ATI Programme Strategic Batch Expression of Interest (November 2025): Closed, No 2026 Batch Announced

ATI Programme Strategic Batch Expression of Interest (November 2025): Closed, No 2026 Batch Announced

This round is closed. The UKRI opportunity page for the ATI Programme strategic batch expression of interest November 2025 now shows “Opportunity status: Closed”. It opened on 3 November 2025 at 9:30am UK time and closed on 19 November 2025 at 11:00am UK time. The matching competition on the Innovation Funding Service (competition 2334) lists a slightly later closing point — 26 November 2025 at 11:00am — with applicants notified on 9 December 2025. Either way, submissions ended in November 2025 and the portal no longer accepts entries for this batch.

If you found this page while looking for a live ATI expression of interest to apply to, read the status note below before you spend any more time on it.

Current status

ATI Programme strategic batch expressions of interest are periodic competitions, not a continuously open application window. The official UKRI opportunity page for this November 2025 record is marked closed, and the linked Innovation Funding Service competition is also marked closed. No 2026 successor is announced in the official UKRI and IFS sources checked for this refresh. The November 2025 page does not provide a future opening date, so this record is an archive entry rather than a live application listing.

That is not the same as the programme ending. UKRI’s programme guidance, “ATI Programme Strategic Batches: what funding you can get and how to apply”, was last updated on 10 April 2026. The maintained guidance confirms that the programme framework remains documented, but it does not announce a new batch. Treat the material below as preparation for a future competition, not as an instruction to apply to the closed round.

Key Details at a Glance

What this round actually was

An easy misreading of the ATI strategic batches is to treat the expression of interest as a small grant competition. It is not. Phase 1 awards no money at all. Your proposal is reviewed by the Aerospace Technology Institute, and DBT decides — on the Institute’s recommendation — whether it progresses. Funding is awarded only in phase 2, the full stage application, which is invitation-only. UKRI states that the whole assessment process takes at least six months.

Applicants who succeeded at the November 2025 expression of interest were invited into the Batch 47 Research or Capital strands. At that point the proposal goes through independent assessment by Innovate UK, a value-for-money and policy review by DBT, and a strategic review by the Aerospace Technology Institute. Successful phase 1 applicants could defer their full stage application to the following batch by emailing [email protected] within 10 working days of their notification; anyone who skipped both of the next two batch competitions had to start again with a fresh expression of interest.

The ATI partners also monitor drift between the phase 1 and phase 2 submissions. Unjustified major changes to the consortium or the costs are not accepted, so the numbers and partner list you put in an expression of interest are a commitment, not a sketch.

What the funding rules are

These rates come from the November 2025 competition brief and are the best guide to what a future batch will look like, though every batch republishes its own terms.

Industrial research projects. The total grant request cannot exceed 60% of total eligible project costs, regardless of what individual partners claim. Within that 60%, each partner conducting commercial or economic activity can request up to 70% if it is a small or micro organisation, 60% if medium sized, and 50% if large. These caps apply even to organisations that normally act non-economically. The total grant funding limit for any individual organisation is £18 million.

Capital infrastructure projects. Each project can request up to £18 million, and total project grant funding must not exceed 50% of total eligible project costs. In a collaborative capital project, research organisations undertaking non-economic activity can claim up to 100% of their own costs, but the 50% project-level ceiling still holds.

Research organisations undertaking non-economic activity. Collectively they can share up to 30% of total eligible project costs — shared between them if there is more than one. Within that 30%, RTOs, charities, not-for-profits, public sector bodies and research organisations can be funded at up to 100% of eligible costs, while Je-S registered institutions such as universities get 80% of full economic costs, submitted through Je-S and entered on IFS as the 80% FEC figure only.

DBT applied the overall 60% project-level cap on industrial research to manage high demand against a constrained budget. The official competition brief describes the wider £975 million programme allocation and the separate project-level caps; it does not promise that every eligible proposal will be funded.

Who can lead, and what is out of scope

To lead a collaborative project or work alone, your organisation had to be a UK registered business of any size for a research project, or a UK registered business of any size, an academic institution, research organisation or RTO for a capital infrastructure project. You had to plan to carry out the work in the UK, address the requirements of the UK Aerospace Technology Strategy (Destination Zero), and sign up to the Aerospace Technology Institute framework agreement. Collaborators had to be UK registered businesses, academic institutions, charities, RTOs or similar. Applicants must not act to gain selective commercial or economic advantage from the project’s outputs.

Project duration is not fixed by a hard limit. The brief asks only that duration be “appropriate and in proportion to the planned objectives and prioritisation within the UK Aerospace Technology Strategy”. Projects must start on the first of a month, and cannot start before the Grant Offer Letter is approved by Innovate UK.

The programme explicitly does not fund projects that are focused solely on defence, space or other industrial sectors — dual-use technology is recognised only where the primary application is civil aerospace — nor projects for fundamental research, early-stage technologies or experimental development, nor anything classed as State aid under the Windsor Framework or a subsidy under the Subsidy Control Act 2022. That exclusion of experimental development is worth reading twice: this is an industrial research programme, and proposals pitched at either end of the maturity scale are ruled out on eligibility rather than merit.

Scope: the portfolio and thematic areas

Every proposal had to sit in one of four portfolio areas:

• Zero Carbon Emission Aircraft Technologies — propulsion and infrastructure enabling zero carbon tailpipe emissions, covering battery, hydrogen and fuel cell technologies, much of it still early in development.
• Ultra Efficient Aircraft Technologies — energy efficiency improvements affecting CO2, NOx and noise, including high value, sustainable, high productivity manufacturing technologies.
• Cross Cutting Enabling Technologies — capabilities for whole aircraft design and analysis extending across the aircraft lifecycle, from design through manufacture and assembly, operation and end of life.
• Non-CO2 Technologies — reducing the negative effects of non-CO2 emissions, spanning fuel characteristics and related research areas alongside the Destination Zero roadmaps.

Proposals also had to select a thematic area: Structures, Systems, Propulsion, Design and Validation, Whole Aircraft Integration, Manufacturing and Assembly, or Through Life Support. A project judged out of scope is ruled ineligible, with the reason given.

What the expression of interest asked for

The November 2025 IFS form had 16 questions. Questions 1 to 6 covered applicant location, animal testing, permits and licences, international collaboration, export licences, and Trusted Research and Innovation. Question 14 asked the team to list every organisation and show its ATI framework-agreement status. Questions 15 and 16 recorded whether the project was industrial research or capital infrastructure and whether it had internal approval. These items were identified as not scored where the brief says so.

The proposal content covered business opportunity, exploitation and dissemination, technical approach and management, innovation, skills and facilities, adding value, and finances. Every question had to be answered, with a maximum of 400 words per answer, and URLs were prohibited in answers. The Q13 finance question required the supplied financial template, including eligible costs by project quarter. Q9 required a work breakdown structure showing the cost of each work package. Q10 required a technology table explaining the innovation and the change in technology or manufacturing readiness between the start and end of the project. Those Q9 and Q10 appendices had to be PDFs no larger than 10MB, limited to one A4 page and legible at 100% zoom. Q7 allowed supporting charts under the same one-page, 10MB appendix limits.

That format rewards compression. Four hundred words is roughly a page, and the assessors read the appendix table as the evidence behind the innovation claim rather than as decoration.

How to prepare while there is no open round

1. Read the standing guidance. UKRI maintains ATI Programme Strategic Batches: what funding you can get and how to apply, published 12 March 2021 and last updated 10 April 2026. It is the current published account of eligibility, the two-phase structure and the application mechanics, but it does not announce a new round.
2. Watch the UKRI funding finder. New batches appear at ukri.org/opportunity. Filtering on Innovate UK, or searching “ATI”, will surface a batch as soon as one is published. UKRI also offers funding alerts by email.
3. Check the Innovation Funding Service. Competitions appear at apply-for-innovation-funding.service.gov.uk/competition/search, usually with a fuller brief than the UKRI summary page. Note that UKRI warns other government and third party sites may not show correct competition information — the brief on IFS is authoritative for dates.
4. Sign the framework agreement early. The ATI framework agreement is a precondition, and the expression of interest asks about your sign-up status. Getting it through legal review takes longer than most applicants expect.
5. Fix your consortium and costs before you write. Because major unjustified changes between phase 1 and phase 2 are not accepted, a placeholder partner or a rough budget in the expression of interest becomes a liability months later.
6. Build the required appendices now. The work breakdown structure with costed work packages and the technology comparison table with start and end readiness levels were required for Q9 and Q10 in this round. A concise chart appendix for Q7 was optional. These are useful preparation materials for a future batch, but they cannot be submitted to the closed competition.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I still apply to the November 2025 batch? No. The UKRI page shows Status: Closed. Nothing is accepted for this round.

Why do UKRI and the Innovation Funding Service show different closing dates? The UKRI opportunity page lists 19 November 2025 at 11:00am UK time; the IFS competition page for the same batch lists 26 November 2025 at 11:00am. The IFS brief says that its deadline is the authoritative competition deadline and warns that other government or third-party sites may not show the correct competition information. For this archive record, the metadata follows the date on the UKRI page because that is the verified external URL; anyone preparing for a future round should use that round’s own IFS brief.

When is the next batch? Not announced. The official sources checked for this refresh do not publish a successor date, so there is no current application deadline to use.

Has the ATI Programme been cancelled? There is no published statement to that effect, and the programme guidance was updated on 10 April 2026. What is absent is a scheduled next batch, not the programme.

Does the expression of interest come with money? No. Phase 1 carries no funding. Grants are awarded at the full stage, which is invitation-only.

Can non-UK organisations take part? Grant recipients must be UK registered and the work must be carried out in the UK, with results exploited in or from the UK. There are limited exceptions for non-funded partners.

Can defence or space projects apply? Not if that is the sole focus. Dual-use technology is accepted only where the primary application is civil aerospace.

For the closed opportunity record and the link through to the competition brief, see the UKRI page: https://www.ukri.org/opportunity/ati-programme-strategic-batch-expression-of-interest-november-2025/