Submissions open for Future Flight Programme: Regional Demonstrator (UK)

Aims

• The aim of this competition is to accelerate the transition from trials of cutting edge innovations to real world commercial operations at a regional scale. This will unlock high value, socio-economic benefits for UK communities and meet the objectives of the Department for Transport (DfT) Future of Flight programme.

Specific Themes

• Your project must focus on one or more of the following:
  • use cases that deliver economic and social benefit
  • regional drone, eVTOL or zero emission CTOL services (living lab, business case, proof of concept or concept of operations)
  • local community integration and planning
  • development of stakeholder relationships for regional deployment of operations
  • distributed network of take-off and landing spaces, for example, vertiports, airports, airfields, emergency landing spaces
  • multi-modal transport system integration
  • airspace integration and management

Funding Information

• Up to £400,000 has been allocated to fund innovation projects in this competition. Funding will be in the form of a grant.
• Your project’s total eligible grant funding request must be between £50,000 and £200,000.

Ineligible Projects

• They are not funding projects that:
  • have no engagement with a local government authority, operator, end user or customer
  • are reliant on any regulatory approvals that are either not already granted or obtainable by a clear and supported route through the regulator within the project timeline
  • are repetitions of work already carried out within industry
  • do not have a specific geographical focus
  • focus solely on defence, space applications or High Altitude Platform Stations (HAPS)
• They cannot fund projects that are:
  • dependent on export performance, for example, giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of bread to another country
  • dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example, giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it uses 50% UK flour in their product

Eligibility Criteria

• Your Project:
  • Your project must:
    • last between five and six months
    • carry out all of its project work in the UK, unless specifically stated and pre-approved by Innovate UK
    • intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
    • start on 1 October 2025
    • end by 31 March 2026
• Lead organisation:
  • To lead a project your organisation must:
    • be a UK registered business of any size, academic institution, research and technology (RTO), charity or public sector organisation
    • collaborate with other UK registered organisations
    • involve at least one micro, small or medium sized enterprise (SME)
    • involve at least one local government authority
    • involve at least one operator, end user or customer

For more information, visit GOV.UK.