Future Flight Regional Demonstrator

Overview

Innovate UK, in partnership with the Department for Transport, is investing up to £600,000 to support innovation projects that help bring next-generation flight — including drones, electric (eVTOL), and zero-emission aircraft — into real-world regional operations.

This funding aims to move beyond trials and into scalable, commercial services that deliver real socio-economic value to UK communities — in line with the DfT’s Future ofFlight programme.

Projects must focus on one or more of the following:

• Turning trial results into commercial services in a specific UK region
• Building the business case for regional drone or low-emission aircraft operations
• Proving how these services could work in practice at scale
• Developing test beds or “living labs” to explore readiness across infrastructure,     regulation, and community engagement
• Integrating future flight with regional transport systems
• Creating commercial plans that meet local needs and customer demand — including how     to coordinate across regulators, authorities, and communities

Each project must include atleast one local authority and one operator, end user, or customer.

Scope

The aim of this competition is to accelerate the transition from trials of cutting edge innovations to real world commercial operations at a regional scale. This will unlock high value, socio-economic benefits for UK communities and meet the objectives of theDepartment for Transport (DfT) Future of Flight programme.

Your project must demonstrate the commercial viability of regional drone, electric take off and landing(eVTOL) or zero emission conventional take-off and landing (CTOL) aircraft operations or services in the UK. This will foster investment and catalyse commercialisation of future flight products and services.

Your project must deliver one or more of the following:

• a detailed pathway to transform demonstrations to real world commercial operations at scale in a selected UK geographical area
• a business case for commercial drone, eVTOL or zero emission CTOL aircraft services that deliver high value socio-economic benefits to a selected UK     geographical area
• a proof of concept, or concept of operations, for commercial drone, eVTOL or zero emission CTOL aircraft services at scale across a selected UK geographical area
• a development plan for a living lab or test bed, representative of the future flight operating ecosystem, to accelerate regional scale regulatory, community and infrastructure readiness for commercial drone, eVTOL or zero emission CTOL aircraft operations
• acceleration of multimodal transport with drone, eVTOL or zero emission CTOL aircraft integrated into regional transport networks or regional transport hubs, including airports
• a commercial development plan for drone, eVTOL or zero emission CTOL aircraft services in a selected UK geographical area, based on identified commercially viable use cases that meet socio-economic needs for the region and customer demand

Note: the commercial development plan can include a study to determine decision-making authorities, roles and frameworks across the regulator, local government authorities and local community to accelerate safe, coordinated and socially accepted integration of commercial drone, eVTOL or zero emission CTOL aircraft services in a selected UK geographical area.

Projects must include at least one local government authority, and at least one operator, end user or customer.

Your project can include flight activities where you can demonstrate that any required approvals are either already granted or obtainable by a clear and supported route within your project timeline.

To support industry progress, and government and regulatory frameworks it is expected that the key learnings from your project are shared openly.

Key themes and topics

Your project must focus on one or more of the following:

• use cases that deliver economic and social benefit
• regional drone, eVTOL or zero emission CTOL services (living lab, business case, proof of concept or concept of operations)
• local community integration and planning
• development of stakeholder relationships for regional deployment of operations
• distributed network of take-off and landing spaces, for example, vertiports, airports,  airfields, emergency landing spaces
• multi-modal transport system integration
• airspace integration and management

Project duration

Between 5 and 7 months

Must start by 1^st September 2025

End by 31^st March2026

Award value

Must have a grant funding request of between £150,000 and £200,000

Funding rates

For industrial research projects, purposeful research that builds new knowledge and skills to improveor develop products, processes, or services—often through prototypes or system components that validate ideas in realistic settings, you can get funding for your eligible project costs of:

• up to 70% if you are a micro or small organisation
• up to 60% if you are a medium sized organisation
• up to 50% if you are a large organisation

For experimental development projects, which use existing knowledge to shape and refine new or improvedproducts, processes, or services—through prototyping, testing, and validation,not routine upgrades and are nearer to market, you can get funding for your eligible project costs of:

• up to 45% if you are a micro or small organisation
• up to 35% if you are a medium sized organisation
• up to 25% if you are a large organisation

Research organisations can share up to 30% of the total eligible project costs

Eligibility criteria

• Projects must be collaborative and led by a UK registered business of any size, academic institution, research and technology (RTO), charity or public sector organisation
• Projects must involve at least one SME
• Projects must involve at least one local government authority
• Projects must involve at least one operator, end user or customer
• Collaborator scan be a UK registered business of any size; an academic institution; a charity; a not for profit; a public sector organisation; or a research and technology organisation (RTO)
• Subcontractors must be preferably UK-based with fully justified and appropriate cost
• All funded project work must be carried out within the UK
• intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
• Subsidy control and state aid rules apply