UKRI Energy Catalyst Round 11 (Mid Stage): Historical Funding Reference

This is a historical reference for Innovate UK’s Energy Catalyst Round 11 mid-stage competition. The official UKRI opportunity page and its linked Innovation Funding Service record now say “This competition is now closed.” The closing date was 25 March 2026 at 11:00am UK time. No Round 12 date or successor mid-stage competition is announced on the official pages checked for this update, so this entry must not be read as an invitation to apply.

At a glance

What Round 11 mid stage was designed to fund

The mid-stage strand was for industrial research, not a general-purpose business grant and not an open-ended operating subsidy. Proposals had to create or improve clean energy access in eligible ODA countries and use a technology or business model that was affordable, reliable and low carbon. The official brief required energy access and clean energy to be addressed together, with more than 50% of the project focused on energy access innovation as measured through costs and work packages.

The intended beneficiaries were low-income households, enterprises and social institutions in the eligible regions. A proposal needed to explain a clear social or economic benefit in one or more target countries. The brief allowed work supporting the development, testing or scale-up of innovative technologies or business models, including new access in unserved regions or cleaner, more reliable existing services.

Priority areas listed by the competition included next-generation solar, sustainable cooling, modern cooking services, energy efficiency, industrial decarbonisation, clean transport, smart energy systems, energy storage, clean hydrogen, critical minerals, inclusive energy, and zero-emissions generators. These were not a licence to submit an unrelated energy project: the central test remained clean energy access in an eligible ODA country. Proposals also had to address Official Development Assistance (ODA) compliance and Gender Equality, Disability and Social Inclusion (GEDSI).

The competition took a portfolio approach across technologies, markets, geographic regions, maturity levels and research categories. That did not remove the eligibility tests. A project that failed the clean-energy, energy-access, ODA or GEDSI requirements was not sent for assessment, even if its underlying technology was strong.

Funding and cost rules

The three Round 11 strands shared an allocation of up to £7 million. For this mid-stage strand, total eligible project costs had to be between £50,000 and £1.5 million. That figure describes the project cost ceiling, not an automatic award to every successful applicant. The organisation receiving the grant had to fund the balance between eligible costs and the grant awarded.

For commercial or economic work classified as industrial research, the official funding limits were up to 70% of eligible project costs for a micro or small organisation, up to 60% for a medium-sized organisation, and up to 50% for a large organisation. Research organisations conducting non-economic activity could share up to 30% of total eligible project costs. Within that share, the brief allowed up to 100% of eligible costs for an RTO, charity, not-for-profit organisation, NGO or research organisation, and up to 80% of full economic costs for a Je-S-registered academic institution. These rates depended on the organisation and activity; they were not a promise that every partner would receive the same percentage.

The successful technology leads were also due to be enrolled in the Energy Access Accelerator. The official brief described that support as minimal financial assistance, with public bodies able to award up to £315,000 to an enterprise in a three-year rolling financial period. This was additional programme support with its own declaration and eligibility checks, not a reason to treat the £1.5 million project-cost ceiling as an individual cash award.

Eligibility and consortium structure

Round 11 mid stage was open to collaborations. There had to be at least two legally separate organisations. The administrative lead had to be a UK-registered business of any size and had to claim grant funding through the competition. The consortium also had to include at least one grant-claiming micro, small or medium-sized enterprise, which could be the administrative lead or another eligible partner.

The technology lead was responsible for the technical scope, work packages and other technical work. It had to be a business of any size, could be based anywhere in the world, and had to claim grant funding. A UK-registered organisation could serve as both administrative and technology lead if it met both sets of conditions.

Other collaborating organisations could include businesses, academic institutions, charities, not-for-profits, NGOs and research and technology organisations. The project had to include at least one partner with a legal entity in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, the Indo-Pacific or Latin America; an in-country office could satisfy this requirement. The project also had to include testing or demonstration work in an eligible ODA country and meaningful, equitable collaboration between the UK organisation and organisations from an ODA recipient country or territory.

The official brief allowed non-funded partners and subcontractors. Subcontractors could be from anywhere, but their costs had to be justified and appropriate to the total project costs and they had to be selected through the applicant’s usual procurement process. One partner could not account for more than 70% of eligible costs. Organisations had to follow the competition’s sanctions, subsidy-control, financial viability, animal-welfare and other eligibility requirements.

What applicants had to explain

The IFS application was divided into project details, application questions and finances. The project-details section asked for the application team, project title, start date, duration, research category, project summary, public description and scope. The project summary, public description and scope each had a stated limit of up to 400 words, and the IFS guidance warned applicants not to place website addresses in their answers.

Questions 1 to 11 were eligibility or background questions rather than scored quality questions, but they still mattered. Applicants had to identify the full registered addresses of the UK administrative lead, partners and subcontractors; name the technology lead; identify the main target country; select the primary technology area; disclose animal testing; state the position on permits and licences; identify the in-country entity; describe international collaboration; address export licensing and trusted research; and provide the ODA case.

The ODA response had to explain the development need, expected effects on businesses, services and low-income households, benefits for ODA-country partners, affected stakeholder groups outside the consortium, and possible negative impacts. Applicants also had to complete the ODA template and upload it as a legible PDF no larger than 10MB.

The scored questions covered the need or challenge, approach and innovation, equitable partnerships, GEDSI, circularity, market awareness, team and resources, outcomes and route to market, wider impacts, project management, risks and added value. The application therefore needed more than a technical description. It had to connect the innovation to users, partners, costs, impacts, inclusion, risks, route to market and the effect of public funding.

The IFS guidance also specified supporting appendices for selected questions. Applicants could submit a short appendix for the approach and innovation response, a short team summary, a project plan or Gantt chart, and a risk register, each subject to the stated PDF size and page limits. These were competition requirements, not a generic request for a separate monitoring-and-evaluation plan or letters of support.

Official competition timeline

The official IFS record lists 5 January 2026 as the opening date and 25 March 2026 at 11:00am as the closing date. It records an online briefing event on 14 January 2026. Applicants were notified on 22 May 2026, the successful applicant briefing was listed for 26 May 2026, and projects could start from 1 August 2026. The record says projects had to end by 31 March 2030 and had to last between 6 and 24 months.

Those dates are now historical. The competition did not remain open after the closing time, and the IFS page explicitly labels it closed. A reader should not submit a new application through the old record, reuse its closing date as a future deadline, or assume that a later Energy Catalyst competition will use the same eligibility, amount, regions or questions.

How to use this page now

There is no current application step for Round 11 mid stage. The correct archival action is to read the official UKRI opportunity page and, where useful for historical comparison, the closed Innovation Funding Service competition record. Those pages are the authoritative references for the closed strand.

If Innovate UK announces a new Energy Catalyst round, applicants should begin with that new official competition record rather than copy this page. They should recheck the strand, total eligible costs, duration, regions, required in-country involvement, funding rates, application questions, appendices and start-date rules. The Energy Catalyst guidance page says competitions typically run once a year and directs readers to the Innovation Funding Service and Innovate UK competition alerts, but it does not announce a Round 12 deadline on the pages checked for this update.

For a future applicant, the useful lessons from this closed round are procedural: choose the correct strand; assemble the UK administrative lead, technology lead, grant-claiming SME and in-country partner; test the project against the clean-energy and energy-access threshold; prepare the ODA and GEDSI case; make costs and work packages agree; and complete every IFS section before resubmitting. Those lessons should guide preparation only after a new official call is published.

Historical-reference note

This entry remains useful because it preserves the verified terms of Round 11 mid stage: the funder, amount range, industrial-research category, eligible regions, collaboration structure, funding limits and closed-cycle dates. It is marked as a historical reference so the real deadline remains visible in the archive without making the page look like a live listing.

At the latest source check, the official Round 11 mid-stage page confirms closure and the checked official pages do not announce the next round. Keep the page archived until Innovate UK publishes a new official opportunity. Do not infer a future deadline, award range or eligibility rule from the Round 11 record.