MRC curiosity-driven research reopens with new approach – UKRI

MRC applicant-led funding opportunities will reopen on 7 April, with experimental medicine opportunities opening on 30 April.

A full list of MRC’s funding opportunities in 2026, including opening and closing dates where applicable, is listed under ‘Further information’.

Redesigning our approach

Professor Patrick Chinnery, MRC Executive Chair said:

We are grateful for our community’s patience with the pause in our funding and for helping us shape schemes for the future.

It was vital that we used this time to reform our funding process for curiosity driven discovery research to reflect today’s research community questions.

Our mission is to advance knowledge, improve lives and drive growth. The MRC is doing this by supporting the world’s best curiosity-driven research that advances our understanding of human disease mechanisms, and that enables precision prevention, early diagnosis and treatment of disease.

Curiosity without borders

Many human diseases share common biological mechanisms and require cross-disciplinary approaches to drive major advances in understanding.

To support this, MRC will make targeted investments enabling disciplines, technologies, methodologies and skills to combine when needed to address an important research question.

We are redesigning the way we manage our applicant-led grant funding to:

• support ambitious, impactful research that spans medical disciplines without any artificial boundaries, whether technical or clinical
• enable quicker decisions for many applicants
• increase opportunities for researchers to participate in the panel assessment stage

A new College of Experts

To strengthen decision-making and enable cross-disciplinary research, we will bring together our existing applicant-led research funding boards into a single College of Experts.

This new structure will retain the full breadth of MRC’s remit, across biomedical and health sciences from molecules to cells, tissues and organs, physiological systems and human populations.

Funding panels will be flexibly drawn from the College of Experts and will be responsible for scrutinising all the applications we receive.

This will enable the researchers to shape our assessment process rather than the other way around.

Following assessment of written applications, shortlisted applicants will be invited to an in-person panel interview, giving them the best possible opportunity to make their case.

We will also ensure that early career researchers are particularly supported.

In line with the rest of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), applicant-led funding opportunities will remain open all year.

Improving investment decisions

Recommendations from the applicant-led funding panels and the experimental medicine panel will be considered collectively by the panel chairs and MRC executive directors.

This will ensure that we support the very best high-risk high-reward curiosity-driven research likely to deliver the greatest impact aligned with MRC’s strategy.

Funding decisions will be made by MRC twice a year in June and December.

We will monitor the impact of this new approach to ensure it delivers our ambitions and does not have unintended consequences.

Beyond curiosity

Our first application shortlisting in 2026 will take place in July, with decisions planned for December.

Professor Chinnery added:

I’m hugely excited to see the breadth of ideas this new approach will bring forward, from breakthrough discovery in pathology with the application of cutting‑edge technologies to experimental medicine and large‑scale interventional population studies in humans.

I would like to thank our Board Members and Board Chairs for their continued support as we transition to our new College of Experts.

Together with our fellowships, strategic programmes, translational research funding, MRC Centres of Research Excellence and our institutes, this forms a vibrant, interconnected portfolio that amplifies curiosity‑driven science that will advance medicine and drive economic growth.