Women in Innovation Awards 2025 to 2026: Historical Reference for UK Women Founders

The Women in Innovation Awards 2025 to 2026 competition is closed. This page is a historical reference for the most recently published competition, operated by Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The official UKRI opportunity page and the linked Innovation Funding Service record do not announce a later application window, so this page should not be read as an open call.

The closed competition was aimed at women founders and co-founders who were leading UK-registered micro, small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) at the late-stage start-up phase. It focused on innovations in three high-growth sectors: advanced manufacturing, digital and technologies, and life sciences. Successful projects could request up to £75,000 in grant funding and would receive bespoke business support for 12 months. The programme also described a wider support package, including training, coaching, mentoring, investment connections, networking, press and media preparation, and role-modelling activity.

Status and key facts

The deadline in the front matter is deliberately stored as the short ISO date 2026-02-04. The competition has passed, and historicalReference = true identifies this as an archive entry. There is no current deadline to substitute and no evidence on the official programme pages of a new round that would justify marking this opportunity open.

What the award offered

Innovate UK described the competition as an offer of up to 60 Women in Innovation Awards, subject to receiving enough high-quality applications. Each successful project could receive up to £75,000 of grant funding and bespoke business support for 12 months. The grant request could not exceed £75,000, while total eligible project costs could be funded up to 100% subject to the applicable Minimal Financial Assistance rules.

The support was not limited to a payment. The official competition brief listed a minimum of 10 hours of training and development support, tailored coaching from an Innovation Growth Specialist from Innovate UK Business Growth, a press and media training day, bespoke investment support and connections, access to Innovate UK Business Connect networks, and mentoring. Award holders were expected to take part in at least one hour of mentoring and to complete at least four hours of role-modelling activity to inspire future women innovators. Applicants had to be willing to use the full award package, not request funding while declining the non-financial support.

The grant was intended for a defined 12-month project. A funded project had to start on 1 July 2026 and finish on 30 June 2027. Work had to be carried out in the UK, and the business had to intend to exploit the project results from or in the UK. Innovate UK stated that projects could not start before the Grant Offer Letter had been approved; delays during project setup could affect the start arrangements.

If a project had been funded, the grant would have been paid in three instalments: 50% of the grant request within a month of the project start date, a further 40% in arrears after approval of the relevant claim and evidence of spend, and the remaining 10% up to 30 days after Innovate UK received and approved the final claim. These payment terms applied to the published 2025 to 2026 competition and should not be assumed to apply to a future round.

Eligibility for the closed round

The competition accepted single applicants only. The lead applicant had to be a woman founder or co-founder within a UK-registered micro, small or medium-sized enterprise registered on Companies House, and had to be resident in the UK. Only one woman working within an organisation could apply, and an individual could make only one application for herself.

The business needed to be beyond the idea stage. Innovate UK’s definition of a late-stage start-up expected applicants to have built a basic version of the idea, product, service or solution, such as a prototype or minimum viable product. The business should also have received early interest from users or customers, or have made some money; know who the product was for and have started testing how the business would work; understand the realistic market opportunity; and have started forming a team beyond the original founders.

The innovation had to align with one of three growth sectors defined in the competition scope:

• Advanced manufacturing: priority areas included automotive, batteries, aerospace, space, advanced materials and agri-tech.
• Digital and technologies: the brief identified artificial intelligence, cyber security, quantum technologies, semiconductors, engineering biology and advanced connectivity.
• Life sciences: the named areas were biotechnology, medtech, pharmaceuticals, and health data and artificial intelligence.

The business also had to be developing a new or significantly improved product, service or business model addressing a specific market need. The proposed solution needed to be new to the market or a significant improvement over existing options in performance, efficiency, accessibility, cost or impact. The programme was seeking late-stage businesses with ambitions to grow a scalable company and raise considerable investment in the following 12 to 24 months.

Several exclusions were material. Innovate UK would not fund a project led by someone who was not a woman founder or co-founder within a UK-registered SME, a project outside the three named growth sectors, or work that did not meet the competition’s definition of innovation. Applications requesting more than £75,000, allocating more than 50% of costs to subcontractors, or declining the wider award package were out of scope. Projects with a negative environmental or social impact, a detrimental effect on equality, diversity and inclusion, or an inability to complete the required training and role-modelling commitments were also excluded.

The published rules also excluded applicants if the applicant or another person from the same business had previously received Innovate UK funding through Women in Innovation Awards, Young Innovators Next Steps follow-on funding, or Innovate UK Award: Build. The competition did not fund primary production in fishery and aquaculture or primary production in agriculture, and it applied Minimal Financial Assistance and subsidy-control restrictions. Subcontractors were permitted, but subcontracting costs could not exceed 50% of the grant funding amount; overseas subcontractors required a specific justification and evidence that suitable UK contractors had been considered.

How the application worked

The application process began with a suitability checker. Applicants had to complete that checker before starting an application. The Innovation Funding Service divided the application into four sections: project details, application questions, finances, and project impact. Every assigned section had to be complete, and applicants had to accept the terms and conditions before submitting. A submitted application could be reopened until the deadline, but it had to be resubmitted before 4 February 2026 at 11:00am UK time.

The project-details section asked for the project title, start date and duration, a project summary, a public description, and an explanation of how the proposal fitted the competition scope. The public description had to be suitable for publication and could not contain commercially sensitive information. The application instructed applicants not to include website addresses or other URLs in their answers.

The questions covered the applicant’s location, the Minimal Financial Assistance declaration, animal testing, permits and licences, international collaboration, export controls, trusted research and innovation, completion of the suitability checker, the relevant industrial strategy sector, founder status and the role-model commitment. Applicants then had to explain the problem, the intended benefits, the nature of the idea, how the idea addressed the problem, inclusive design, customer needs, market size, milestones, delivery, risks and the founder’s motivation and business vision.

The video-pitch question was required for eligibility. Applicants had to use Pitchtape through the application and answer three prompts: showcase the idea, outline business growth ambitions, and explain why the award was right for them. The maximum video length was three minutes, and the submission link had to work and be hosted through Pitchtape. Innovate UK said it would assess the content rather than production quality.

The finance section required project costs, organisation details and funding details. Applicants had to complete the Minimal Financial Assistance declaration and upload it as a legible PDF appendix. The declaration covered relevant Minimal Financial Assistance and de minimis awards, and applicants were told to retain related documentation for six years. The project impact section was not scored, but it still had to be completed before submission.

Timeline recorded by the official brief

The official record lists the competition opening on 26 November 2025, with briefing and support materials available from that date. It lists a live questions-and-answers session on 8 January 2026, the application deadline on 4 February 2026 at 11:00am, applicant notification on 29 April 2026 at 2:34pm, and the project start on 1 July 2026. The funded project period ended on 30 June 2027.

Those dates describe the closed competition only. Applicant notification and project dates are included here to preserve the historical record; they are not future application dates. The current UKRI opportunity page labels the competition Closed, and the linked Innovation Funding Service record says that the competition is now closed. No later programme deadline is presented on those official pages.

What to do now

This page is not an invitation to submit an application. Anyone researching the programme should first confirm whether Innovate UK publishes a new Women in Innovation opportunity and should use the new competition’s own eligibility rules, dates, funding limits, support commitments and application questions. The 2025 to 2026 rules should not be copied into a future application without checking the new official brief.

For historical research, the closed round is useful as a clear example of Innovate UK’s more focused approach to Women in Innovation: it targeted women founders and co-founders of UK SMEs at a late-stage start-up point, required early product and market evidence, concentrated on three high-growth sectors, and paired grant funding with structured development and role-modelling commitments. It also shows that a strong fit involved more than a promising idea. Applicants needed a defined market problem, evidence that the business had begun testing its model, a credible growth plan, a complete financial declaration, and a short founder video.

The official source remains the UKRI opportunity page linked in this record. It is the appropriate place to check whether Innovate UK publishes a successor competition, changes the programme’s scope, or provides any new application route. Until such a notice appears, this entry should remain an archive of the 2025 to 2026 competition rather than a live listing.