Astronomy Research Grants UK 2026: Small Awards for Observation and Theory Beyond the Solar System

Astronomy Observation and Theory Small Awards 2026: historical reference

The Astronomy Observation and Theory Small Awards 2026 was a Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) funding opportunity delivered through UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The official UKRI page now records the opportunity as closed. The application window opened on 16 December 2025 at 9:00am UK time and closed on 10 March 2026 at 4:00pm UK time. This entry keeps the real closing date in its metadata and is marked as a historical reference, so it records the 2026 round without suggesting that applications are still possible.

The official page does not announce a later observation-and-theory small-awards round. There is therefore no verified future deadline to add. Readers looking for a new opportunity should check the STFC and UKRI funding finders for a subsequent call rather than treating this archived 2026 page as an open application route.

What the 2026 call covered

The round supported one research project in astronomy observation or astronomy theory. The subject had to be relevant to astronomy and astrophysics beyond the solar system. STFC described a broad remit, so a suitable proposal did not have to be limited to telescope observations. It could address theory, modelling, simulation, related software development, observation, experiment, or new technology research.

The listed areas included:

• stellar physics, including star formation and extra-solar planetary systems; a study of the Sun could fit when it was part of a wider stellar-physics programme
• transient phenomena
• the interstellar medium and galactic astronomy
• extra-galactic astronomy and cosmology
• astrophysical aspects of particle astrophysics, including dark matter, the origin of cosmic rays, and gravity
• blue-skies technology or instrumentation development applicable to the astronomy remit, at technology readiness levels (TRL) 1 to 4
• laboratory astrophysics, including relevant software development

The boundary around the remit mattered. Technology work that planned to exceed TRL 4 during the award was considered out of scope. Telescope and instrument operations costs were not within the remit when they were not directly linked to specific science outcomes during the grant period. Solar physics and planetary science belonged to the related STFC solar and planetary small-awards opportunity, while space-mission work at TRL 5 or above could fall to the UK Space Agency. The official page also directed Mars exploration and sample-return queries to the UK Space Agency in the first instance. Solar-terrestrial physics whose primary goal was understanding Earth’s environment was identified as a Natural Environment Research Council responsibility.

Funding and project limits

The official call did not publish a single minimum or maximum cash award. Instead, it stated that STFC would fund 80% of the full economic cost (FEC). Applicants had to justify the resources required for the proposed project, and the small-award label was reinforced by limits on staff effort rather than by a headline pound range.

Every award had to be a single project, with a maximum duration of three years. Projects in this round had to start on 1 October 2027. The main resource rules were:

• no more than one full-time equivalent (FTE) of research and innovation associate (RIA) effort across the application; the page notes that RIA was the newer name for the role previously called a postdoctoral research assistant
• no more than 0.20 FTE of combined applicant time for one application, including applicants contributing at zero salary
• a project lead was expected to request at least 0.10 FTE for scientific contribution, project oversight, and management or supervision
• an applicant could request no more than 0.20 FTE in total across applications in the round
• researcher co-leads were permitted, but their time had to fit within the relevant applicant or RIA limits
• technician FTE had no stated general cap, but any technician contribution had to be project-specific and justified in the resources and costs section

The call allowed applicants to request and justify project-specific travel and subsistence, directly incurred costs, directly allocated other costs, and equipment. High-performance computing costs needed a clear explanation of why national facilities such as DiRAC were not suitable, if those facilities had been considered. The guidance also said there were no suggested guideline costs and warned that relying on an old formula for roles or travel could count against an application.

Studentships were not permitted on these small awards. A proposal could involve international collaborators or project partners, but their contribution, role, and any associated costs had to be described in the application. Existing support was not an automatic exclusion: applicants who already held other funding had to show that the programme proposed in the Small Award was distinct from that support.

Eligibility for the 2026 round

The opportunity was open to organisations with standard UKRI eligibility. A project lead had to satisfy the general UKRI eligibility criteria for both the research organisation and the individual, and had to be based at a UK research organisation eligible for UKRI funding. Applications could come from a single eligible research organisation or from a consortium of multiple research organisations.

Project co-lead eligibility was open to all UK applicants when the project lead was eligible. The round also introduced the UKRI Funding Service role terminology, including project lead, project co-lead (UK), researcher co-lead, research and innovation associate, technician, specialist, and other core-team roles.

The official page identified two exclusions for project leads in this round. A person could not apply as project lead if they were already the project lead of a currently funded small award and the new funding would overlap. A person who had applied as project lead in the 2025 small-awards round and whose application had been unsuccessful was also not eligible to apply as project lead in 2026. UKRI advised anyone uncertain about project-lead eligibility to contact the STFC Astronomy Awards team before preparing an application.

The call permitted up to two applications to the small-award round across the observation-and-theory and solar-and-planetary opportunities, but only one could be submitted as project lead, subject to the 2026 eligibility rules. That limit was separate from the FTE restrictions, which still applied to the resources requested in the application and across the round.

How applications were submitted

The 2026 round used the new UKRI Funding Service. It did not use the Joint Electronic Submissions (Je-S) system. The project lead was responsible for completing the application in the service, with team members and project partners expected to contribute. Only the lead research organisation could submit the completed application to UKRI.

The process described on the official page was:

1. Select Start application on the UKRI Funding Finder page and confirm that you are the project lead.
2. Sign in or create a Funding Service account. Account creation required selecting the organisation, verifying an email address, and setting a password. If the organisation was not listed, UKRI advised contacting the Funding Service helpdesk; the page warned that adding an organisation could take at least 10 working days.
3. Complete the questions directly in the Funding Service, saving answers to return to later or working offline before copying them into the service. Upload documents where the service requested them.
4. Review the application in read-only view before sending it to the research office.
5. Send the completed application to the research office for checking. The research office could return it for edits.
6. The research office submitted the checked application to UKRI. STFC had to receive it by 10 March 2026 at 4:00pm UK time; the official page stated that applications could not be submitted after that time.

The required application content was more specific than the old page suggested. The vision and approach response had to be supplied as a single PDF of no more than four sides of A4, single-spaced, in 11-point Arial or an equivalent sans-serif font, with margins of at least 2cm. Three pages were for vision and approach and one page was for appropriate references. The PDF had to be no larger than 8MB and had to use the unique Funding Service application number followed by “Vision and Approach” in its filename. Exceeding the page limit, using the wrong format, or failing to follow the attachment requirements could lead to rejection.

Applicants also had to complete the Funding Service questions for the plain-English summary, core team, applicant and team capability, ethics and responsible research and innovation, resources and cost justification, research classification, risk management, other funding support, project partners where relevant, data management and sharing, trusted research and innovation, and international collaboration where relevant. The research classification choices were astronomy observation and astronomy theory.

The resources and cost justification had a 1,000-word limit and was expected to explain the more costly resources, including project staff, significant fieldwork or collaboration travel, equipment costing more than £25,000, unusually large or exceptional consumables, facilities, infrastructure, and items costed as exceptions. The call did not ask for a line-by-line explanation of every ordinary resource, but it did expect the major costs to be connected to delivery of the work.

What a well-matched proposal needed to show

A strong application would have made the astronomical question and the non-solar-system relevance easy to identify. A project about exoplanet atmospheres, star formation, transient sources, galaxy evolution, cosmology, gravitational phenomena, laboratory astrophysics, or early-stage instrumentation could fit, provided the scientific case matched the stated remit. A proposal whose main outcome was Earth’s environment, a solar-system planetary study, or high-readiness mission technology needed to be redirected to the more appropriate funder or opportunity.

The three-year limit and staff caps required a bounded work plan. Applicants needed to connect the requested RIA, applicant, technician, computing, equipment, and travel effort to specific tasks and outputs. For a modelling project, that might mean defining the simulations, validation, data products, and software release that could realistically be completed during the award. For an observing project, it meant identifying the data and analysis needed for the science result rather than requesting open-ended operations support. For a technology project, it meant keeping development within TRL 1 to 4 and explaining how the prototype or method would support an astronomy outcome.

The application also needed a credible risk plan. UKRI’s questions asked applicants to consider access to expertise, data, instruments, facilities, training, recruitment, and loss of staff. A sensible response would have named the important risks, assessed their likelihood and impact, and supplied a practical fallback. This was particularly important for proposals dependent on observing time, external datasets, specialised computing, or recruitment of an RIA.

Contacts and archive use

The official opportunity page listed Chloe Woodcock, Senior Programme Manager, at chloe.woodcock@stfc.ukri.org, and Kim Burchell, Head of Astronomy Awards, at kim.burchell@stfc.ukri.org for questions about the specific call. Questions about costings and writing were directed first to the applicant’s research office. Technical questions about the Funding Service went to support@funding-service.ukri.org.

Those contacts and the application instructions describe the closed 2026 round. They should not be read as confirmation that a new round is open. For a future application, check the official UKRI opportunity page and the current STFC funding information for a new publication, opening date, closing date, eligibility rules, resource limits, and application questions.

Official source: UKRI — Astronomy observation and theory small awards 2026