Business Grants in the West Midlands
The West Midlands offers strong business support through the West Midlands Combined Authority, local councils, and the regional Growth Hub. The region's automotive, advanced manufacturing, and professional services sectors are particular strengths.
West Midlands Combined Authority
WMCA runs business support programmes across the seven metropolitan districts. Their schemes support business growth, innovation, skills development, and the transition to net zero.
Birmingham Business Support
Birmingham City Council and partners provide various grant schemes for city businesses. Enterprise zones and the city's university partnerships create additional funding opportunities.
Wider Region Grants
Surrounding areas including Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Staffordshire, and Shropshire have their own grant programmes through local councils and the LEP structure.
West Midlands Business Grants
211 grants found
Large Grant full applications: November 2026 (invite only)
Funding to support innovative, large-scale and complex projects that tackle big science questions and have the potential to produce world-leading research.
Energy Resilience Accelerator – helping SMEs scale their resilience innovations
A programme designed to connect ambitious SMEs with industry partners (Centrica, NHS England, NESO, NGED, SSEN) to collaboratively develop trial proposals tackling pressing energy resilience challenges, with fully funded technical and business support and potential trial funding.
Transformative sustainable AI technologies
Apply for funding for projects focused on speculative and high-risk research with the potential to deliver high rewards and a step change in the sustainability of future AI systems. Projects should consider technological innovations across the AI stack.
Frontier AI: SME Champions, phase 1
Feasibility studies for frontier artificial intelligence, and machine learning technologies with a clear route to defensible scale-up.
Teacher Development Fund
Supports schools and arts organisations working in equal partnership to deliver professional learning for teachers, enabling arts-based approaches that create equitable classrooms for primary-age children.
Second Act Entrepreneur Fund
A grant funding and mentorship initiative aimed at supporting UK business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs aged 40 and over to start or grow their business.
Exploring the frontiers of environmental research 2026
Apply for funding to pursue truly novel curiosity-driven environmental research that is at an early stage of development and has the potential to be transformative. Projects should focus on preliminary investigation that may inform future activities and applicants should articulate the potential for impact of the project outcomes.
Efficient, Structured and Controllable AI Systems
UK registered SME businesses can apply for a share of up to £1.66 million to deliver experimental validation of prototype AI systems for novel reusable components of efficient, structured and controllable learning systems.
MDI programme innovation and scale-up hub
UK registered eligible organisations can apply for a share of up to £4 million for a manufacturing digitalisation innovation (MDI) and scale-up hub to improve the targeting, quality and commercial impact of grant funded activity.
UKRI Translation: MRC Proof of Concept: stage one
Apply for funding to develop and test novel therapeutics, medical devices, diagnostics and other interventions across any stage of the developmental pathway, from prototype development, through pre-clinical refinement, to early-phase clinical studies (up to phase 2a).
Bioinformatics and Biological Resources Fund (26BBR)
Apply for funding to implement, improve or consolidate bioinformatics or biological resources in support of UK bioscience, helping to drive forwards progress in bioscience research and innovation. Your project must focus on the delivery of a community resource that addresses a significant demand or supports an established user base in the biosciences.
Funding opportunity: Economic research on the returns to R&D investment
Apply for funding to support research that can help develop new measurements of the return on investments in research and development (R&D).
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about business grants in West Midlands