We are pleased to announce that the next round of Immersive Arts funding will go live in July and will be open for applications until the end of September 2025. Awards will be announced in January 2026, with funded projects starting in February 2026.

The funding call will follow a similar format to round one with three types of grants available to support artists at different stages of their immersive arts journey. 

• Explore £5,000 
• Experiment £20,000 
• Expand £50,000

Alongside this, we’ll be running events and activities around the UK throughout the summer to help people connect and get involved.

Have you made any changes to the programme?

Yes, we have made a few changes to the programme. After the overwhelming response to the first round, we took some time to incorporate all of the feedback that we received from those involved in the process.

• Timeline: We initially planned for this round to be live in Spring 2025. To support updates to the programme we have moved the timeline to Summer 2025. The call will open in July and close at the end of September 2025. We hope this longer window will give artists more time to develop ideas, ask questions, and build partnerships.
• Number of rounds: We initially planned to have three rounds of funding, but have changed this to two. Therefore this round will be our final open call. We encourage anyone interested to get ready to apply between July and September 2025.
• Double the number of awards in this round: We will be awarding approximately twice as many grants in each category compared to the first round. 
• Application form: There will be some small changes to the application questions and guidance to reflect feedback we had from applicants and/or reviewers about where things could be clearer. So if you are applying for a second time, please make sure you check things carefully. 

Why are we making these changes?
We have been bowled over by the interest in the programme, and recognise the evident need and demand in the sector. Awarding more funds in 2025 enables us to support more people now and ,hopefully, improve the success rate for applicants. The same amount of funding will be awarded to the same number of artists over the lifetime of the programme as we originally planned.

This approach will allow more time for our team to work with, and support those involved in the programme, rather than spreading the resources out and squeezing in a final round just before we are due to finish in January 2027.

We appreciate that this is a change what we initially shared, and that our new timeline might not be the best fit with your own planning. We know that it can be disruptive when things change and we apologise if this is the case for you.