GOSH Charity National Research Project Grants

The 2025/2026 National Research Project Grants will be open for applications until 3pm on Thursday 26 June. Applications should be submitted through GOSH Charity's application portal.

GOSH Charity will be hosting a webinar to give candidates further information on the call from 12:00-12:45pm on Friday 9 May 2025.

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GOSH Charity is inviting project grant applications for paediatric health research studies focusing on complex or rare diseases. The call will support research across the spectrum of medical conditions affecting the foetus, neonates, and children directly, as well as pregnancy disorders that affect the child.

All projects must aim to improve understanding of the disease or associated conditions or to improve outcomes for the affected child. Proposals will be expected to have the potential to lead to new medical developments or improved healthcare (e.g. diagnostic tools or novel interventions) through laboratory and/or clinically based research. Qualitative and mixed-methods research projects, including healthcare management for specific childhood diseases/conditions or groups of closely related conditions, are also welcomed. Applicants must clearly articulate the route to clinical application and/or potential for patient benefit, regardless of where their proposed studies are positioned along the basic-to-applied research continuum.

This is a national funding call that is open to independent researchers based anywhere in the UK.

Investigators can apply to this call as a lead applicant if they:

• Are an independent researcher who holds a salaried academic research post or a research fellowship.
• Are able to employ a team and, if applying for a lab-based project, able to access dedicated laboratory space to enable delivery of the project.
• Have authority to financially manage their own grants (in collaboration with the finance teams at the organisation).

The lead applicant's salary must be covered through to the end of the grant period, or a supporting letter must be provided by your organisation guaranteeing your continued employment throughout the duration of the grant. Exemptions apply for applicants that hold early career fellowships; please see our scheme guidance document for more information.

As a way of increasing and maintaining capacity in this critical research area, we are particularly interested in supporting projects from promising applicants at an early career stage. To this end, whilst we are committed to supporting high-quality research regardless of career stage, if a funding decision is required between applications of equivalent quality that are deemed equally competitive, those from early career researchers (ECRs) will be prioritised.

For the purpose of this call, we would consider an ECR as someone:

• Up to 10 years post-PhD or equivalent experience (taking into account career breaks).
• Who has attracted less than £350,000 total grant income as PI (excluding income for their own salary such as fellowships).
• Who does not hold a tenured academic position.

GOSH Charity has made £2.5 million available for this funding call.

Total costs between £50,000 and £350,000 per application will be considered, for a maximum project duration of three years. These grants will cover direct research costs associated with the project, please see our scheme guidance document for details.

Applications will be received and managed by GOSH Charity and considered by its Research Assessment Panel. A lay Research Patient Insight Panel will also assess the lay summary and PPIE sections, and their feedback will be fed into the scientific assessment.

Final funding decisions are expected to be announced in late March 2026.

Please note that all applications to this call will be uniformly assessed according to the same criteria for remit, quality, impact, and value for money, irrespective of their potential for co-funding by one of the research partners, or the career stage of the main applicant. Any further prioritisation of applications will only be considered where proposals are deemed equally competitive.

We are delighted to extend the reach of this call by offering, in association with our research partners, the possibility of joint funding for projects focusing on their respective areas of interest. This year we are proud to partner with a number of rare disease charities:

• Action for A-T – Ataxia telangiectasia.
• Cure DHDDS – DHDDS gene mutations.
• The Lily Foundation -  Mitochondrial disease.
• Myotubular Trust – Myotubular and centronuclear myopathy.
• The Norrie Disease Foundation – Norrie disease.
• Nystagmus Network – Nystagmus.

As funders, we have signed a cross-funder statement coordinated by the Academy of Medical Sciences, on the COVID-19 institutional memory: how we as funders will look to fairly remember and recognise the impacts of COVID-19 on grant applicants' work in the future.

As part of this statement, we would like to reassure our research community that we are aware of the immediate and long-term impacts of COVID-19 on research activities. Any disruptions to research activities due to the COVID-19 pandemic will be taken into consideration by our panels and committees when assessing an individual applicant’s record of outputs, research achievements, and career progression in future grant rounds. Read the Covid-19 Statement here.

If you would like to know more about the funding call, our research partners, or have any questions not covered in the FAQs, please do not hesitate to email the GOSH Charity Grants team.

View previously funded National Call projects.