Contracts for Innovation in Drug and Alcohol Addiction Healthcare (2026 Closed Cycle)

This page is a historical reference for the 2026 Contracts for Innovation competition in drug and alcohol addiction healthcare. The official UKRI opportunity page now marks the competition Closed. It does not announce a replacement round or a new deadline, so this page should not be read as an invitation to submit an application. The real closing date remains in the metadata for the archived cycle: 6 May 2026 at 11:00am UK time.

What the competition was

Innovate UK ran this procurement competition on behalf of the Office for Life Sciences (OLS) Addiction Healthcare Goals programme. The scheme offered a share of up to £20 million inclusive of VAT across two competitions. This page concerns the Contracts for Innovation strand, not the separate collaborative R&D grant strand presented alongside it in the Innovation Funding Service.

The purpose was to advance pharmaceutical, MedTech and digital health interventions that could improve treatment outcomes, support recovery, and reduce harm and deaths connected with illicit drug or alcohol addiction. The competition was designed for further development and testing of promising interventions, with an expectation that successful projects would move toward UK market readiness. It was procurement of R&D services, so the award was a contract rather than a conventional grant.

The official brief described a demanding end point. By the end of a project, the innovation was expected to reach Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 6 or 7, demonstrate user acceptability and market fit in relevant UK settings, and have a completed business plan with a clear path through intellectual property, regulatory and certification requirements. The competition was therefore aimed at organisations that could carry out a defined development programme, work with potential users and customers, and explain what would happen after the funded work.

Key facts from the closed cycle

The total scheme budget was not a promise that every applicant would receive funding. Innovate UK said allocations could change and that awards would depend on the number, quality and funding needs of applications. The brief expected up to eight contracts across pharmaceutical, MedTech and digital projects, subject to the portfolio decision. Adoption or implementation after the competition would require a separate, potentially competitive procurement exercise; the competition did not purchase a finished solution for deployment.

Who could lead a project

The lead applicant had to be an organisation of any size. The official eligibility summary included organisations based in the UK, the European Union, the European Economic Area or internationally. An applicant could work alone or use subcontracted specialist skills from business, research organisations, research and technology organisations, or the third sector.

The contract could be awarded to one legal entity only. This did not prevent specialist collaboration, but it made the lead organisation responsible for delivery, finances, milestones and the relationship with subcontractors. The majority of project work and the key deliverables had to be completed by the applicant and carried out in the UK. Subcontractors were intended for specialist skills rather than for shifting the central work away from the lead.

Applicants also had to select the correct strand. A project could be entered into only one of the two strands under the Addiction Healthcare Goals Catalysing Innovation Awards scheme. The same project could not be submitted to both the Contracts for Innovation competition and the CR&D industrial research competition. The brief said that an application submitted to the wrong strand would not be transferred for assessment.

The project itself had to start on 1 October 2026, end by 30 September 2028, and last no more than 24 months. Projects were required to start on the first day of the month, and no work could begin before Innovate UK approved the contract. If a proposal fell outside the stated cost or duration limits, the applicant had to seek advance approval by email before the closing point; without that approval, the application could be made ineligible.

What the work needed to address

The competition required a pharmaceutical, digital health or MedTech solution addressing illicit drug or alcohol use. The intended outcomes were better treatment, stronger recovery, and prevention of harm, overdose and deaths. The brief listed substances treated in typical services, including alcohol; illicit and prescription opioids; cocaine, crack, amphetamine and methamphetamine; cannabis; GHB; ketamine; benzodiazepines; and gabapentinoids.

The proposal had to show more than a general interest in addiction or a plan for awareness activity. It needed to explain how the intervention would improve healthcare outcomes for people with drug or alcohol addictions, how it would be tested, and how it could progress toward approval, assessment or certification where relevant. It also had to include a credible route to UK adoption and roll-out and a plan for commercialisation.

The scope excluded projects that primarily prevented the initiation of addictive substance use or intervened before addiction was established as a treatment need. Tobacco or nicotine addiction, gambling addiction and other behavioural addictions were also outside the stated primary focus. Projects with no clear commercial potential, no route to TRL 6 or 7 after the R&D cycle, or no plan for meaningful engagement with lived-experience groups and service providers were not suitable.

The brief recommended accounting for complex needs that can affect addiction healthcare, such as mental health, housing and criminal justice. It also expected applicants to engage statutory bodies where appropriate so that regulatory approvals, certification and assessments were part of a practical development path rather than an afterthought.

Funding and delivery requirements

The Contracts for Innovation strand expected at least 50% of the contract value to be attributed directly and exclusively to R&D services. Eligible R&D could include solution exploration, design, prototyping and field testing. Commercial production, supply intended to establish commercial viability, and routine integration, customisation or incremental improvement of an existing product did not count as R&D under the brief.

For digital health and MedTech tools, the expected contract size was up to £1 million inclusive of VAT per project. For pharmaceutical solutions, the expected amount was up to £1.5 million. The broader project cost and funding range was £200,000 to £1.5 million inclusive of VAT, although Innovate UK said it would consider a justified amount outside that range. The applicant had to account for relevant MHRA, NICE or other approval-body costs in eligible project costs.

Costs had to represent actual fair-market-value costs and could not include profit. Applicants had to choose their VAT status before entering eligible costs. The brief stated that payments would be made monthly in arrears against invoices and completed milestones, with no advance payments. This meant that cash-flow planning was part of delivery readiness. Milestones needed clear deliverables and success criteria, and the proposed milestone payments had to match the finance summary.

The project plan had to show how the innovation would reach TRL 6 or 7. It needed technical, commercial and environmental risks with mitigation, a management process, the resources required, a route toward future regulatory and certification requirements, and measurable success criteria. Projects were also expected to demonstrate user acceptability with people who had lived experience and to be co-developed with relevant treatment or service providers in the settings where testing would take place.

What an application contained

Applications were submitted through the Innovation Funding Service (IFS). The official process required the lead applicant to create or use an organisation account, collect the project information, and invite colleagues to contribute if needed. The application was divided into four sections: project details, application questions, finances and Project Impact. Every section had to be complete before submission, and the lead applicant was responsible for confirming that the proposal met the eligibility and scope rules.

The project-details section asked for the project title, start date and duration, a concise scope summary, a public description and the registered locations of the applicant and any proposed or confirmed subcontractors. The application questions covered the sector, animal testing, permits and licences, international collaboration, export controls, trusted research and innovation, proposed spend, the idea or technology, the technical approach, intellectual property, project plan, team expertise, costs, value for money and commercial potential.

The scored material required a practical explanation of the proposed intervention and its differentiation from existing approaches. Applicants had to describe the current state of development, technical challenges, safety and reliability, IP and freedom to operate, the milestones needed to reach the target TRL, and the way the work would meet end-user needs. The team section needed evidence of addiction-healthcare expertise and delivery capability, including the role of subcontractors and the time each organisation would commit.

The commercial section needed a UK market plan, customer and decision-maker understanding, delivery timescales, competitive advantage, market feedback and financial projections. The finances section required costs, organisation details, funding details, the payment schedule and the months in which milestones would be completed. Project Impact questions were not scored, but they had to be completed before submission.

The supporting material was specific. An applicant could attach a two-page PDF appendix of images or diagrams for the proposed idea or technology, a two-page PDF project plan or Gantt chart, and a two-page PDF spreadsheet-style appendix for costs. The commercial-potential question required an annexe with full financial projections. Each file had a 10MB limit and needed to remain legible at 100% zoom. The application guidance also warned applicants not to include URLs in their answers unless a video link had been explicitly requested, because doing so could make the application ineligible.

Before submitting, the lead applicant had to check that every section was marked complete, that the information was accurate, and that the proposal satisfied the eligibility and scope criteria. A submitted application could be reopened before the deadline, but it had to be resubmitted before the competition closed. That workflow is retained here as an archive of the closed cycle; it is not a set of live instructions for a new round.

Practical reading of the archived opportunity

The strongest proposals would have connected a defined clinical or service problem to a specific intervention, a credible R&D plan and an identifiable UK customer. A general-purpose digital platform would have needed a clear addiction-healthcare use case, evidence of how it would fit real service workflows, and an explanation of what would improve for patients or staff. A pharmaceutical or device proposal would have needed an equally clear development stage, field-testing plan, safety approach and regulatory route.

Lived-experience involvement was a delivery requirement, not decoration. Applicants had to explain how people with lived experience and treatment or service providers had shaped the innovation, how those groups would remain involved, and how the project would establish UK user acceptability and market fit. The brief also pointed to meaningful involvement practices such as payment, feedback and safeguarding when seeking public and patient involvement.

The procurement structure mattered as much as the topic. A lead organisation had to be ready to hold one contract, manage specialist subcontractors, meet milestones, invoice in arrears and carry out most of the work in the UK. Because adoption after the project would be a separate procurement decision, a proposal could not treat the award as an automatic route to NHS or public-sector purchasing. It needed a route-to-market plan and evidence that future customers, regulatory bodies and service settings had been considered.

Status and next steps for readers

The official UKRI page and the linked IFS brief both identify the competition as closed. The archived closing date is 6 May 2026 at 11:00am UK time. The brief also recorded the planned project start on 1 October 2026 and the end by 30 September 2028, but those dates describe the closed competition’s contract timetable, not an application window that is open now.

No new cycle is announced on the official opportunity page reviewed for this update. Do not substitute a guessed future deadline, and do not treat the archived date as a live opportunity. Organisations interested in a later Addiction Healthcare Goals competition should check Innovate UK and UKRI directly for a newly published brief with its own eligibility, funding, dates and application link. Until that happens, this entry is intentionally marked historicalReference = true and retained as a factual record of the 2026 call.