New Zealand R&D Grants 2026: What MBIE Innovation Services Still Funds Now That Callaghan Innovation Is Being Disestablished

If you went looking for Callaghan Innovation’s funding pages recently, you’ll have noticed something: they don’t go where they used to. The old product URL now lands on a disestablishment notice. That’s not a broken link or a temporary outage. Callaghan Innovation is being wound up as part of the Government’s science, innovation and technology reforms announced in January 2025, and the organisation is scheduled to fully wrap up during 2026.

Here’s the part that matters for your runway: the R&D money did not disappear with the agency. The grants moved. They now sit with Innovation Services inside the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), and the official notice is blunt about continuity — the same teams, the same products, the same contact points, just delivered from within MBIE. Applications are still being accepted.

What did change is the shape of what’s on offer. The old headline figure of “up to NZD 5,000,000” belonged to the Project Grants regime, and that door is now closed to new applicants: active Project Grants, R&D Loans and Transition Support Payments are being transferred to MBIE for existing customers, not opened up for fresh applications. If you are approaching this cold in 2026, the realistic entry point is smaller, more structured, and considerably easier to qualify for.

At a Glance: New Zealand Business R&D Funding After Callaghan Innovation

What Moved Where: A Map You Can Actually Use

The reorganisation split Callaghan Innovation’s portfolio in two directions, and knowing which pile your service landed in saves you a week of chasing dead contacts.

Transferred to MBIE (funding and business-facing support):

• New to R&D Grant — first structured commercial R&D project, plus capability building
• R&D Career Grants — salary support for hiring a recent master’s or PhD graduate
• R&D Experience Grants — funding for student interns in your R&D team
• R&D Tax Incentive — the 15% credit on eligible R&D costs
• Startup and founder support — accelerators and growth programmes delivered by partners
• Project Grants, R&D Loans & Transition Support Payment — active grants only, transferring for existing customers

Transferring to the new Public Research Organisations (science capability and facilities):

• New Zealand Bioeconomy Science Institute takes the Biotechnologies group, the Bioresource Processing Alliance (BPA), and the New Zealand Food Innovation Network (NZFIN)
• New Zealand Institute for Advanced Technology (NZIAT) — a PRO focused on commercialising AI, quantum computing and synthetic biology — takes the NZ Product Accelerator (NZPA) and the HealthTech Activator (HTA)
• New Zealand Institute for Earth Science, formed by merging NIWA and GNS Science, takes the Measurement Standards Laboratory
• New Zealand Institute for Public Health and Forensic Science — no Callaghan Innovation functions are transferring here

A number of other products were retired outright during the wind-down. Callaghan Innovation’s own guidance is that the services still listed on its disestablishment page are the confirmed survivors, and no further retirements are expected. If the thing you used isn’t on that list, it’s gone.

The New to R&D Grant: The Realistic Front Door

This is the grant most New Zealand businesses reading this page should be looking at, because it is the one open right now with no closing date attached.

The mechanics are straightforward. Innovation Services co-funds 40% of eligible R&D and capability development costs, up to a maximum of $400,000, based on up to $1 million in total eligible project costs excluding GST. You fund the remaining 60%. Worked through: a $400,000 project attracts $160,000 in funding and you cover $240,000. The grant runs for up to 2 years.

The eligibility test is deliberately aimed at businesses that have never done this before. To qualify you need to be a company incorporated and registered in New Zealand, a registered limited partnership, or a Māori incorporation or trust administering Māori assets. Sole traders, charitable trusts, ordinary partnerships and joint ventures are out, as are businesses 50% or more owned or controlled by government bodies or tertiary education organisations.

Then come the two thresholds that define “new to R&D”:

• you must have spent less than $150,000 total on R&D in the past 3 years, and
• you must have received less than $5,000 in government R&D funding in the past 3 years.

You also need to be financially healthy enough to pay your 60% share alongside normal operating costs, and you must intend to keep doing R&D after the grant ends.

One feature catches applicants off guard: this grant is not purely a cost-share on lab work. You must pick at least two of six capability development areas — customer understanding, intellectual property, regulatory and compliance, Lean R&D, project management, and information management — and spend at least 5% of total project costs on building those skills. Training, workshops, internal assessments, expert support and partner-led learning all count. You’ll also sit an introductory session with the RDTI team so you understand whether the tax credit applies to you and are recording the right information from the start.

Read that requirement as a signal about intent. The grant is designed to graduate you into the R&D Tax Incentive, not to keep you on grant funding indefinitely.

Student and Graduate Funding: Two Firm Dates in Your 2026 Calendar

These two grants are the ones with real deadlines, and both fall in late August 2026.

R&D Experience Grant. Applications are open now and close at 9am, Monday 24 August 2026, or earlier if the allocated funding runs out. It funds a 10-week, full-time student internship on an R&D project: up to $11,960 plus GST for up to 400 hours, a minimum of 30 hours a week, with the student paid at least $29.90 per hour. The internship can start once your application is approved, must begin before 1 December of the current year, and must be completed by 31 March the following year. Students need an NZQA level 6–10 qualification, in progress or finished within the last 12 months, in science, technology, engineering, design or business.

R&D Career Grant. Applications open at 9am, Monday 31 August 2026. This one funds a 6-month full-time role for a recent master’s or PhD graduate, reimbursed monthly against actual salary: up to $30,000 plus GST for a master’s graduate (based on a $60,000 annual salary) and up to $35,000 plus GST for a PhD graduate (based on $70,000). Pay more than the benchmark and the cap still applies — a $120,000 salary still returns a maximum $30,000 for a master’s hire. Pay less and you get less: a $56,000 salary returns $28,000. The graduate must have finished studying less than 12 months ago and this must be their first full-time industry job in their field, with a short exemption for temporary jobs under three months and prior R&D Experience Grant internships.

For both grants your business needs at least one full-time R&D employee, an active R&D programme with a budget, evidence of R&D work in the past year and plans for more, and enough cash to keep operating for the next 6 to 12 months. You can apply for a new grant one month before your current one ends — if your agreement finishes on 31 March, you can apply from 1 March for a grant starting 1 April.

Note the ordering: the funding-runs-out clause on the Experience Grant means late August is a bad time to start writing. Treat 24 August 2026 as a backstop, not a target.

The R&D Tax Incentive: The Long Game

The RDTI is administered by Inland Revenue and gives a tax credit equal to 15% of eligible R&D expenditure. The entry threshold is spending at least $50,000 a year on eligible R&D, or using an approved research provider to do the R&D for you. The upper limit is $120 million per year of eligible expenditure, unless you get prior approval to exceed it for R&D that returns substantial net benefit to New Zealand. Most business structures and every sector can apply.

If you are running a project of any size, model the RDTI alongside grant funding rather than treating them as alternatives. The New to R&D Grant explicitly builds an RDTI orientation session into its capability requirement, which tells you how the two are meant to fit together.

What Reviewers Actually Look For

Three questions sit under every assessment, whatever the product.

Is this genuine R&D? Assessors look for technical uncertainty — a problem where the answer isn’t obvious and you need experimentation and iteration to get there. Buying a standard machine and running standard settings is procurement, not research. The New to R&D Grant provides a decision matrix specifically so you can test your activities against this before you write anything.

Is there a commercial path? You don’t need revenue on day one, but you need logic. Who buys this? What triggers the purchase? How does it reach them? “We’ll work out go-to-market later” reads as a project that quietly dies when the funding stops.

Can you deliver and can you pay your share? Co-funding at 60% is the part people underestimate. Reimbursement is claim-based and monthly on the student grants, which means you carry the cash before you get it back. Show recent financial statements, investor commitments, bank facilities, or a parent company letter — whatever makes your ability to pay invoices boring and obvious.

How to Apply

The process now starts with a conversation, not a form. Contact the Innovation Services team before applying. Their Navigators and Funding Engagement Specialists confirm whether your business is eligible and which product matches your stage. This is a genuine filter, not a courtesy call — it exists partly to stop businesses spending weeks writing an application for the wrong instrument.

Once you’re through that, applications are submitted through the Innovation Services online grants portal. If you already have portal access you can start immediately while a grant window is open. Expect to prepare:

• business details and recent financial statements showing you can carry your 60% share
• an R&D project plan describing the technical uncertainty and the work that resolves it
• a capability development plan naming your chosen areas and the activities in each
• a cost breakdown that ties each line to project activities, with the 5% capability minimum visible
• evidence of your co-funding source

The consistency rule applies throughout: every document should agree on scope, dates and costs. Contradictions between a budget and a project plan get noticed immediately and are not interpreted charitably.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Applying to Callaghan Innovation. The organisation is winding up and its funding pages redirect. Go to the MBIE product pages via business.govt.nz, or the RDTI site for the tax credit.

Assuming the old $5 million ceiling still applies to you. It doesn’t, unless you already hold a Project Grant. Size your plan around the $400,000 cap and the $1 million eligible-cost base.

Treating capability development as filler. It’s a hard requirement with a 5% floor and a minimum of two chosen areas. Budget it properly and pick areas that fix real gaps.

Tripping the “new to R&D” thresholds. Check your last three years of R&D spend and government R&D funding before you invest time. $150,000 and $5,000 are hard lines.

Leaving the student grants to the deadline. The R&D Experience Grant can close before 24 August 2026 if funding runs out, and you still have to recruit a suitable student and start before 1 December.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to do anything right now if I already have a grant? No. Callaghan Innovation’s guidance is that existing customers of the transferred services continue working with the same teams, and you’ll be contacted directly if something changes that affects you.

Can I still apply for funding while the disestablishment is happening? Yes. The official position is that any service still listed on the disestablishment page is operating and accepting applications or enquiries.

Are my contacts changing? Existing points of contact remain the same and are reachable through the usual channels; the delivery now happens from within MBIE.

What happened to the Project Grants and R&D Loans? Active grants for existing customers transfer to MBIE. They are not a route for new applicants.

Is the New to R&D Grant only for startups? No. It’s for businesses new to structured R&D, which is a spend test rather than an age test — an established firm that has never run a formal R&D programme can qualify.

Will more services be retired? Callaghan Innovation says no further retirements are expected beyond those already made, and that the listed products are the confirmed survivors.

Official Links

• Callaghan Innovation disestablishment updates (the transfer map): https://www.callaghaninnovation.govt.nz/about-us/disestablishment-updates/
• New to R&D Grant: https://www.business.govt.nz/tax-and-money/innovation-funding/new-to-r-and-d-grant
• R&D Experience Grant: https://www.business.govt.nz/tax-and-money/innovation-funding/r-and-d-experience-grant
• R&D Career Grant: https://www.business.govt.nz/tax-and-money/innovation-funding/r-and-d-career-grant
• R&D Tax Incentive: https://www.rdti.govt.nz/

Start with the Innovation Services eligibility conversation. It costs an hour and tells you which of these five doors is actually yours.