Innovate UK opens a £2m Eureka call for UK-Japan R&D partnerships

Innovate UK opens a £2m Eureka call for UK-Japan R&D partnerships

9 October 2026: Innovate UK has opened Eureka collaborative R&D: Globalstars Japan 2027, a grant competition with £2,000,000 in total for UK organisations that team up with a Japanese small or medium-sized enterprise. Applications close at 11:00 UK time on 20 January 2027.

Not yet independently verified. The UKRI page does not give project size, duration, funding rate or cost rules; those sit on the Innovation Funding Service, which we could not read. Innosuisse's page gives no deadline or funding amount. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

The competition opened at 09:00 UK time on 7 October 2026, and UKRI published its opportunity page on 9 October. Entries are for collaborations only. A consortium must include at least one UK registered business and a Japan registered SME as a minimum. It may also add other UK registered organisations and organisations from other participating Eureka countries.

UKRI's page points applicants to the Innovation Funding Service, competition 2586, for the rest: project size, length, funding rates, cost rules and assessment criteria are not on the opportunity page itself.

Switzerland has opened its side of the same call. Innosuisse, the Swiss innovation agency, posted on 7 October that Swiss companies and research institutes are invited to run R&D projects with Japanese start-ups and SMEs. Its page names Japan's NEDO as the Japanese funding body and lists Belgium, Canada, the United Kingdom, Austria, Estonia, France, Germany, Israel, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Singapore, South Korea, Spain and Turkey as participants alongside Switzerland.

Topics on the Swiss page are broad: artificial intelligence, quantum technology, robotics, semiconductors, energy and environment, biotechnology, medical devices and aerospace. Nuclear power technologies, pharmaceutical development and regenerative medicine product development are excluded. Large companies, universities and research institutions can join as subcontractors or joint research partners in projects led by Japanese start-ups. Innosuisse lists a partner-search service on b2match for finding Japanese partners.

Our startup funding programme category lists 71 schemes and programmes for founders elsewhere.

Innosuisse gives its deadline and funding terms in a guidelines PDF dated 5 October, not on the page.

Sources

• UKRI: Eureka collaborative R&D Globalstars Japan 2027, 9 October 2026
• Innosuisse: Eureka Globalstars call with Japan, 7 October 2026