ESRC Connect Awards (pilot) 2026: Fund Early-Stage Collaborations in the Social Sciences

ESRC Connect Awards (pilot) 2026: Fund Early-Stage Collaborations in the Social Sciences

The ESRC Connect Awards pilot was a short-duration UKRI funding opportunity for researchers developing new collaborations and testing early-stage research directions. The 2026 round is now closed. The official UKRI page records the closing date as 10 June 2026 at 4:00 PM UK time, and says that applications could not be submitted after that time. No replacement round or later deadline is announced on the official opportunity page, so this entry is retained as a historical reference rather than presented as an application route that is still open.

The call was designed for ideas that were novel, exploratory, unconventional, or high risk. Its purpose was not to fund a mature multi-year research programme. Instead, Connect gave researchers a maximum of six months to bring people together, develop a shared research agenda, scope an emerging field, test a new area of inquiry, or run an initial pilot that could show whether a larger collaboration was worth pursuing. The primary focus had to be in the social sciences, while collaborations with researchers from other disciplines were encouraged where they could produce a genuinely new approach.

Key details

The funding range is the full economic cost of the proposed project. ESRC would fund 80% of that FEC. The opportunity page was updated on 11 May 2026, and UKRI previously updated the total fund from £1.5 million to £3 million on 30 April 2026. Those changes explain why older summaries of the pilot may show a different total envelope, but they do not create a new round or extend the deadline.

What the pilot was intended to support

Connect was aimed at the period before a research idea had become a settled programme. UKRI described the purpose as helping researchers “scope, seed and grow” emerging fields and new areas of inquiry. A strong project would therefore have made the uncertainty useful: it would have explained what the team did not yet know, why the uncertainty mattered, how the collaboration would investigate it, and what evidence would determine the next decision.

Eligible activities could include networking, seminars and workshops, focused events or conferences, knowledge exchange, scoping and initial pilot studies, and initial data collection. These activities were not a menu of routine events to assemble into a work plan. They needed to serve the central test of the proposal: whether a new collaboration, method, field, or research question had enough promise to justify future work.

The call expressly accepted that a viability test might show an idea was not viable. That is an important feature of the pilot. A proposal did not need to promise a guaranteed breakthrough, but it did need to define a credible test, identify the evidence that would count as progress, and explain how the team would learn from a negative result.

The call did not support duplication of collaborations or research that already existed. It also excluded follow-on work from a previous or existing collaborative project, including continuation, extension, or repackaging, unless a truly novel or exploratory idea had arisen. Incremental development, literature surveys, and work that belonged in another ESRC responsive-mode opportunity were also outside scope. A team with an established partnership could still be relevant only if the proposed work introduced a new exploratory direction rather than giving an existing project a different label.

Eligibility and partnership structure

The 2026 opportunity was open to researchers based in eligible UK organisations, including UK research organisations, UKRI institutes, NHS bodies, independent research organisations, public sector research establishments, and Catapult centres. Applicants at any career stage could apply subject to ESRC eligibility. UKRI specifically encouraged applications from diverse groups of researchers and from people who had not previously held ESRC grants.

Every application needed a project lead from a social science discipline within ESRC’s remit. The primary focus of the proposed activities also needed to be social science, even where the collaboration extended beyond that boundary. The official wording allowed collaborations between any number of researchers and in any format, so the call did not impose a single institutional or disciplinary model.

The role rules matter. International researchers could be included as project co-lead (international) because ESRC was the lead funder for this opportunity. Other international collaborators, and UK partners who were not based at approved eligible organisations, needed to be included as project partners. Business, third-sector, and government organisations could participate as project partners, but they could not be project co-leads under the special policy used for this call. A project partner could have an integral role and contribute cash, equipment, staff time, facilities, datasets, or other in-kind support.

Only the lead research organisation could submit the application to UKRI. The project lead was responsible for completing the application, but UKRI expected team members and project partners to contribute. The host organisation’s research office and finance team were also expected to check hosting arrangements and financial eligibility. These requirements mean that an informal cross-sector group could not submit independently without an eligible lead research organisation.

What a suitable project plan would have covered

A credible Connect plan would have tied each activity to a decision about the future of the research direction. For example, a team could have used an initial workshop to compare methods from two fields, a short pilot to test whether data could be obtained and interpreted, and a final synthesis session to decide whether the collaboration had a defensible basis for a later grant. The point was not simply to hold meetings. The point was to make the collaboration and the research question more testable.

The maximum award duration was six months, and successful projects had to finish by 31 March 2027. UKRI stated that a project lasting the full six months would therefore need to start on 1 October 2026. A sensible plan would have included early agreement on roles, access to any required data or facilities, a small number of measurable milestones, and a final account of what had been learned. Projects dependent on data access needed the relevant approvals in place early enough for the work to start on time.

The application also needed to explain how the partnership would be managed and how it could respond to future strategic research opportunities if the pilot demonstrated viability. That could include a plan for a later collaborative bid, a shared research agenda, a method for maintaining the partnership, or a clear statement that the evidence did not justify continuation. UKRI expected applicants to describe equality, diversity, and inclusion considerations in the aims, events, networking, formation, operation, and governance of the collaboration.

How applications were submitted

The application route was the new UKRI Funding Service. Organisations needed to be registered there, and the Joint Electronic Submissions system was not available for this opportunity. The process described by UKRI was:

1. Confirm that the applicant is the project lead.
2. Sign in to, or create, a Funding Service account and select the organisation.
3. Answer the required questions in the Funding Service text boxes. Applicants could save their work, return later, or prepare answers offline and paste them into the service. Where the service requested an upload, the applicant had to follow its upload instructions.
4. Check the completed application in read-only view before sending it to the research office.
5. Send it to the research office for institutional and financial checks, allowing time for edits.
6. The research office submits the checked application to UKRI.

The official deadline was absolute: ESRC had to receive the application by 10 June 2026 at 4:00 PM UK time, and UKRI stated that applicants would not be able to apply after that time. UKRI also warned applicants to follow their institution’s internal deadline. Once submitted, an application could not be changed, and a non-compliant application could be rejected.

The application questions were substantial. They covered a 250-word plain-English summary; a 500-word vision; a 1,500-word approach; a 1,650-word applicant and team capability section using the Résumé for Research and Innovation format; ethics and responsible research and innovation; resources and cost justification; facilities; and, where relevant, data management. The approach needed an indicative project plan, milestones and timelines, collaboration management, future sustainability, and access to the services or infrastructure required to deliver the work.

Applicants also needed to address research integrity and data responsibilities where relevant. If the work used data, the proposal needed to consider access, provenance, management, sharing, confidentiality, anonymisation, security, and ethical or legal constraints. UKRI’s data requirements applied to data generated, collected, or acquired through ESRC-funded research. A team that could not obtain a required dataset or approval within the six-month period would have needed to redesign its plan before submission.

Assessment and distributed peer review

This pilot used distributed peer review. Applicants agreed to review other applications submitted to the same opportunity, and UKRI said each applicant was expected to receive approximately six to eight applications to review. Reviewers had to read the assigned applications, rate them, and provide feedback under the DPR rules and guidelines. Failure to complete the reviews by the required deadline would lead to automatic rejection of the applicant’s own submission.

The review commitment was part of the eligibility and assessment arrangement, not an optional extra after an award. UKRI said applicants should be available to undertake reviews likely to take place in July, and applicants consented to the DPR process by applying. The review materials were allocated through separate reviewer pools, budgets, and an allocation algorithm so that scoring another application did not determine the reviewer’s own funding rank.

UKRI assessed the applications across vision, approach, applicant and team capability to deliver, ethics and responsible research and innovation, and resources and cost justification. Because reviewers could come from different disciplines, UKRI asked applicants to use clear language that non-experts could understand. The vision needed to show novelty, exploratory value, timeliness, EDI considerations, and alignment with the call. The approach needed to demonstrate feasibility, risk management, collaboration governance, milestones, future development, and access to relevant facilities. The capability section needed evidence of the team’s skills, experience, leadership, relationships, and contribution to the wider research community.

UKRI aimed to complete assessment within three months of receiving applications and said applicants would be notified of the outcome in September. The page also states that the final decision could use a tiered and portfolio approach. Successful projects would still have needed to meet the 31 March 2027 end date.

Historical-reference guidance

This page should not be used as evidence that applications are currently being accepted. The official UKRI page is still the authoritative record for the 2026 pilot, but it identifies the opportunity as Closed and does not announce a subsequent cycle. Readers looking for a future ESRC route should check the current UKRI Funding Finder and ESRC announcements rather than reuse the dates or application instructions above for a new submission.

The archived details remain useful for teams planning a similar proposal. They show the scale of the pilot, the six-month delivery constraint, the requirement for a social-science project lead, the permitted international role, the project-partner rules, the Funding Service workflow, and the additional responsibility created by distributed peer review. They also clarify the kind of evidence Connect was meant to produce: not a promise that an idea would succeed, but a disciplined basis for deciding whether a new research direction and collaboration should continue.

Official source: ESRC Connect Awards (pilot) – UKRI.