Targeted Call - Research Awards 2026

Targeted Call Research Awards 2026

We welcome proposals across the full breadth of IBD research, including both medical research and research focused on living with IBD.

Grants up to a maximum of £150,000 for up to three years are available to fund research into Crohn’s Disease, Ulcerative Colitis, or other types of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD).

The Charity will consider smaller or innovative projects, including feasibility and pilot studies, as well as mainstream research.

Highlight notice

In the 2026 grant call, we would like to spotlight priority areas identified by people living with Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis in the Top 10 Impacts of Crohn’s and Colitis report. We particularly encourage applications that build understanding of IBD, strengthen diagnosis and monitoring, improve care, or explore the impact of the conditions on people living with IBD.

The highlighted areas of focus are:

1. Fatigue and energy management 
2. Anxiety about toilets and accessing them 
3. Living with unpredictable symptoms and flares 
4. Living with physical symptoms 
5. Feeling embarrassed and self-conscious 
6. Dealing with poo 
7. Complex emotions (e.g. frustration, worry, grief) 
8. Always being alert to signs and symptoms 
9. Having to plan and strategise activities and events 
10. Sleep disruption

This highlight notice welcomes applications from a range of professionals working in IBD diagnosis, follow-up, rehabilitation, and care.

Whilst strong proposals outside the highlight notice remain eligible for funding, applications aligned with the highlight notice will be prioritised during assessment. 

Application Deadline

The deadline for outline applications is 12 noon, Thursday 9 April 2026. All applications must be submitted via our Flexigrant portal.

If you have any queries relating to submitting an application, please email us at research@crohnsandcolitis.org.uk.

For further information, please follow the links below:

• Amount of funding available
• Eligibility
• How to apply
• Timeline
• Assessment criteria
• Plain English summary review
• Research Grant Terms and Conditions
• Other grant round guidance and documents

Amount of funding available

Funding for any one project will not exceed £150,000 in total over a maximum period of three years. 

The Charity will consider smaller or innovative projects, including feasibility and pilot studies, as well as mainstream research.

Crohn’s & Colitis UK Research Awards can cover direct costs of the research.  This includes costs of materials, laboratory services, expenses and staff specifically employed in the research, including PhD stipends and fees. Any salary costs for the Principal Investigator, or other directly allocated salary costs, must be fully justified within the application. 

You can apply for funds to cover the cost of purchasing equipment (but not costs associated with maintenance of equipment) on the grant, but these must be specific to the project. We will not, for example, cover the costs of generic lab equipment such as fridges or freezers unless required specifically for the purposes of the project being applied for – this must be clearly justified in the grant application.  In addition, we will not consider grants where the item of equipment represents a significant portion of the grant costs. Budget requests must be fully justified in the full application.

You may include any consumables and laboratory materials directly attributable to the project including animal costs and access charges to shared equipment facilities (e.g. microscopes, flow cytometers, mass spectrometers).  You can also include costs for consultancy and statistician advice.

The Charity will not pay for:

• Estates costs
• Equipment maintenance or running costs.
• Staff recruitment costs
• Standard office equipment (e.g. laptops, printers etc.)
• Apprenticeship levy
• Organisational overheads (e.g. rent, heating, administrative support etc.) and other indirect costs

Please note that once awarded, whilst changes within the budget can be agreed in the light of the project’s development or national pay awards, costs additional to your original budget cannot be agreed without a further grant application through an active funding call.

In calculating staff costs, please ensure that you have allowed the appropriate amounts for any increments due and for any Employers' National Insurance or Pension Scheme costs.  You should include an estimate for pay awards in second or subsequent years and state the percentage increase you have assumed in the item description.  Pay awards cannot be added to the budget once the award has been made. 

At the outline application stage, we are only looking for summarised, top line costings.  If you are asked to submit a full application for Stage Two you will be expected to produce a full, detailed budget.  We anticipate there may be some changes to budget lines between Stages One and Two but would not expect to see the budget completely change without prior discussion with the charity.

 Eligibility

Applicants must be based at a UK-based university, research institute or NHS setting.  We cannot accept applications from commercial organisations at this time.

We are committed to strengthening research capacity among groups that are underrepresented in IBD research and particularly encourage lead, joint‑lead, and co‑applicants from these communities. We value diversity across disciplines; types of health professionals; lived experience; and characteristics such as race, disability, and other underrepresented identities.

We also welcome applications from Early Career Researchers (ECRs) and encourage ECRs to apply either as lead applicants, where appropriate, or as co-applicants as part of collaborative teams, supporting the development of future research leaders in IBD. For this scheme, ECRs include:

• doctoral students
• researchers without PhDs
• researchers with up to 10 years (FTE) relevant experience post completion of PhD.

Please note that whilst we would consider funding studies involving international collaboration, the Principal Investigator and Host Institution must be based in the UK.

How to apply

Applications to the 2026 grant round will be assessed via a two-stage process. Please note – this process has recently changed as we have now implemented the use of a grants management system, Flexigrant. 

Timeline

Assessment criteria

There are both scientific/clinical reviewers on the panel and lived experience reviewers.  They have different roles on the panel and will assess your outline application accordingly. 

We expect all applicants to have considered patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE) and equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in their proposed work. Any involvement should be proportionate to the type of study being proposed. For example we would expect a laboratory-based study to have less involvement overall than a clinical study that will be recruiting patients. We expect all studies, however, to have consulted people living with the condition.

Applications that fail to embed PPIE and EDI adequately in the proposed work will not be shortlisted and invited to submit a full application, irrespective of the strength of the rest of the application.

Details of the assessment criteria at Stage One (outline applications) can be found here. For Stage Two (full applications), you can find the assessment criteria here.

Plain English Summary Review

For those applicants who have been Shortlisted at Stage One and invited to submit a full application, we are delighted to offer the opportunity to have your plain English summary reviewed. Members of our community living with Crohn's and Colitis, will provide feedback on readability and ease of understanding, before you submit your Stage Two application. If you are interested in receiving feedback on your plain English summary, please get in touch with us at research@crohnsandcolitis.org.uk