Outcomes of our 2025 Project/Programme Grant funding rounds

The results of our 2025 Project Grant and 2025 Programme Grant funding rounds are available to applicants on HRC Gateway. Public announcements will follow in the second half of July.

Opening dates for the 2026 Project/Programme Grant funding rounds

We will confirm the opening dates for both the 2026 Project Grant and 2026 Programme Grant funding rounds later this month.

The results of our 2025 Request for Proposals on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Healthcare are available now to applicants via HRC Gateway. As always, results are confidential until public announcements are made by the HRC.

Since 2010, the Health Research Council has administered and distributed money from the Vision Mātauranga Capability Fund on behalf of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) through our Ngā Kanohi Kitea grants (known as the Ngā Kanohi Kitea Community Advancement Fund from 2022 onwards).

As you may be aware, MBIE replaced the Vision Mātauranga Capability Fund with the He Ara Whakahihiko Capability Fund on 29 May this year. The new He Ara Whakahihiko fund is designed to support economic growth by investing in and growing Māori science, innovation and technology.

While we work through these changes, we have paused this year’s Ngā Kanohi Kitea funding round. We will provide an update on a new-look HRC funding mechanism using our component of the He Ara Whakahihiko fund later in the year.

The goal of the HRC’s investment in health delivery research is to fund research that directly contributes to a primary outcome of improved health delivery by informing decisions or changes to policy, practice or systems in the New Zealand health and disability sector.

We are pleased to advise that applications for the 2026 Health Delivery Research Career Development Awards opened on 4 June 2025.

This award is an opportunity for health professionals (clinical or non-clinical) and academic health researchers to undertake a funded placement in a health delivery research team, health sector setting or health delivery policy setting. Funding includes salary supplemented by a $20,000 contribution to the host organisation. This grant is designed to directly engage health professionals and researchers on issues of priority for our health system and improve the delivery of healthcare in New Zealand.

Key dates, including the closing and results dates, will be announced on HRC Gateway.

The Health Delivery Research Activation Grants will not be offered this year

The Activation Grants were launched in 2019 as part of a suite of Health Delivery Research funding opportunities. In recent years, there has been a significant increase in high-quality health delivery research proposals across all our funding rounds, and it is timely to focus on longer-term investments that deliver longer term impact and benefit.

We recommend that you refer to the HRC Gateway funding calendar for information on all our funding rounds. Here you will find the upcoming opening, closing and results dates for our various funding opportunities, which are updated as more become available. By clicking on the name of the individual round you are interested in, you will be provided with more information, including eligibility criteria, a brief description of the application process, and who to contact if you have any questions.