Grant funding data for 2024/25
We publish a summary of our grant funding data every year to show how we spend our money.
We update this information every year. The most recent data is for the period from 1 October 2024 to 30 September 2025. You can find further details on our finances in our annual reports.
How many grant applications did we receive?
The number of grants we make and their value varies from year to year, depending on the scale and type of funding programmes we offer, when in the year we open and close funding rounds or when we renew funding for major initiatives.
- In 2024/25, we received 4,289 applications for grant funding, compared to 2,757 applications in in 2023/24.
- We made 711 awards worth a total of £1.3bn, compared to 615 awards worth £1.5bn in 2023/24.
- Awards include both those resulting from applications to our competitively assessed schemes, which make up the majority, and a smaller number we make based on internal assessment of priorities and opportunities or to support our major partnerships.
- Award totals for any one financial year are influenced by the timing of:
- funding scheme launches
- a small number of large awards.
We fund research across our four strategic programmes – Discovery Research, Climate and Health, Mental Health and Infectious Disease. We also award grants to fund other activities in support of our mission, including public engagement and influencing work.
Find out more about the research we fund and current opportunities.
Amount awarded by financial year (£mn)
Where do we fund?
Most of our grants last for several years. As of 30 September 2025, we have 2,723 active grants based at 1,443 organisations across 133 countries, with a total value of £7.3bn. Of this funding, by value:
- 56.4% supports work in the UK
- 28.3% supports work in other High Income Countries (HICs)
- 15.3% supports work in Lower and Middle Income Countries (LMICs)
Active grant portfolio by recipient organisation country
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Most of our active funding is administered by institutions in the UK, where we have directly funded 2,209 active grants held by researchers across 134 organisations. Some of this funding supports work by researchers in those institutions’ partner organisations beyond the UK.
| Administering organisation | Current Award Value (in millions of pounds GBP) |
| University of Oxford | 772,245,185.36 |
| Wellcome Sanger Institute | 629,403,600.45 |
| University College London | 440,269,813.42 |
| University of Cambridge | 346,433,073.18 |
| University of Edinburgh | 232,758,290.91 |
| King's College London | 200,183,348.25 |
| The Francis Crick Institute | 197,715,951.35 |
| Imperial College London | 146,167,987.97 |
| University of Manchester | 97,775,169.14 |
| Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine | 90,700,260.98 |
| University of Dundee | 90,266,430.97 |
| London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine | 89,142,244.53 |
| University of Bristol | 82,654,134.28 |
| EMBL - European Bioinformatics Institute | 81,986,584.26 |
| University of Glasgow | 79,357,123.71 |
| UK Biobank Ltd | 77,321,340 |
| University of Liverpool | 69,839,105.93 |
| Diamond Light Source Ltd | 61,162,561 |
| University of Sheffield | 59,516,322.38 |
| UKRI-MRC | 57,125,133.34 |
Pages 184-187 of our 2025 annual report set out all organisations administering grants totalling more than £10mn awarded in 2024/25 (figures in the annual report may not match figures on this page due to accounting reasons).
Who do we fund?
In 2024/25, 64.1% of grants were made to individuals and 35.9% were made to teams (excluding PhDs and funding given to make research open access).
27.8% of awards made in 2024/25 were to clinically active researchers or research teams where one or more of the grant holders is clinically active.
All the data below relates to the lead applicant or principal investigator for a grant, where the lead applicant provided the relevant data.
Awards in 2024/25
Of lead applicants on grants awarded in 2024/25:
- 52.4% were women
- 6.1% were disabled researchers
- 61.7% were White, 14.5% Asian or Asian British, 14% Black or Black British, 6.1% of Mixed ethnicities and 3.7% of Other ethnicities.
- In the UK, 68.5% of awards were to White, 12.7% to Asian or Asian British, 9.7% were to Black or Black British, 5.3% of Mixed ethnicities and 3.7% of Other ethnicities.
Awards by gender and financial year
Awards by ethnicity and financial year
Awards by disability status and financial year
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These figures are for lead applicants only, and do not include co-applicants nor staff supported by a grant. Where lead applicants have not provided data, have responded ‘prefer not to say’, or for gender have responded ‘non-binary’ or ‘prefer to self-describe’, they have been excluded from this analysis. Therefore, we report on 87.3% of lead applicants for ethnicity, 88.3% for gender and 85.5% for disability for 24/25. For the ethnicity question we use the UK Census categories and recognise the limitations of this both within the UK and in the global context of our funding.
Success rates in 2024/25 for our competitive grants
Most of our grants are awarded through open competitive schemes or calls. For these we report success rates which is the proportion of total eligible applications for our competitively assessed grants that were successful.
Success rates for 2024/25 were:
- 10.4% for men and 9.4% for women
- 9.9% for non-disabled and 10.5% for disabled lead applicants
- Globally, 12.7% for White lead applicants compared to 7.4% for lead applicants from other backgrounds (Black, Asian, Mixed and Other ethnicities)
- In the UK, 15.4% for White lead applicants compared to 12.2% for lead applicants from other backgrounds (Black, Asian, Mixed and Other ethnicities)
- 14.2% for UK-based applicants, 4.9% for applicants from other high-income countries and 5.1% for applicants from low- and middle-income countries
UK and international ethnicity success rates for 2023/24
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Award rates for competitive schemes remain lower for applicants of Black, Asian, Mixed and Other ethnicities than White applicants. We have seen ethnicity award rate gaps both within UK and international applications which we will continue to monitor closely. The overall award rate gap has also been influenced by applicant demographics, with higher proportions of international applicants and applicants of Black, Asian, Mixed, and Other ethnicities applying to funding calls which have on average lower award rates.
Wellcome is taking steps to support underrepresented researchers, for example by launching the Accelerator Awards for Black, Bangladeshi and Pakistani researchers in the UK.
Expert advisory panels
We have diversity targets for our external expert panels that assess funding applications.
Of Wellcome’s expert advisory panel members in 2024/25:
- 51.5% were women (target 50%)
- 31.2% were from racially minoritised backgrounds (target 25%)
- 31.8% were from outside the UK (target 50%)
- 59.4% were early-mid career researchers
- 4.1% were disabled (target 5%)
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