Matching projects to grant schemes is a big part of our job. So when the Australian Research Council released the final report of its funding policy review in July, we did what you probably did: read it, reread it, and then built a table. If you're feeling a bit discombobulated, so are we.
Here's the short version. From 2027, the ARC is replacing the 15 schemes in its National Competitive Grants Program (NCGP), the main way it funds university research, with 7 new schemes plus an infrastructure sub-scheme. The Discovery and Linkage programs are being retired. The new schemes are Initiate Fellowships, Indigenous Excellence, Lead and Mentor, Explore, Breakthrough, Collaborate (with its sub-scheme, CIEF) and Prioritise. They open one at a time between early 2027 and 2029, and existing schemes continue for a transition period before being retired.
The new names get most of the attention, but they aren't the biggest shift. The bigger shift is that every new scheme funds early-stage research only. Experimental development is out. That's good news for clarity, because it's now much easier to tell whether a project belongs with the ARC. The catch is for projects that used to fit Linkage well: an industry partner on board, and the work already heading towards real-world use. Some of those projects won't have an obvious ARC home any more, so they need a new plan.
Most of us still think in the old scheme names, so start with the one you know. The ARC hasn't published an official one-to-one mapping. This is our read, matched on purpose and scale.
| Old scheme | Closest new scheme | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery Projects | Breakthrough, or Explore for high-risk ideas | Breakthrough starts at $200k a year. Final Discovery Projects round expected February 2027 |
| DECRA | Initiate Fellowships | Two tiers by years post-PhD. Attempt limits not yet confirmed |
| Future Fellowships | No direct replacement | Mid-career salaries are no longer funded |
| Australian Laureate Fellowships | Lead and Mentor | Funds a team of ECR mentees, not the lead researcher's salary |
| Discovery Indigenous | Indigenous Excellence | Dedicated funding rises from about 1% to about 5% of the NCGP |
| Linkage Projects | Collaborate | Much larger grants, at least one Partner Organisation, runs every second year |
| ITRP Hubs and Training Centres | Collaborate, or Prioritise at national-priority scale | No industry-specific scheme |
| LIEF | Collaborate: Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (CIEF) | Interim, until a whole-of-government infrastructure solution exists |
| Centres of Excellence and Special Research Initiatives | Prioritise | Tied to national priorities, approved by the Minister |
These figures come from the policy review's indicative settings. Explore's grant guidelines have been tabled in Parliament, but the other schemes don't have guidelines yet, so treat their figures as a guide rather than a rule.
| Scheme | Who can lead | Partner Organisation required? | Funding per year | Duration | Grants per round | First round |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Initiate Fellowships | ECRs, 0 to 5 years post-PhD | No | $50k project funds plus salary and on-costs | Up to 3 years | About 300 | Apr to Jun 2027 |
| Indigenous Excellence | Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander researchers, up to 15 years post-PhD | No | $50k to $500k | Up to 5 years | About 50 | Oct to Dec 2027 |
| Lead and Mentor | Mid-career and senior researchers with a strong leadership record | No | Up to $250k project funds plus 2 postdocs and 2 HDR students | Up to 5 years | About 50 | Jul to Sep 2027 |
| Explore | Any career stage | No | $50k to $400k | Up to 3 years | About 150 | Jan to Mar 2027 |
| Breakthrough | Any career stage | No | $200k to $600k | Up to 5 years | About 700 | Jul to Sep 2028 |
| Collaborate | Multi-institution teams | Yes, with significant cash | $1m to $2m | Up to 5 years | About 60 | Jan to Mar 2028 |
| CIEF | Multi-institution | Infrastructure must be shared | Not yet published | Not yet published | Not yet published | Apr to Jun 2028 |
| Prioritise | Multi-institution teams | Yes, with a strong focus on cash | $4m to $6m | Up to 7 years | About 3 | EOI late 2028, full applications mid-2029 |
Breakthrough is the centrepiece. It's set to take the largest share of the NCGP budget, about 40%, and it's open to every career stage.
Early career researchers come out ahead. ECRs within 5 years of their PhD can now be named as salaried chief investigators on project grants, not just fellowships. In Explore, that salary comes out of the $400k annual cap rather than sitting on top of it. Initiate assesses applicants in two groups, up to 2 years and more than 2 up to 5 years post-PhD. Each application needs a career development plan setting out the support the university will provide, which can include placements with industry or end users.
Mid-career researchers carry most of the cost. The ARC will no longer fund salaried fellowships for mid-career or senior researchers, and Future Fellowships has no successor. Breakthrough and Explore become the main routes, as project funding rather than salary.
Senior researchers can still lead large investigator-led work through Lead and Mentor. The difference is that the grant funds the team you mentor, not your own position. The Kathleen Fitzpatrick and Georgina Sweet awards continue inside it, alongside 2 new awards for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander researchers.
Every new scheme allows collaboration with industry, government and community partners. Only Collaborate and Prioritise require a Partner Organisation, and both run every second year, alternating with each other.
This is the change we're most excited about. The ARC intends the smaller schemes to have low or minimal co-contribution requirements, and every grant will have a new establishment phase. The ARC is exploring using that phase to collect full partner information from successful applicants only, rather than from everyone at application. We've seen so many SMEs get scared off by the cash commitments and forms before we could get them over the line. If this lands as described, a small company can come into a project without signing up for a pile of paperwork on a bid that might not be funded. For SMEs and community organisations, that's going to help so much.
This is the gap to plan for. A typical Linkage project was one university working with one or two partners, with ARC funding of $50k to $300k a year. There's no direct equivalent in the new model. Collaborate is the closest scheme, but it starts at $1m a year, needs a multi-institution team and significant partner cash, and only runs every second year.
The gap has already started. Linkage Projects 2026 was the last Linkage round in the ARC calendar, and Collaborate doesn't open until early 2028. ITRP 2027 Research Hubs and Training Centres, closing 25 November 2026, is the last large partnered ARC round before then.
So a project of that size has three options:
All 7 schemes fund early-stage research, across all disciplines, and exclude experimental development and medical research. The ARC doesn't use technology readiness levels (TRLs), but for planning purposes we read the new schemes as sitting roughly at TRL 1 to 4.
That matters, because some partnered ARC projects have pushed further along the path to application than that. For work closer to market, the options are thinner than they were a year ago. The Cooperative Research Centres Projects (CRC-P) and ARENA (for renewable energy) are the main federal routes. Australia's Economic Accelerator, which funded university research on its way to commercialisation, is closed to new projects after the government took $800 million out of it this year.
Put those two changes together and there's a real gap. University-led research that has moved past proof of concept, but isn't yet ready for an industry-led CRC-P, has fewer places to go than at any time in recent years. The Industry Growth Program, which supported SMEs commercialising new products, has also been paused for new applicants since May. The ARC report frames the NCGP as the early-stage research that feeds the rest of the R&D system, but for now the next rung on that ladder is missing.
For a project at TRL 2 to 3 that's ready to grow, the strongest options outside the ARC are international or industry-funded:
Research offices will feel this before researchers do. Here's what's coming.
A long overlap. For about three years you'll run legacy rounds and existing grants alongside new schemes. Each new scheme gets its own guidelines, assessment criteria and forms, so templates, internal deadlines and checklists will need rebuilding one scheme at a time as guidelines are released.
Research Points. Project limits become a points balance. Each eligible chief investigator and salaried chief investigator has 13 points, committed when an application is submitted and held for the life of a funded project. Grants from legacy schemes don't count. Researchers will need help planning who leads what across Explore, Breakthrough and Collaborate.
Work moves from pre-award to post-award. Every grant will have an establishment phase, so the ARC collects less at application and more from successful applicants. Partner details and other setup information may be confirmed after the outcome rather than before. Plan who handles that, because it's likely to land in a busy window after announcements.
Fewer formal variations. The final report proposes handling minor administrative changes through notification or annual reporting. Across the sector, that should free up real time.
Workforce planning. The ARC will no longer fund salaries for mid-career or senior researchers, and the report acknowledges this will change how universities plan their workforce. Future Fellows and Laureates finishing their current grants won't have a like-for-like ARC renewal. At the same time, ECRs within 5 years of their PhD can be named as salaried chief investigators. In Explore, that salary sits inside the project funding cap, which changes how budgets get built.
ECR eligibility checks. Attempt limits for Initiate aren't confirmed yet, including how previous DECRA attempts will count. Pulling together ECR application histories before Initiate opens in mid-2027 means you can check them quickly once the guidelines land.
Career development plans. Each Initiate application needs a career development plan setting out the support the university will provide, which may include placements with industry or other end users. Someone needs to own that.
Indigenous engagement funding. About 4% of NCGP funding is reserved for infrastructure and for Indigenous community engagement and research capability, combined. How that reaches individual projects isn't confirmed yet, so watch for it in each set of guidelines.
Different assessment. Assessment will weigh value for money and national benefit alongside peer review. Internal review panels will need to adjust what they look for.
Ministerial approval and ad hoc rounds. Prioritise grants will be approved by the Minister for Education rather than the ARC Board, and the ARC can run ad hoc Prioritise rounds at government direction or with international funders. Expect some of those to arrive with short notice.
Comms that last. With a three-year rollout, this belongs on intranet pages and in researcher onboarding, updated as each set of guidelines lands, rather than in a one-off alert.
The ARC's indicative timeline, as at October 2026:
Confirmed dates will appear in the ARC's NCGP Scheme Calendar.
Final Discovery Projects round or Explore. If your project suits Discovery Projects, the February 2027 round is the last under the current rules, and Breakthrough isn't expected until the second half of 2028. This last round has no EOI stage, allows one application per chief investigator, and is closed to chief investigators awarded a DP in DP26 or DP27. Explore suits smaller, riskier ideas. If you're weighing up the two, get in touch before the round opens and we'll help you work out which one suits your project.
Who your Collaborate partners are. Collaborate opens in early 2028 and needs significant partner cash. Partner agreements almost always take longer than the application.
Whether the ARC is still the right funder. If your project is already testing prototypes or working towards a product, a translational funder may be a better fit than forcing it into an early-stage scheme. With Australia's Economic Accelerator closed, that list is shorter, so start looking sooner.
We'll update this post as the ARC releases guidelines.
The reforms do make the program simpler, and the extra support for ECRs and Indigenous researchers is overdue. But simpler on paper doesn't mean simpler to plan around, especially if your best work lives somewhere between a good idea and a working product. That's where the thinking has to start now.
Download the full comparison
Every scheme, old-to-new mapping and opening date in one PDF you can save and share with your team.
What are the new ARC schemes? From 2027, the ARC's National Competitive Grants Program moves from 15 schemes to 7: Initiate Fellowships, Indigenous Excellence, Lead and Mentor, Explore, Breakthrough, Collaborate and Prioritise. Collaborate also has an infrastructure sub-scheme, CIEF. They replace the Discovery and Linkage programs and open progressively between 2027 and 2029.
What replaces ARC Discovery Projects? Breakthrough is the closest replacement, funding $200k to $600k a year for up to 5 years. Explore covers smaller, higher-risk projects at $50k to $400k a year. A final Discovery Projects round is expected to open in February 2027, and Breakthrough is not expected to open until the second half of 2028.
What replaces ARC Linkage Projects? Collaborate is the closest replacement. It funds multi-institution teams at $1m to $2m a year for up to 5 years and requires at least one Partner Organisation with significant cash contributions. It runs every second year, starting in early 2028.
Is it easier for SMEs to partner on ARC grants now? It should be. All new schemes allow industry collaboration, and the ARC intends the smaller schemes to have low or minimal co-contribution requirements. It is also exploring collecting full partner information from successful applicants only, which would cut the paperwork a small business faces before it knows whether the bid is funded.
What happened to ARC Future Fellowships? Future Fellowships has no direct replacement. The ARC will no longer fund salaries for mid-career or senior researchers. Those researchers can still apply for project funding through Breakthrough and Explore, or lead a mentoring team through Lead and Mentor.
Do the new ARC schemes fund applied research? All 7 schemes fund early-stage research and exclude experimental development and medical research. Projects closer to commercialisation may fit better with CRC-P or, for renewable energy, ARENA. Australia's Economic Accelerator has closed to new projects and the Industry Growth Program is paused, which leaves fewer options for university-led research that is past proof of concept. From 2027, Horizon Europe is a strong option for projects that want to grow through international collaboration.
Got a project that used to be an easy Linkage fit and now isn’t?
Send us a paragraph about it, and we’ll tell you which scheme, or which funder, gives it the best shot.
Related reading: From idea to industry: building partnerships that funders trust, 5 secrets from grant review panels: what reviewers really notice