Kone Foundation Annual Grant Call 2026: Personal Working Grants of €2,700–€3,800 a Month and Project Budgets up to €500,000 for Bold Research and Art in Finland, Closing 15 September 2026

Kone Foundation Annual Grant Call 2026: Personal Working Grants of €2,700–€3,800 a Month and Project Budgets up to €500,000 for Bold Research and Art in Finland, Closing 15 September 2026

Kone Foundation is one of the largest private funders of the humanities, social sciences, environmental research and the arts in the Nordic countries. In 2025 it awarded grants, prizes and donations totalling more than €65 million. Almost all of that money is distributed through a single, short annual competition: a two-week window at the start of September when the online grant service opens and anyone with a genuine connection to Finland can ask for anything from six months of protected writing time to a four-year, half-million-euro team project.

The 2026 call runs from 1 September to 15 September 2026, with applications and attachments due at 4:00 p.m. Finnish time on 15 September. Decisions are announced in early December, and funded work starts the following year.

The unusual thing about Kone Foundation is not the money. It is what the money is for. The foundation explicitly funds work that is difficult to place — projects that fall between disciplines, between research and art, or outside what a university department or a national research council would naturally support. If your project keeps getting told it is “not quite a fit” elsewhere, this call is worth reading carefully.

Key Details

What the Grant Actually Pays For

There are two distinct things on offer, and many applications combine them.

The first is a personal working grant — a tax-treated stipend that buys you time. Kone Foundation sets three fixed levels rather than asking you to name a figure. Level 1 pays €2,700 a month and is aimed at doctoral researchers and early-career artists. Level 2 pays €3,200 a month for postdoctoral researchers and artists with roughly ten or more years behind them. Level 3 pays €3,800 a month for experienced researchers and artists with twenty or more years of professional work. You choose the level that matches your career stage; you do not negotiate the amount.

Crucially, you can apply for a fraction of a working grant — 25%, 50% or 75%. This matters more than it sounds. A part-time grant lets you keep a teaching post, a studio job or a clinical role while carving out real, defended time for the project. Reviewers do not penalise part-time requests; a credible half-time plan often reads better than an implausible full-time one.

The second thing is a project budget for costs beyond your own time: travel, materials, studio and workspace rent, research assistant salaries paid through a university, and other expenses. Note two specific rules. Research assistant salaries are handled as salaries through an institution, not as another person’s working grant, unless that person is a named member of your working group. University overhead is accepted but typically capped at around 15% of the expenses, and it is not applied to personal grants. Work fees and performance compensation go under “other expenses,” not under monthly grants.

For groups, the numbers get substantially bigger. Research groups can apply for up to four consecutive years, with budgets that in practice land in the €200,000–€500,000 range. Artistic organisations and groups can apply for up to three years and a maximum of €250,000. Individual artists can also request funding for up to three years, which is unusually long for artistic work and one of the strongest features of this call.

Who This Fits

Kone Foundation funds four overlapping things: academic research in the humanities, social sciences and environmental sciences; artistic research; professional artistic work in every art form; and multidisciplinary work that mixes these. Popularising research also counts.

The eligibility rule is about connection to Finland rather than citizenship. An individual, a working group, or a legal entity with a Finnish business ID can apply. Finnish citizens can do the work in Finland or abroad. Non-Finnish citizens are eligible if they are affiliated with a Finnish institution, are based in Finland, or if the work is carried out in Finland. A research or artistic group can include members from anywhere in the world provided at least one member is a Finnish citizen or based in Finland. In all cases the project needs a real connection to Finland — not a token one.

That last clause is where international applicants most often go wrong. “I will spend two weeks in Helsinki” is not a connection. A Finnish co-investigator, a Finnish archive or field site central to the work, a Finnish host institution that has actually agreed to host you, or a body of Finnish material you can read or have arranged to have read — those are connections.

The exclusions are equally specific and worth checking before you invest weeks in a proposal. Kone Foundation does not fund research in psychology, theology, law or business studies unless the project has a genuine interdisciplinary element. It does not fund medical research at all. It does not fund cultural hobby activity — genealogy, local heritage societies, amateur pursuits. It does not fund master’s-level study, internships, tuition or course fees, or building renovation. And it will not fund an application that is essentially a shopping list of equipment or a request to cover ordinary running costs.

How the Application Works

Everything goes through the online grant service, which only opens when the call is live in September. You cannot see the live form in advance, which is why it is worth reading the published instructions now and drafting your text offline.

The form has eleven sections. You identify the applicant (working group members are listed here), choose whether the project is Research, Art, or Research and Art, and give a working title plus a summary capped at 2,000 characters. You then set out the funding requested — the purpose, the duration, and who in the group receives a monthly grant. You must disclose other funding, granted or pending, for the same project. You select up to two expert fields to route your application to the right peer reviewers. You upload attachments and links, request recommendations, declare any proximity to Foundation personnel, and submit.

Attachments for an individual applicant are: a research or work proposal, a CV, a budget if you are requesting expenses, a portfolio for artistic work, a recommendation letter (mandatory for doctoral researchers), and a copy of your degree certificate. Working groups and legal entities submit the same plus organisational financial documents.

The length limits are tight and enforced: four pages for an individual’s research or work proposal, eight pages for a group’s proposal including the bibliography, and a maximum of four pages for the CV. Recommendation text is capped at 4,000 characters.

Two dates run past the main deadline. Recommendations submitted through the online service are due 22 September at 4:00 p.m. Finnish time — a week’s grace, but only for the referee’s action, not yours. And if you are awarded a degree after the application deadline, the certificate is due by 15 November.

Applications are accepted in Finnish, Swedish or English. The form itself is available in Finnish and English.

How It Is Judged

Kone Foundation uses peer review by specialists in research and art, and the reviewer pool rotates annually. This has two practical consequences.

First, your choice of up to two expert fields in the form is a real decision, not administrative box-ticking. It determines who reads you. A project that sits between environmental history and sound art will be received very differently by an environmental historian than by a sound artist, and a badly chosen field can send a genuinely strong application to readers with no way to assess its core contribution. Pick the two fields that together cover what is actually novel in the work.

Second, because reviewers rotate, there is no stable house style to imitate and no reliable folklore about “what Kone likes.” What survives across cohorts is clarity about what you will do, why it has not been done, and why you specifically can do it.

Write the 2,000-character summary last and treat it as the most important text in the application. It is the first thing a reviewer reads and often the only thing a panel re-reads. It should state the question or the artistic proposition, the method or the working approach, the material, and the outcome, in plain language a well-read specialist from an adjacent field can follow.

Preparing a Competitive Application

Start with the calendar. The call is only two weeks long and the decision comes in December, with work starting the following year. Grants are never awarded retroactively, so build a timeline that begins in 2027, not one that quietly assumes you started in October 2026.

Secure your referee early. A doctoral researcher without a recommendation letter has an incomplete application, and the referee needs the online service link plus enough lead time to write something substantive within 4,000 characters. Ask in August, not on 14 September.

Be honest in the “other funding” section. Kone Foundation asks directly about granted and pending funding for the same project, and Finnish funders talk to each other. Disclosing a pending application elsewhere does not disqualify you; concealing one is the kind of thing that ends a relationship with a funder permanently.

Build the budget from the work, not from the ceiling. The foundation explicitly advises applicants for larger projects to seek as sustainable a funding base as possible, because its own funding is always time-limited. A four-year group proposal that shows how the work continues, or concludes cleanly, after the grant ends reads as more serious than one that treats €500,000 as the whole world.

If you can get to Helsinki, the foundation runs a funding call information session in English on 27 August 2026 at Lauttasaari Manor. Sessions like this are where the unwritten expectations get stated out loud, and they are free.

Common Mistakes

Applying for less than six months as an individual. Individual working grants are mainly not awarded for periods shorter than six months. A four-month request is likely to be set aside on structural grounds regardless of quality.

Treating the connection to Finland as a formality. This is a Finnish foundation funding work with a Finnish stake. Name the institution, the archive, the collaborator, the site.

Submitting a project that is really medical, legal, psychological or business research with a humanities veneer. Reviewers in these fields know the difference. If the interdisciplinary element is real, make it structural — in the method, not in the framing paragraph.

Overshooting the page limits. Four pages for an individual proposal, eight for a group. Excess material is not a bonus; it signals that you could not decide what mattered.

Asking for a full-time grant you cannot actually take. If you hold a post you will not leave, apply at 50% and say so. It is a supported option, and it makes your plan credible.

Waiting for the form to open before writing. The service only opens on 1 September. Two weeks is not enough time to conceive, draft and revise a competitive proposal from scratch.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to be Finnish? No. You need a connection to Finland: Finnish citizenship, affiliation with a Finnish institution, being based in Finland, or carrying out the work in Finland. Groups qualify if at least one member meets one of these.

Can I apply in English? Yes. Applications are accepted in Finnish, Swedish or English, and the online form is available in Finnish and English.

Can I hold a job and a working grant? Yes, through the part-time options — 25%, 50% or 75% of the full grant. Be explicit about the arrangement in the application.

What if I am on a pension? Recipients of an artist’s pension can apply for a 50% grant. Those on a national or earnings-related pension may apply for a 100% grant.

Can I include a salaried research assistant? Yes, as a salary paid through a university, budgeted under expenses rather than as a personal monthly grant.

Is university overhead covered? Typically yes, at up to around 15% of expenses. It is not applied to personal grants.

When will I know? Funding decisions are announced in early December 2026.

Can I start the work this autumn? No. Grants are not awarded retroactively and funded work begins in the year following the decision.

Are there other Kone Foundation calls? Yes. The foundation also runs the Saari Residence for artists with its own application process, the Metsän puolella (“For the Woods”) forest-related grant initiative, thematic calls that change from year to year, and the Vuoden Tiedekynä academic writing award. These are separate from the September general call.

Official Links and Contact

• Information for grant applicants: https://koneensaatio.fi/en/grants/grantapplicants/
• Criteria for applying: https://koneensaatio.fi/en/grants/grantapplicants/criteria-for-applying/
• Guidelines for using the online grant service: https://koneensaatio.fi/en/grants/grantapplicants/instructions-for-using-the-online-grant-service/
• Frequently asked questions: https://koneensaatio.fi/en/grants/grantapplicants/frequently-asked-questions/
• Grants overview: https://koneensaatio.fi/en/grants/
• Email: [email protected]
• Telephone: +358 9 260 0617 (Monday and Wednesday, 11 a.m.–3 p.m. Finnish time)
• Address: Lauttasaari Manor, Otavantie 10, 00200 Helsinki, Finland

Next Steps

If your work sits in the humanities, social sciences, environmental sciences or the arts and has a real Finnish anchor, put 1–15 September 2026 in your calendar now and work backwards. Draft the four-page proposal and the 2,000-character summary in August. Ask your referee in the first week of August so the 22 September recommendation deadline is never in doubt. Decide your grant level and your percentage honestly. Then, on 1 September, the form becomes a transcription exercise rather than a writing crisis — which is the difference between an application that gets finished and one that gets abandoned on 14 September.

A note on scope: the 2026 thematic call, if one is announced alongside the general call, is not confirmed on the foundation’s published pages at the time of writing. The general September call described here is the reliable route. Check the official grants page in late August for any thematic addition, and consider attending the English-language information session on 27 August 2026.