SSI Research Software Maintenance Fund Round Two (2026): Historical Reference

The second round of the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) Research Software Maintenance Fund is closed. The official UKRI opportunity page records the Expressions of Interest deadline as 2026-02-25 at 16:00 UK time and labels the opportunity “Closed.” The SSI’s own Round 2 guidance also records the later full-proposal stage, which was available only to applicants invited after the Expression of Interest (EoI) review.

This entry is therefore a historical reference, not an active application listing. The closed deadline remains in the front matter because it is the real deadline for this cycle. historicalReference = true tells the site that the date belongs to an archive entry. The SSI programme page says proposals can be submitted when there is an active round, but the current official material does not announce a successor round. Do not treat this page as an invitation to submit now or as evidence of a future deadline.

Round 2 at a glance

The funding was designed for existing research software that already matters to researchers. It was not a general software-development award and was not intended to pay for a new tool whose main purpose was to enable a research project. The SSI describes the wider fund as supporting work that reduces technical debt, improves user experience, and builds a stronger community around software that is difficult to fund through ordinary research grants.

What the fund supported

Maintenance in this call meant practical work that leaves an existing research software project more reliable and more sustainable. The SSI’s examples covered technical changes such as refactoring, rearchitecting, scalability work, porting, testing, interoperability, and improvements to the user experience. A proposal could also include documentation, community activity, training tied to a specific software project, and governance work.

That scope is broader than fixing individual bugs, but it still requires a defined existing project and a credible maintenance need. Eligible work could include making installation easier, improving test coverage, updating an unsupported dependency chain, strengthening release procedures, documenting contributor workflows, or making it possible for more than one person to maintain the code. Community meetings, sprints, outreach, and contributor-process improvements were also listed as possible activities when they directly supported the software’s sustainability.

The fund could support staff such as developers, research software engineers, technical writers, community managers, project managers, and other contributors whose work directly served the software project. The SSI also listed operational costs such as cloud computing, storage, networking, and continuous-integration services, as well as work that connects related software projects or ecosystems. It was not intended to become a permanent source of support after the grant finished.

Round 2 offered awards of up to £150,000 for a maximum period of 12 months. The UKRI opportunity record gives the Round 2 total fund as £1.8 million. Separately, SSI programme material describes the broader Research Software Maintenance Fund as supported by a £4.8 million UKRI grant. Those figures refer to different levels: £1.8 million is the Round 2 opportunity total shown by UKRI, while £4.8 million describes the wider fund supported through SSI.

Who was eligible

The Project Lead had to be based at a UK research organisation eligible for UKRI funding. The SSI guidance listed UK higher education institutions, research council institutes, UKRI-approved independent research organisations, public sector research establishments, and NHS bodies with research capacity. The Project Lead did not have to be an academic or researcher; SSI suggested that a person with senior responsibility for the software could be a creator, project manager, product manager, or research software engineer, provided the application explained why that person was suitable.

Business, third-sector, government, and international organisations could participate as co-leads under the conditions in the SSI guidance, but they could not replace the eligible UK Project Lead. The guidance set funding and cost rules for those partners, so a team would have needed to check the relevant partner category and justify the associated costs in the proposal. An in-kind collaborator with no costs requested was to be listed as a Project Partner rather than a co-lead.

The software itself had to meet the call’s purpose. At the EoI stage, applicants had to show that the software supported research being carried out in the United Kingdom, was beyond the prototype or pilot stage, and had multiple stable or production releases available to end users. It also had to be used by people outside the maintainers’ organisation and beyond the immediate collaborators of the development team. Applicants needed mechanisms for users to raise issues, provide feedback, and add contributors.

Those requirements meant that a strong application needed evidence rather than only a claim that the project was important. Useful evidence could include external users, citations, downloads or installations, issue and pull-request activity from outside the home organisation, training attendance, dependent projects, or statements from research groups. The central question was whether the proposed maintenance would protect or improve software that already enabled research, rather than create a new product with no established user base.

How the application process worked

Round 2 used a two-stage process. Applicants first submitted an Expression of Interest. The EoI was expected to explain the software’s importance, the maintenance problem, the proposed direction, and how funding would benefit research. The SSI then used screening and Distributed Peer Review to decide which applicants would be invited to submit a full proposal. By submitting an EoI, the lead applicant agreed to review a small number of other EoIs as part of that process.

The application route was the SSI’s GoodGrants-powered submission platform. It was not the UKRI Funding Service and it was not the Joint Electronic Submissions system (Je-S). The official SSI instructions for the EoI route were:

1. Open the RSMF submission website linked from the SSI Round 2 guidance.
2. Register for an account if required.
3. Choose the proposal form named “RSMF Round 2: Expression of Interest” and select “Start application.”
4. Complete the first “Start here” tab, including the application name, then use “Save + next.”
5. Complete all mandatory tabs and return to any missing responses highlighted by the platform.
6. Submit the completed EoI and wait for the email confirming receipt.

The EoI could be updated before the deadline, but each Project Lead could submit only one EoI. Applicants invited onward were then given the full-proposal form and its precise submission deadline. The SSI’s outcome notice says that 229 EoIs were received and 61 applicants were invited to submit a full application; the remaining 168 were not invited to the next stage. Those numbers describe the completed Round 2 process and are not a current indication that applications are open.

Verified Round 2 timeline

The SSI’s published timeline records the following sequence:

The later full-proposal deadline was relevant only to the 61 EoI applicants invited to continue. It did not extend the EoI window for everyone else. The official SSI outcome notice identifies the 2026-05-20 full-proposal deadline and says the invitation applied to the selected applicants; the UKRI record separately confirms that Round 2 was closed.

What a strong historical application would have needed to show

The SSI organised the assessment around eligibility, vision and impact, feasibility and approach, and capability to deliver. Those headings provide a useful way to understand the completed call.

For eligibility, the application needed a clear account of the software’s research role, production maturity, external use, and ways for users or contributors to engage. For vision and impact, it needed to connect maintenance work to research outcomes: for example, fewer installation failures, safer releases, more accessible documentation, a stronger contributor base, or more dependable workflows for external researchers.

For feasibility, the work plan needed objectives, activities, outputs, and measures that fit together. A credible plan might have grouped dependency and release work, testing and portability, documentation, community support, and governance into a sequence with named owners. It should also have explained how progress would be measured and how the project would remain available after the award.

For capability, reviewers needed confidence that the team understood the codebase and could deliver the proposed work. This included relevant skills, a connection to the software, suitable development practices, and a way to incorporate external feedback. The SSI also asked applicants to consider accessibility, equity, diversity, inclusion, and the range of users and contributors who would benefit from the work.

Status and future checking

There is no active Round 2 application route to follow now. The UKRI record is closed, the EoI and full-proposal dates have passed, and the SSI programme material does not announce a new round. Anyone looking for a future opportunity should check the SSI Research Software Maintenance Fund programme page and its mailing-list updates for a new call. A future announcement may change the award limit, eligible organisations, application platform, assessment method, or deadline, so the Round 2 instructions on this page should not be reused without checking the new official guidance.

For the completed cycle, the authoritative references are the closed UKRI opportunity record and the SSI Round 2 guidance. Questions about a future round should be directed to SSI through the contact details on its programme page rather than through this archived listing.