Medicines Manufacturing: Labs of the Future 2026: Up to £1.5 Million for UK SME Automation Projects

Medicines Manufacturing: Labs of the Future 2026: Up to £1.5 Million for UK SME Automation Projects

This is a historical reference for the 2026 Innovate UK competition Medicines Manufacturing: Labs of the Future. The official UKRI opportunity page now marks the competition as closed. The linked Innovation Funding Service record also says that it is closed, so organisations cannot submit a new application to this round. No next cycle is announced on the official opportunity pages reviewed for this update. This page keeps the real 2026 deadline and explains what the closed competition sought, who could have applied, and how the application was structured.

Key details

The date matters. The official UKRI summary and the Innovation Funding Service competition record both give 28 May 2026 at 11:00am UK time. The page is therefore not a live listing with a missed deadline; it is an archive entry for a completed competition. The official record also lists the opening date, the interview period, applicant notification, and the planned project start window, but none of those details reopen the competition.

What the competition was designed to support

Innovate UK offered a share of up to £7.5 million for the development and use of digital, automated, and robotic technologies that could improve the speed and efficiency of pharmaceutical process development and manufacturing. The stated aim was to contribute to a Lab of the Future for medicines development and manufacturing: an integrated, intelligent, data-driven environment in which automation, robotics, artificial intelligence, and connectivity work together.

This was an industrial innovation competition, not a general medicines discovery grant. The official scope excluded projects linked to medicines discovery and projects where the primary output would be a workflow for creating a new medicine. A suitable project needed to develop an enabling technology or solution for human medicines development or manufacturing. Examples of relevant areas listed in the competition record included artificial intelligence and machine learning, data collection and interoperability, connected laboratory systems, laboratory automation, robotics and co-bots, digital twins, process analytical technology, and systems that could support continuous laboratory operations.

The proposal also needed a measurable value case. Applicants were asked to describe expected improvements in productivity, cost, quality, speed, or another relevant metric. A credible project would therefore connect its technical work to a defined operational problem: for example, reducing manual handling, improving data integrity, increasing throughput, shortening a development cycle, supporting more consistent process decisions, or helping a manufacturing team move a validated process into wider use.

The competition expected the innovation to work with real infrastructure. The scope called for integration with existing digital, automation, and data systems where appropriate, attention to data standards and interoperability, and consideration of regulatory requirements from the start of the design. The main technology was expected to begin at Technology Readiness Level 4 or above and progress to TRL 6 or higher, with a demonstrator validated in representative conditions either during the project or beyond it. The proposal also had to include plans to upskill or reskill the workforce involved in adopting the innovation.

Who could apply

The lead organisation had to be a UK-registered grant-claiming micro, small, or medium-sized enterprise. A UK-registered SME could apply alone, or it could lead a collaboration. The lead SME could only lead one application, although an SME that was not leading an application could collaborate on multiple applications.

The collaboration rules were broad but specific. A partner could be a UK-registered business of any size, academic institution, charity, not-for-profit organisation, public sector organisation, research and technology organisation, or Catapult. Each partner had to be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead. Once invited, partners had to accept the invitation, sign in or create an IFS account, enter their own project costs, and complete their Project Impact questions.

For a funded collaboration to be eligible, the lead and at least one other organisation had to apply for funding, explain why the collaboration was needed, and describe how it would be structured. No single partner could account for more than 70% of total eligible costs. The competition also allowed non-funded partners, including organisations outside the UK, where their work was paid from their own resources. Subcontractors were allowed, but an overseas subcontractor required a detailed justification and evidence that suitable UK contractors had been considered; lower cost alone was not enough.

Every project had to request between £500,000 and £1.5 million in eligible grant funding, last for at least 9 months and no more than 24 months, start by 1 October 2026, and end by 30 September 2028. Funded organisations had to carry out project work in the UK and intend to exploit the project results from or in the UK. The grant did not cover all eligible costs automatically. For commercial or economic work, the permitted funding percentage depended on organisation size and whether the work was industrial research or experimental development, with the applicant responsible for funding the balance.

How the application worked

Applications were made through the Innovation Funding Service. The official instructions divided the application into four sections: Project details, Application questions, Finances, and Project Impact. The lead applicant was responsible for checking that the information was correct, that the proposal met the competition’s eligibility and scope rules, and that every section was marked complete. In a collaboration, every partner also needed to complete its assigned sections and accept the terms and conditions.

The Project details section was not scored. It asked for the application team, project title, start date, duration, research category, a short project summary, a public description, and an explanation of how the project fitted the competition scope. The summary and public description needed to be clear enough for the service to assign suitable assessors and, if funded, for the public description to be published without commercially sensitive material.

The application questions covered location, animal testing, permits and licences, international collaboration, export licences, trusted research and innovation, and skills and training. The competition required all questions to be answered, and it warned that including website addresses or links in answers would make the application ineligible. Applicants had to explain workforce development, including who would be trained, how much of the grant would support training, and how end users would be prepared to adopt the innovation.

The scored questions asked applicants to explain the business need and technological challenge, the approach and innovation, the team and resources, the target market, and the expected outcomes and route to market. A strong response needed more than a description of a tool. It had to show how end-user needs had been identified, how the proposed solution compared with existing options, how it would integrate with legacy systems, how regulatory and compliance issues would be managed, and how the technology would progress toward a realistic demonstrator. The application also needed to explain the freedom to operate, the people and facilities required, the market being targeted, adoption barriers, and the route from project outputs to commercial use.

Applicants could submit a supporting appendix for some questions. The official instructions limited the appendix to a legible PDF of no more than 10MB and up to two A4 pages. The appendix was supporting evidence, not a replacement for a complete answer in the application form. Applicants also had to read the general Innovation Funding Service guidance before starting and contact Innovate UK about accessibility adjustments early enough for support to be arranged.

An application could be reopened after submission up to the deadline, but it had to be resubmitted before the deadline to count. That detail was especially important for a collaborative application, because a draft or incomplete submission would not become eligible simply because it had once been submitted.

Assessment and competition timeline

The competition opened on 13 April 2026 and closed on 28 May 2026 at 11:00am UK time. The official schedule listed invitations to interview on 24 June 2026, interview panels from 13 July 2026 to 17 July 2026, applicant notification on 22 July 2026, and project starts from 1 October 2026. Those dates describe the completed 2026 round; they are not future application dates.

Because this was a competitive, capped fund, a proposal could score well and still not receive support if the available budget was insufficient. Applicants needed to make a case that was technically credible, commercially relevant, and deliverable within the proposed duration and budget. Assessors would have needed to see a clear problem in human medicines development or manufacturing, a solution that contributed to an integrated Lab of the Future, evidence that the team could deliver it, and a path to adoption after the funded work.

What a future applicant should take from the closed round

There is no announced next cycle to apply to through this page. Organisations considering a similar future call should not copy the 2026 deadline into a new plan or assume that the rules will remain unchanged. They can, however, use the closed guidance as a useful record of the kind of evidence Innovate UK requested.

Start by defining the manufacturing or process-development bottleneck in operational terms. State what happens today, where time or quality is lost, and which users experience the problem. Then describe the enabling technology and the evidence that supports its starting TRL. A proposal should say what will be demonstrated, in what representative setting, and how success will be measured.

Next, map the project to the practical constraints. Identify the existing systems that must connect to the innovation, the data standards or ontologies that matter, the permits and regulatory requirements that may affect the work, and the training needed by operators or scientists. A detailed team plan should make clear which organisation supplies the domain setting, which partner supplies technical capability, and who will carry the result toward market adoption.

Finally, make the finances and route to market fit the work. A request at this scale needs a reasoned work plan, realistic costs, and a credible explanation of who will use or buy the result. The 2026 competition was aimed at industrial research and experimental development, so the application needed to show progress toward a usable, validated technology rather than an unbounded research agenda.

Official links

• UKRI opportunity page
• Innovation Funding Service competition record

The 2026 competition is closed, and this page should be read as an archive entry. The official pages confirm the closed status, the 28 May 2026 deadline, the £7.5 million total fund, the £500,000 to £1.5 million project request, and the SME-led eligibility rules recorded above.