What Are UKRI's Strategy and Funding Priorities?

Updated

UKRI's stated mission is to advance knowledge, improve lives and drive growth, and it says it invests more than £9 billion of public money into research and innovation every year. Its strategy is set out in a published five-year strategy, and its funding priorities span the full breadth of research and innovation — from the arts, humanities and social sciences through to biology, environmental sciences, physics and engineering. If you want to know what UKRI is trying to achieve and where its money goes, the two things to look at are the five-year strategy and the funding opportunities it advertises.

What UKRI says it is for

UKRI describes itself as the website for UKRI: its seven research councils, Research England and Innovate UK. Its purpose, in its own words, is to:

  • Advance knowledge — support research across disciplines.
  • Improve people's lives — connect research to real-world outcomes.
  • Drive growth in the UK — support innovation and economic benefit.

These three aims are the frame for everything else on the site, including how it describes individual projects and funding calls.

The scale of the funding

UKRI states that every year it invests more than £9 billion of public money into research and innovation. That figure is the headline number for understanding its role: it is a major public funder, not a small grant scheme, and its remit covers both curiosity-driven research and innovation-focused work.

Where the direction comes from: the five-year strategy

UKRI points visitors to its five-year strategy as the document that sets out its direction. The strategy is the reference point for how UKRI frames its priorities over a multi-year period, rather than a single year's spending plan. If you need to understand or cite UKRI's priorities, the five-year strategy is the primary source to read.

The breadth of what it supports

UKRI's own description of its remit is deliberately wide. It says it supports everything from:

  • the arts, humanities and social sciences, through to
  • biology and environmental sciences, and
  • physics and engineering.

That spread matters if you are trying to work out whether your area fits. The practical implication is that UKRI is not limited to STEM: social sciences, arts and humanities are explicitly within scope.

The organisations that deliver it

UKRI is made up of seven research councils, Research England and Innovate UK. Each part has its own subject or mission focus, which is why funding calls on the site are often labelled with a council name. When you see a funding opportunity, the council or organisation attached to it tells you which part of UKRI is running it.

How to see current priorities in practice

Strategy documents describe direction; funding calls show what is actually being funded now. UKRI's site has a section for future research and innovation funding opportunities, and its news section regularly announces specific programmes — for example, a pinned article from 2 October 2026 describes an £80m challenge for faster, better dementia diagnosis. Items like this are useful evidence of where money is being directed at a given moment.

To follow priorities as they develop:

  1. Check the future funding opportunities section for upcoming calls.
  2. Read the news section for announced programmes and their funding amounts.
  3. Use the five-year strategy to interpret whether a given call fits the longer-term direction.

Keeping up to date

UKRI offers a subscription to UKRI emails, described as a way to keep up to date with funding, news and events, plus a weekly newsletter. If your goal is to track strategy and funding priorities over time rather than read a single page, subscribing is the low-effort way to do it. Note that the site presents this as a subscription for updates; the source material does not state terms such as cost, so check the sign-up page for the current conditions.

What this means if you are deciding whether to engage

  • If you want to understand UKRI's direction, start with the five-year strategy.
  • If you want to know what is being funded right now, use the funding opportunities and news sections.
  • If your field is arts, humanities or social sciences, UKRI's stated remit explicitly includes you.
  • If you need a single number for scale, UKRI's own figure is more than £9 billion of public money invested each year.