Rethinking the future of research funding

On the face of it, rising numbers of applications is a nice problem to have but it matches wider, concerning trends in the funding landscape. We hear from researchers and institutions about the financial pressures and what feels like an increasingly fragile funding landscape. At the start of 2026 we convened a meeting of public funders and private foundations from across the UK & Europe to discuss the measures that could be taken to manage rising demand – all funders present, including Wellcome – reported an increase in applications of 50%-100% in the most recent funding period. 

There is no single driver behind this demand. It’s down to combination of factors ranging from: the financial pressures faced by research institutions; larger pools of potential applicants; broader funding remits; changes or disappearance of funding opportunities in the wider funding landscape. It is likely that the use of AI is making applying for grants easier and driving up numbers. While there is no definitive evidence for this, it is something that funders are actively monitoring.

Regardless of the causes, this rise in demand has significant consequences for the whole sector. Our capacity is not unlimited – a rise in applications places an unsustainable strain on our operations and the capacity of peer reviewers who help us to evaluate applications. Even more damagingly, this increased demand leads to lower success rates and longer processing times. This wastes applicants time, creates a vicious cycle of resubmissions, and ultimately threatens our ability to effectively deliver our mission of supporting science to solve urgent health challenges.

There is nothing gained from Wellcome making our grant systems more efficient if all we do is pass the burden on to institutions and research offices already feeling the pressure. 

We want to make sure that the effort invested by everyone in all stages of the funding process – applicants, administrators, peer reviewers – is proportionate to the likelihood of success and resources invested.

There are many different demand management strategies that funders may choose to apply. Ultimately, the most sustainable solution for all is to limit the number of applications. At Wellcome, we regularly review our funding policies and processes. During this period where we have seen applications rise dramatically, we have actively made changes to improve efficiency. However, like other funders, now is the time for us to address this burden by making more significant changes to our application process. 

Starting today, 14 July 2026, we are implementing changes to Wellcome’s funding application process.

Our career-based Discovery Research schemes – Early-Career Awards, Career Development Awards and Discovery Awards – will move to ‘always-open’ rolling deadlines. Applicants will be able to apply at any time. We will still assess applications at regular intervals throughout the year, but we hope that this change will encourage applicants to submit only when they are ready, removing the pressure of having to rush to submit their proposal before a deadline. We will also be making some changes to our resubmission rules, with full details available in our funding guidance.

While this may not directly reduce the number of applications we receive, we hope this will smooth workload during the year both for us and for institutions. 

For our themed one-off funding calls, we are introducing a cap on the number that progress to review based on the anticipated number of awards and desired award rates. These calls will still have published application deadlines, but if we receive a high number of applications above a pre-determined threshold, we may choose to apply a cap and use a random selection process to determine which applications to take forward. This process will be applied to any new funding call; those currently open for applications on our website will not be capped.

We will of course monitor the impact of these changes. We already place significant resource dedicated to our grant funding operations to support how we manage applications and our active awards. We believe implementing these measures will be the most effective method at managing demand, while maintaining a fair and equitable approach to research funding, ultimately better supporting research that will help improve health around the world.