Dupe Burgess, founding father of Bloomful, which gained funding within the Innovate UK Girls in Innovation Awards 2024 (Picture offered by Innovate UK)
Innovate UK has launched its Girls in Innovation Awards for 2025-26, providing as much as 60 awardees a grant of as much as £75,000.
HealthTech options to win funding by the 2024 awards included a tampon that forestalls bacterial infections, an AI-powered audio system for visually impaired individuals, and an app for gynaecological situations.
The awards are geared toward feminine founders of late-stage start-ups, with a minimal viable product, early consumer curiosity or income, a rising crew, and plans to boost important capital inside the subsequent 12 to 24 months.
Liz Kendall, science secretary, stated: “The Girls in Innovation Awards are unlocking the UK’s untapped potential inside our neighborhood of girls innovators; if women and men began and scaled companies on the similar price this could possibly be price as a lot as £250 billion for the UK financial system.
“This report £4.5 million funding will empower formidable ladies founders to scale their companies, drive financial progress, and encourage the subsequent era of innovators.”
Candidates should function inside superior manufacturing, digital and applied sciences, or life sciences, three of the excessive progress sectors recognized within the UK’s Industrial Technique.
In addition to a grant of as much as £75,000, winners will obtain a collection of coaching, networking and role-modelling alternatives. Bespoke enterprise help will even be provided to different extremely recommended candidates.
The competitors opened on 26 November 2025 and the deadline for submissions closes on 4 February 2026.
Since 2016, the Innovate UK Girls in Innovation Awards have invested greater than £11 million in 200 ladies innovators, with as much as 60 extra ladies to be awarded this 12 months.
Final 12 months’s awards triggered controversy when Innovate UK introduced funding for 50 ladies after which stated it will solely award 25 of the promised grants, price £75,000 every.
Innovate UK finally reversed its choice to slash 50% of grants, following a social media marketing campaign sparked by Emma Jarvis, founding father of FemTech startup Dearbump.
A bunch of greater than 400 campaigners fashioned the collaborative ‘Let’s Fund Extra Girls’ to oppose Innovate UK’s choice.
In response, Innovate UK confirmed that it will fund the complete 50 awards and £4 million funding, as initially dedicated, saying it was “a mistake and we prioritised wrongly”.
The difficulty adopted a viral LinkedIn put up by Anna-Sophie Hartvigsen, cofounder of Feminine Make investments, highlighting that simply 2% of enterprise capital funding goes to feminine founders.
These occupied with making use of for this 12 months’s Girls in Innovation Awards can study extra right here.
