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31JUL

UK Horizon Europe share rebounds to 9.3%

3 min read
12:32UTC

DSIT data published on 5 June show the UK's Horizon Europe funding share rose to 9.3% in 2024 from 5.8% a year earlier, with the applied-research strand up 68%, a genuine recovery that still sits below the pre-Brexit peak.

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Key takeaway

UK Horizon Europe recovery is real and feeds the spinout pipeline, but sits below the 2018/19 peak.

DSIT published UK participation figures for the EU's Horizon Europe research programme on Friday 5 June. The UK's share of funding won rose to 9.3% in 2024, from 5.8% in 2023, worth €994m, with its share of proposals climbing from 18.9% to 24.1%. The department described the result as a partial recovery toward late Horizon 2020 levels, still below the 2018/19 peak. 1

Horizon Europe is the EU's flagship research programme; the UK re-associated in 2024 after Brexit exclusion. The sharpest move sits in Pillar 2, the strand funding industrial and applied collaborative research that feeds university tech-transfer offices and spinouts. The UK's Pillar 2 share rose 68% year on year, from 3.7% to 6.2%. The part of the recovery most likely to surface later as commercial IP is also the part growing fastest.

DSIT's own framing keeps the ceiling in view. Re-association has reopened the collaborative-funding pipe, but it is not yet running at pre-Brexit volume. The France science alliance signed in May is the bilateral hedge that runs alongside the multilateral programme, a second channel for the same collaborative research while Horizon participation climbs back toward where it was.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Horizon Europe is the European Union's main research funding programme, with a total budget of roughly €95bn for 2021-2027. The UK was excluded from it after Brexit until re-association in early 2024. In 2023, the UK's share of Horizon funding was 5.8%. In 2024, it recovered to 9.3%, meaning UK researchers won €994m of grants. The applied-research strand (Pillar 2) recovered fastest, growing 68% year-on-year. However, DSIT itself describes this as a partial recovery: before Brexit, the UK had a larger share. Getting back to pre-Brexit levels requires winning a higher proportion of the proposals that UK researchers are submitting, which depends partly on Brussels relationships that were disrupted during three years of exclusion.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

Pillar 2 (industrial research consortia) recovered faster than Pillar 1 (curiosity-driven ERC) for structural reasons. Pillar 2 projects involve industrial consortia where UK companies remain commercially attractive partners regardless of political status. A German automotive manufacturer running a battery electrolyte consortium has direct commercial reasons to include a UK material-science team even under associate rules.

ERC individual grants differ: UK researchers compete head-to-head against EU nationals in peer-review panels where the 2021-2023 exclusion period broke the informal network ties that referees use to assess applicants. Rebuilding those networks takes the length of a grant cycle, roughly 5-7 years, which is why the Pillar 1 recovery lags.

What could happen next?
  • Consequence

    Pillar 2 grants awarded in 2024 will produce commercial IP and spinout companies in 2029-2032. The 68% year-on-year growth means the UK spinout pipeline from Horizon is growing again after a four-year gap.

  • Risk

    The UK's 24.1% proposal share suggests strong research intent but a still-recovering award conversion rate. If consortium-formation biases persist, the actual funding return may plateau before recovering to pre-Brexit levels.

Sources:UK Tech News
Mentions:Brexit →France →Pillar 2 →Horizon Europe →DSIT →ETH Zurich →Brussels →Switzerland →Norway →European Union →
First Reported In

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UK Tech News· 7 Jun 2026
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Causes and effects
Caused by
UK and France sign science pact
UK-France researcher-mobility deal in May is the bilateral hedge running alongside the multilateral Horizon Europe re-association recovery.
Occurred 29 May 2026
Read story →
This Event
UK Horizon Europe share rebounds to 9.3%
The 68% jump in Pillar 2 is a leading indicator for future UK tech transfer and spinout volume, rather than a diplomatic recovery metric.
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