new QA process.”

3) Make the implementation plan feel inevitable

Reviewers love projects where the outcome is not just “new insights,” but “new practice.” Spell out what will change inside the business by month 6, month 12, and at the end.

If your plan requires company cooperation (it will), state what access you’ll have: staff time, datasets, production environment, customer feedback, facilities, procurement support. Don’t assume; confirm.

4) Treat the business contribution conversation like a design session, not a billing dispute

Businesses don’t enjoy surprise costs. Have an early, candid chat: what can they realistically fund, and what value do they expect?

If the business partner is enthusiastic but nervous, help them translate the contribution into what they care about: reduced risk, faster development, external credibility, capability building, competitive advantage. (And yes, they need to be comfortable with the cash commitment—otherwise your “partner” becomes your bottleneck.)

5) Write like a human who has to deliver this project

Avoid jargon soup. If a smart person outside your subfield can’t understand the plan, it’s not because they’re not clever; it’s because you’re hiding behind fancy nouns.

Plain English wins here because KTPs are applied. If the project can’t be explained simply, it probably can’t be executed cleanly either.

6) Put governance on rails

Collaborations fail in predictable ways: decisions don’t get made, meetings happen but nothing moves, the business changes direction, the academic calendar eats everyone alive.

So design a simple governance rhythm: how often you meet, who signs off milestones, how you handle scope changes, and how you report progress. You’re not being bureaucratic; you’re being realistic.

7) Show what happens after the funding ends

The best KTPs don’t end with a final report. They end with a company that can keep doing the work without you.

Explain how the business will maintain the new capability, what follow-on investment looks like, and what success means one year after project completion. That future-proofing makes you look serious.

Application Timeline (Working Backwards from 1 April 2026)

If your plan is to begin in March 2026 and “just write it up,” you’re setting yourself up for a stressful spring and a mediocre submission. A KTP application is part proposal, part relationship test, and part project plan.

Here’s a timeline that won’t ruin your life:

12–16 weeks before the deadline (December to early January): Lock the partnership fundamentals. Agree on the core problem, the intended outcomes, and the rough shape of the work. This is also when you confirm the business meets eligibility (UK registered, 2+ FTE) and is willing to contribute to costs.

8–12 weeks before (January to early February): Draft the project narrative and build the logic: problem → knowledge gap → work plan → outputs → business impact. Collect evidence you’ll need (baseline metrics, context, prior work, early feasibility notes). Identify who is writing which sections, because “we’ll all contribute” is how documents become un-editable monsters.

4–8 weeks before (February): Iterate. Get a critical reader who isn’t emotionally attached to the draft—someone who will say “this makes no sense” and mean it as a favour. Align budget assumptions with the business contribution and any internal institutional checks.

Final 2–4 weeks (March): Polish and package. Finalise attachments, confirm sign-offs, and build submission time for technical hiccups. Aim to submit at least 48 hours early, because systems have an uncanny sense of humour right before deadlines.

Required Materials (What You’ll Likely Need to Prepare)

The official page points you to the Innovation Funding Service for full details, so treat the list below as the practical starter kit rather than a perfect checklist.

You should expect to assemble:

• A project description/narrative explaining the business challenge, what knowledge will be transferred, what activities you’ll run, and what outputs you’ll deliver. Write it like a plan you’d trust with your own money.
• Details of the partners (academic lead organisation plus the UK registered business), including why each is essential. If you can swap a partner without changing the project, the partnership isn’t convincing enough.
• A costed budget showing how funding will be used and how the business contribution is structured. Budget clarity signals competence.
• Milestones and a delivery timeline, ideally with a sequence that matches how real projects work: discovery → build → test → implement → embed.
• Evidence of capability from the academic side (relevant track record) and evidence the business can implement (operational readiness, staff involvement, decision-making ability).

Before you write anything substantial, open the Innovation Funding Service guidance and build your document around their structure. Fighting the form is a waste of your life.

What Makes an Application Stand Out (How Reviewers Think)

A standout KTP application does three things exceptionally well.

First, it makes the business need feel real and urgent. Not theoretical, not “nice to have.” It shows why solving the problem matters now—competitive pressure, compliance changes, market demand, productivity goals, or a clear opportunity the company can’t currently seize.

Second, it proves the knowledge transfer is specific and credible. Reviewers want to see that the expertise isn’t just being “applied,” but actually embedded: new methods, new workflows, staff training, operational tools, decision frameworks, prototypes that can be maintained, and processes that survive after the project ends.

Third, it demonstrates delivery confidence. That doesn’t mean pretending there’s no risk. It means naming the big risks (technical, operational, commercial) and showing you have sensible mitigations. Ambition is good; unexamined ambition is expensive.

Common Mistakes to Avoid (And How to Fix Them)

Mistake 1: Calling it collaboration when it’s really outsourcing

If the business is basically saying, “You build it, we’ll watch,” that’s not a partnership. Fix it by defining what the business team will do, when they’ll do it, and what internal capability they’ll gain.

Mistake 2: A problem statement that could fit any company

“We want to innovate our digital strategy” could describe half the UK economy. Fix it by narrowing to a single, testable objective: a process to improve, a product capability to create, a measurable operational outcome.

Mistake 3: A work plan that’s just a list of activities

“Conduct literature review, develop prototype, evaluate results” is a school assignment, not a delivery plan. Fix it by linking each activity to a decision or output: what will you decide after the review, what will the prototype prove, what does evaluation change?

Mistake 4: Ignoring the awkward bit—business contribution

If the budget story is fuzzy, reviewers worry the project will collapse halfway. Fix it by making the contribution clear, agreed, and aligned with what the business wants out of the project.

Mistake 5: Writing for academics only

If your narrative reads like a journal introduction, you’ve lost the plot. Fix it by writing for a mixed audience: smart people who care about outcomes, not citations.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a business apply on its own?

Not as the lead, based on the eligibility summary provided. The lead must be a UK registered HE/FE institution, RTO, or Catapult, and you must collaborate with a UK registered business.

Does the business partner have to be UK registered?

Yes. The eligibility summary specifies a UK registered business.

What size business is allowed?

The business must have two or more full-time employees at minimum. Beyond that, the best fit is a company that can commit time, data, and decision-making—not just enthusiasm.

Is the £10 million awarded to one project?

No. It’s described as “a share of up to £10 million,” meaning multiple projects will be funded from the total pot.

Do we need to have worked together before?

It’s not stated as a requirement, but existing trust helps. If you’re new partners, you’ll want to show you’ve done enough joint planning to avoid the “we met last week” vibe.

What does business must contribute to the costs mean in practice?

It means the business will pay a portion of project costs (the exact structure and rules will be in the Innovation Funding Service guidance). Treat this as a core part of project design, not an afterthought.

What if our business partner has exactly two full-time employees?

That meets the minimum requirement, but be honest about capacity. A tiny team can still succeed if the project is tightly scoped and there’s clear commitment.

Where do we find the official application requirements?

The UKRI page directs you to the Innovation Funding Service for the full opportunity details and application process.

How to Apply (Practical Next Steps That Save You Time)

1. Confirm the partnership basics this week. Verify the lead organisation eligibility (UK registered HE/FE, RTO, or Catapult), confirm the business is UK registered with 2+ FTE, and get early agreement that the business will contribute to costs.

2. Write a one-page project brief before you touch the application form. Include: the business problem, the measurable outcome, the knowledge gap, the proposed approach, and what changes inside the company by the end. If you can’t get to one page, you’re not ready.

3. Open the Innovation Funding Service guidance and map your draft to it. Don’t write a beautiful narrative and then try to cram it into a system that wants different sections. Write to the structure you’ll submit.

4. Set internal deadlines that are earlier than 1 April 2026. Most good institutions have internal review and approvals. Give yourself room for that, plus time for the business to review and sign off.

5. Plan to submit at least 48 hours early. You want your last day to be for checking, not for praying.

Apply Now and Read the Full Official Details

Ready to apply? Visit the official opportunity page (which links you to the Innovation Funding Service for the full requirements and submission steps): https://www.ukri.org/opportunity/knowledge-transfer-partnership-ktp-2026-to-2027-round-one/