Challenge Tenders and Contracts

A challenge fund puts money behind a problem instead of a specification. The buyer publishes the challenge, suppliers propose solutions, and winners are funded through phases: feasibility first, then a prototype or a pilot. SBRI is the best known route of this kind in the UK, and some buyers now publish it as Contracts for Innovation.

Stotles brings together challenge fund tenders and contracts from 100+ portals into one search, so you do not have to check each portal separately, and you can set alerts for new opportunities across the UK and Ireland.

If you want to search the government portals directly, Find a Tender carries higher-value contracts across the UK and Contracts Finder carries lower-value contracts in England. Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales and eTendersNI cover Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, Ireland's eTenders covers Irish public bodies, and many councils, NHS bodies and housing associations publish on their own e-tendering portals such as ProContract. SBRI and Contracts for Innovation competitions are often published by the funder alongside Find a Tender, and many rounds open with a briefing event or pre-market engagement.

Challenge funds must meet subsidy control rules, and buyers expect suppliers to own or license the intellectual property they bring and to handle any data in line with UK data protection law. Applications are judged on the innovation itself, and buyers check financial standing before funding later phases. Under the Procurement Act 2023, suppliers can be excluded for certain criminal convictions, insolvency or failure to pay tax.

A challenge is usually funded in short, staged bursts rather than one long contract. Phase one is small and short: if the solution proves out, the buyer may fund a phase two, and after that it either moves to an ordinary competition at scale or the round quietly ends.

Almost any public body with a budget for something unproven can run a challenge fund. Research funders, health bodies, devolved governments, councils and nuclear decommissioning operators all appear among the organisations behind these competitions, which is why the subject matter varies so widely.

Skills, employability and net zero recur as themes across these rounds, alongside more specialist scientific and engineering challenges.

Read innovation strategies, SBRI and Contracts for Innovation competition calendars, briefing event announcements and pre-market engagement notices, which show challenge fund rounds coming ahead of a notice. On Stotles you can track those signals and the buyers behind them, then follow a notice from pre-tender through to award.

Challenge fund and SBRI notices most often carry CPV 73000000 (Research and development services and related consultancy services) and CPV 73110000 (Research services), since a challenge round is procuring the development work itself rather than a finished product or a standard service.

The codes alone will not identify a challenge round, though. Many notices are coded for whatever the buyer eventually intends to buy, from industrial robots to tree pruning, once a phase moves toward delivery.