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United Kingdom Research and Innovation is accepting applications for its Reimagining Circularity NetworkPlus Programme 2026. Interested applicants are encouraged to click here to learn more about this opportunity and apply for it.
Opportunity Details
The Reimagining Circularity: NetworkPlus Programme is a UK government-funded initiative designed to accelerate innovation and collaboration in the circular economy — an approach that minimizes waste and maximizes resource reuse.
Total Fund Available: £13 million
Maximum Award per Project: £4.32 million
Full Economic Cost (FEC): Up to £5.41 million
EPSRC Contribution: 80% of FEC
Duration: Up to 36 months
Must be based at a UK research organisation eligible for EPSRC funding.
Teams must include interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary approaches, ideally involving industrial partners.
The Reimagining Circularity opportunity application process takes part in two stages, the first stage consisting of two steps:
An Intent to Submit and a subsequent submission of an outline proposal.
Invited submission of a full proposal, if successful at the outline stage.
Stage one: Intent to Submit
You must submit a completed Intent to Submit (ItS) form by 11 December 2025 4:00pm UK time, to be considered for this opportunity.
Outline proposals from applicants who have not previously submitted an ItS will not be considered. ItS information will not be formally assessed and is only required by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for planning purposes. You are not required to have finalised the details of your application when the ItS form is completed and submitted to EPSRC. We recognise that information provided in the outline proposal, including the names of the project co-leads, may differ from the information provided in the ItS form.
The form will ask you to provide the following information:
name of project lead
name(s) project co-lead(s) at the time of ItS submission. This list can change prior to outline submission deadline
project lead email address
project lead UK academic host institution
your chosen challenge area
proposed project draft title
the Funding Service application reference number. You will need to begin an application on the Funding Service to get this number but will not be required to submit until the closing date
Stage one: outline submission
To apply
Select ‘Start application’ near the beginning of this Funding finder page.
Confirm you are the project lead.
Sign in or create a Funding Service account. To create an account, select your organisation, verify your email address, and set a password. If your organisation is not listed, email [email protected]
Please allow at least 10 working days for your organisation to be added to the Funding Service. We strongly suggest that if you are asking UKRI to add your organisation to the Funding Service to enable you to apply to this Opportunity, you also create an organisation Administration Account. This will be needed to allow the acceptance and management of any grant that might be offered to you.
Answer questions directly in the text boxes. You can save your answers and come back to complete them or work offline and return to copy and paste your answers. If we need you to upload a document, follow the upload instructions in the Funding Service. All questions and assessment criteria are listed in the How to apply section on this Funding finder page.
Allow enough time to check your application in ‘read-only’ view before sending to your research office.
Send the completed application to your research office for checking. They will return it to you if it needs editing.
Your research office will submit the completed and checked application to UKRI.
Where indicated, you can also demonstrate elements of your responses in visual form if relevant.
When including images, you must:
provide a descriptive caption or legend for each image immediately underneath it (this must be outside the image and counts towards your word limit).
insert each new image onto a new line.
use files smaller than 5MB and in JPEG, JPG, JPE, JFI, JIF, JFIF, PNG, GIF, BMP or WEBP format.
Images should only be used to convey important visual information that cannot easily be put into words. The following are not permitted, and your application may be rejected if you include:
sentences or paragraphs of text
tables
excessive quantities of images
A few words are permitted where the image would lack clarity without the contextual words, such as a diagram, where text labels are required for an axis or graph column.
For more guidance on the Funding Service, see:
Apply for United Kingdom Research and Innovation Reimagining Circularity NetworkPlus Programme
