Quantum funding in 2026 is no longer a single story. The UK’s ten-year £2.5 billion quantum strategy still sets the long-term direction, but the near-term picture is now much clearer: more emphasis on mission-led adoption, commercialisation infrastructure, and real-world deployment. That direction was reinforced again on 17 March 2026, when the government announced a fresh quantum package worth up to £2 billion focused on scaling capability and deployment.
Key points at a glance
The UK’s five quantum missions make the policy direction easier to read than it was a year ago. Two of those missions are long-range, with 2035 goals around computing and networking. Three are closer-term, with 2030 goals tied to healthcare sensing, resilient navigation and mobile sensing for critical infrastructure. That matters because it shows where government wants adoption to happen first.
The funding pattern now broadly matches those missions. Innovate UK’s November 2025 quantum awards put more than £14 million into 14 projects, with a clear emphasis on sensing and quantum-enabled position, navigation and timing rather than a narrow computing-only story.
No. Quantum computing remains a core national priority, but the funding architecture is broader than that.
Mission 1 still targets accessible UK-based quantum computers capable of running 1 trillion operations by 2035, while Mission 2 targets a quantum network at scale by the same date. But Missions 3, 4 and 5 show equal policy intent around adoption in healthcare, aircraft navigation and critical infrastructure. In other words, quantum funding in 2026 is increasingly split between long-horizon computing capability and nearer-term deployment use cases.
That broader approach is also visible in government announcements. The April 2025 £121 million quantum package focused on applications including fraud prevention, healthcare and energy efficiency, while the March 2026 package moved further towards rollout at scale.
Quantum sensing is one of the strongest short-term funding themes. Mission 3 aims for every NHS Trust to benefit from quantum sensing-enabled solutions by 2030, while Mission 5 targets mobile, networked quantum sensors across transport, telecoms, energy and defence. That makes sensing one of the clearest lanes for businesses with application-led propositions.
PNT is another strong lane. Mission 4 is explicit that by 2030 quantum navigation systems, including clocks, should be deployed on aircraft. In practice, that frames PNT as an infrastructure resilience issue, not just a laboratory advance. Businesses working on GNSS resilience, precision timing and navigation applications are now much easier to map against a visible public priority.
Quantum networking is still strategically important, but it reads more as a scale-building and infrastructure play than an immediate mass-adoption market. Mission 2 is about nationwide connectivity, early commercialisation, standards leadership and international collaboration, which points to a slower but still very important funding lane.
A major shift in the funding landscape is that support is no longer just about single project awards. It is increasingly about translation environments.
In February 2024, UKRI and the National Quantum Computing Centre invested £30 million in quantum computing testbeds. In November 2025, the Harwell Quantum Cluster launched with the aim of creating more than 1,000 high-value jobs and bringing £1 billion of investment into the UK over the next decade. Alongside that, the Commercialising Quantum Technologies Challenge invested more than £174 million, backed by more than £390 million from industry, between 2018 and 2025. Together, those signals point to a more mature commercialisation model: not just grants for invention, but infrastructure for scaling, testing and attracting private capital.
As of 27 March 2026, these are some of the most relevant routes for quantum businesses:
For quantum businesses trying to turn technical progress into a workable funding strategy, FI Group by EPSA can help align grant opportunities, collaborative programmes and wider non-dilutive incentives with commercial milestones, evidence requirements and application timing.
The clearest near-term signals point to quantum sensing, quantum-enabled PNT and infrastructure-led applications, based on the UK missions and recent Innovate UK awards.
Yes. Quantum computing remains central to UK strategy, with Mission 1 targeting UK-based quantum computers capable of 1 trillion operations by 2035, supported by testbeds, NQCC activity and more recent government backing for rollout at scale.
Yes. One of the most visible current routes is the UK-Germany Collaborative Innovation for Quantum Technologies 2026 competition, which offers up to £3 million and closes on 15 April 2026.
Yes. UK researchers and businesses have wider access to Horizon Europe quantum calls, and the 2026 digital work programme includes several quantum-relevant topics.
Because they bridge the gap between research capability and commercial readiness. In practice, they help businesses compare approaches, refine applications and move closer to market adoption.
Quantum is no longer just a frontier science story. In 2026, it is a capital strategy story too. For UK quantum businesses, the real question is no longer whether funding exists, but how to combine public support, collaborative grants, commercialisation funding, investor capital and tax relief into a route to market that is credible, sequenced and financeable.
Quantum funding has moved into a different category of seriousness in the UK. The government’s National Quantum Strategy committed £2.5 billion over 2024 to 2034, with the aim of crowding in an additional £1 billion of private investment. In April 2025, government added a further £121 million for quantum programmes, while UKRI’s Spending Review allocations published in December 2025 set out £1.013 billion for quantum technologies over 2026 to 2030, including £588 million in the bucket specifically aimed at supporting innovative companies. That is not a niche research signal. It is a clear statement that quantum now sits inside the UK’s growth, industrial strategy and commercialisation agenda.
The 2026 funding landscape is not defined by one flagship grant. It is defined by a stack. From April 2026, UKRI began shifting the majority of its budget into three broad buckets, one of which is explicitly focused on supporting innovative companies to start and scale. For quantum businesses, that means the state is increasingly thinking less in terms of isolated research awards and more in terms of a pipeline that connects research, translation, infrastructure, adoption and scale-up.
The mission-led structure behind that pipeline is now well established. The UK’s five National Quantum Missions cover quantum computing, quantum networking, NHS-facing sensing, resilient navigation and timing, and mobile networked sensing for critical infrastructure. The point of these missions is not simply to fund scientific progress. It is to create commercially meaningful targets that draw in academia, industry and investors around specific deployment outcomes. In other words, the UK is trying to fund quantum against adoption milestones, not just technical curiosity.
Recent awards show where that logic is being applied. In November 2025, Innovate UK announced £14.8 million across 14 projects to accelerate quantum sensors and quantum-enabled positioning, navigation and timing technologies. The programme was designed to support Missions 3, 4 and 5, which tells you something important about where near-term public money is flowing. Right now, the strongest funding momentum is not only around the long-term promise of fault-tolerant computing. It is also around sensing, navigation, infrastructure resilience and public-service adoption.
For businesses looking at live UK opportunities, the most obvious dedicated route I could verify as open on 25 March 2026 is the UK-Germany Collaborative Innovation for Quantum Technologies 2026 competition. It offers up to £3 million in total, with UK organisations able to request £750,000 to £1 million per project, and it closes on 15 April 2026. The significance of that competition is wider than the amount on offer. It shows that in 2026 quantum support is being shaped not only by domestic grant schemes, but also by bilateral collaboration routes designed to speed commercialisation.
That dedicated competition sits alongside a broader translation and commercialisation layer that quantum companies should not ignore. UKRI’s Translation: Proof of Concept call is open until 13 May 2026, with a £9 million budget and awards of £100,000 to £250,000 for projects that move research towards venture creation, licensing or other commercial routes. UKRI’s own commercialisation guidance is explicit that proof-of-concept funding is there to build the technical and commercial readiness needed to attract later public or private sector investment. For university-linked quantum spin-outs in particular, that is a critical bridge.
Innovate UK’s Investor Partnerships model combines grant funding with aligned equity finance and investor expertise. The current programme says up to £130 million is available in 2025 to 2026 through Growth Catalyst, and the scope since spring 2025 has included Digital & Technologies. Quantum is not theoretical territory for this model either: Innovate UK’s past investor partnership programmes have already included quantum technologies. Across investor partnerships since 2017, Innovate UK reports £168 million in grants, £448 million in aligned equity investment and £1.36 billion in follow-on capital. The practical implication is clear: for some quantum SMEs, grant strategy and equity strategy should now be designed together rather than sequentially.
There is another layer that should be treated as part of the same stack rather than as an afterthought: R&D tax relief. HMRC’s reformed system now operates through the merged RDEC scheme and ERIS for eligible intensive SMEs, for accounting periods beginning on or after 1 April 2024. HMRC’s current guidance and manuals show that the new merged RDEC rate is 20% for non-ring-fence trades. For quantum businesses with long development timelines, uncertain commercial revenues and significant payroll and subcontracted R&D costs, that recurring non-dilutive support still matters. It may not fund a platform on its own, but it can materially improve cash planning between grant milestones and equity rounds.
The European dimension is becoming more important, not less. In April 2025, the UK government said UK researchers and businesses now have complete access to all Horizon Europe quantum funding calls. That matters in 2026 because the current Horizon Europe Digital calls include quantum-relevant topics such as Grand Challenge on Quantum Sensors for Inertial Navigation, Standards for Quantum Technologies, and Large-Scale Photonic Quantum Computing Platform Technologies, all with a 15 April 2026 deadline. On top of that, the EIC 2026 Work Programme makes more than €1.4 billion available across deep tech schemes, including €634 million for the EIC Accelerator and €300 million for STEP Scale Up. Meanwhile, the Commission’s Quantum Europe Strategy aims to make Europe a global quantum leader by 2030, and the planned EU Quantum Act is scheduled for adoption in 2026 to boost research, scale industrial capacity and strengthen supply chains.
That widening public framework is arriving at a moment when private capital is still selective. McKinsey’s 2025 Quantum Technology Monitor says global quantum start-up funding reached nearly $2 billion in 2024, up 50% from 2023, but it also found that public funding rose to 34% of the total and that two late-stage start-ups received half of all investment. That is an important signal for UK founders. Private money is present, but it is not evenly distributed, and governments are playing a larger de-risking role than they were even a year earlier.
It should look less like a scramble for the next competition and more like a staged capital plan. Early research teams may need proof-of-concept support to validate commercial direction and IP. Product-focused SMEs may need mission-led grants or contracts to prove adoption in sensing, navigation or infrastructure use cases. More mature businesses may need investor-linked grant routes and international collaborations to move from technical promise to scale. Throughout that journey, R&D tax relief can provide a repeatable layer of non-dilutive support that improves resilience between larger funding events.
The companies most likely to succeed will not necessarily be those chasing the biggest headline competition. They will be the ones that understand how to sequence public grant funding, collaborative programmes, adoption-focused contracts, tax relief and private capital against clear technical and commercial milestones. In quantum, as in other deep-tech markets, funding is no longer just about access to money. It is about building a credible path from frontier R&D to investable business.
At FI Group by EPSA, we support quantum and wider deep-tech businesses by building a funding stack that fits the realities of long development cycles, complex commercialisation pathways and investor scrutiny. We work across R&D tax relief, competitive grants, innovation loans and international programmes to help companies reduce dilution, improve capital efficiency and sequence funding against real technical and commercial milestones. With sector knowledge in deep tech and a cross-border model that combines global reach with local execution, we help ambitious teams move from technical promise to a more financeable growth story.
The UK government has put high growth companies back at the centre of its industrial strategy, with a Budget that combines a £7 billion boost for innovation funding with the largest overhaul of entrepreneur tax incentives in a generation.
For Chief Financial Officers and Heads of Tax in scaling businesses, this is not simply another political announcement. It reshapes the mix of equity, debt and non dilutive funding available in the UK, and it arrives at a time when R&D tax relief is under greater scrutiny and SME claims are falling.
The Chancellor’s new package is built around three core pillars.
The government is:
EMI has not been updated for around 15 years. Extending the lifetime of options and raising the employee cap is designed to let companies keep offering meaningful equity deeper into their growth journey, rather than hitting a hard stop as headcount passes traditional thresholds.
A £7 billion injection into UK Research & Innovation (UKRI)
A substantial new commitment to UKRI will channel long term funding into science and technology, with an explicit focus on pushing breakthroughs from lab to market and keeping promising firms in the UK rather than losing them overseas at Series B or C.
Two specific initiatives stand out:
Innovate UK Growth Catalyst: a new £130 million programme that combines grants with hands on support for cutting edge science and tech firms. A previous iteration of this model turned £156 million of grants into £1.55 billion of follow on investment, a tenfold multiplier.
British Business Bank capital: the British Business Bank will invest £5 billion into growing companies, with the explicit goal of crowding in private capital and helping firms through the “valley of death” between R&D and commercial scale.
Alongside this, the government has committed to cut the administrative cost of regulation by 25 percent across the Parliament, which it estimates will save businesses around £6 billion a year, and has appointed Alex Depledge MBE as Entrepreneurship Adviser until 2026 to lead policy work on barriers to scale up growth.
HMRC’s latest statistics show that total R&D tax relief support fell slightly to £7.6 billion in 2023 to 2024, with the number of claims down 26 percent year on year and SME claims down by around 31 percent.
At the same time, claims are becoming larger on average, reflecting a pivot towards more intensive, higher value R&D and a smaller universe of claimants able to navigate the tightened rules and additional information requirements. For CFOs, that means:
Into this environment, the “scale up surge” is effectively a counterweight. It strengthens the growth stage parts of the system (UKRI programmes, Innovate UK, the British Business Bank, equity incentives) precisely as the pure tax based support for smaller claims becomes more demanding.
From a finance leader’s perspective, the announcement cuts across several persistent pain points:
The strategic takeaway is that the UK funding environment is becoming more barbelled. There is tougher scrutiny at the small claim, lower value end, combined with more firepower at the high growth, strategically important end. Finance leaders need to decide which side of that barbell their business will occupy over the next three to five years.
FI Group has observed this shift first hand in its work with high growth clients across technology, life sciences, manufacturing and energy. Many CFOs are now asking a different set of questions:
FI Group’s consultants are seeing particular interest in integrated innovation funding strategies that map a three to five year plan to specific instruments, rather than treating each grant or R&D claim as a one off transaction. That includes stress testing scenarios where R&D tax relief continues to tighten, while Growth Catalyst and UKRI competitions become more central to the funding mix.
From a third party perspective, FI Group’s role is to help companies translate macro level policy into concrete funding decisions. The consultancy supports CFOs by identifying eligible projects, modelling cash flow impacts, coordinating bids across multiple programmes and ensuring that R&D tax claims and grant funded workstreams are aligned rather than operating in silos.
For finance leaders in scaling businesses, a structured response might look like this:
Map your growth projects to the new funding landscape
Review equity incentive strategy under the new EMI and EIS rules
Re benchmark your R&D tax position
Engage early with British Business Bank and specialist lenders
Build an internal “innovation finance” capability
FI Group is an international innovation funding consultancy that works with more than 15,000 clients worldwide, helping them secure R&D tax relief, national and European grants, and innovation loans each year. Drawing on this experience, FI Group helps UK scale ups to:
By treating the new “scale up surge” as one part of a wider funding ecosystem, FI Group enables CFOs and finance teams to convert policy announcements into extended runway, stronger balance sheets and faster routes to market, without undermining long term shareholder value.
