Currently 28 active tech and infrastructure grants, fellowships and residencies open to applicants in Worldwide. Hand-curated and updated weekly. Almost every entry is funded; a few notable unpaid open calls and festival submissions are included as clearly flagged exceptions. Browse the list below, or use the interactive desk for filtering and shortlisting.
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Travel voucher for Dutch-based professionals in design, architecture and/or digital culture who have been invited by a foreign party to give a presentation, lecture or workshop. To apply you must have submitted an application to the Fund in the past five years that was positively assessed (previous International Vouchers do not count). The inviting foreign party must cover a proportionate share of the costs. Covers hourly fees, travel and accommodation directly related to the activity. IMPORTANT TIMING RULE: applications are accepted from 5 months to a minimum of 7 weeks before the activity begins, and processing takes about 6 weeks. This lead time can rule out activities that fall shortly after a round opens. Round 2 (4 May to 22 June 2026) has closed. Round 3 runs 8 September 2026 15:00 CEST to 27 October 2026 16:00 CEST, with a budget of EUR 33,000; given the 7-week rule it effectively serves activities starting from late October 2026 onwards. IMPORTANT PREREQUISITE: you must already have had an application to the Fund positively assessed within the past five years, and a previous voucher does not satisfy this, so this is not a viable first approach to the Fund. The window runs 8 September 2026, 15:00 CEST to 27 October 2026, but closes early once 20 complete applications are received. Maximum one voucher per applicant per calendar year.
A bias bounty from Zindi, Humane Intelligence, Radiant Earth, and the Heising-Simons Foundation: measure coverage gaps in Overture Maps across US Census tracts by comparing it against Census TIGER/Line Roads, Microsoft US Building Footprints, USGS National Map critical facilities, and Census County Business Patterns. Submissions are automatically evaluated with a Bias Score assessing equity metrics across demographic and climate-vulnerability strata, surfacing whose neighbourhoods open map data underserves. PRIZES: 1st USD 4,500, 2nd USD 2,500, 3rd USD 1,500, Best Bias Discovery USD 1,000, Best Documentation USD 500 (USD 10,000 total), plus 10,000 Zindi points. ELIGIBILITY: open to all, teams of up to 4. HOW TO ENTER: create a Zindi account, download the sample submission files, compute coverage-gap scores per tract GEOID, and upload a CSV; 10 submissions per day, 300 total. Free to enter. DEADLINE: 31 October 2026.
Foresight Institute's AI for Science and Safety Nodes request for proposals funds open, AI-first projects across three calls: I. Local Compute (compute that individuals and communities physically own and control), II. Coordination and Accountability (supercollaboration and decentralised alignment, human empowerment, and AI insurance and open governance: multi-agent oversight and verification, tools for collective deliberation, decision rules for when human control adds value, and independent risk assessment or insurance mechanisms for frontier labs), and III. AI-first Science (automated nanotechnology, whole-brain emulation, frontier bio). Grantees can also get workspace in the San Francisco or Berlin AI Nodes (a community xNode runs in Cape Town) and private compute. All funded code, data and outputs must be open-sourced. Projects are judged on fit with the focus area, impact on reducing existential risk from AI, feasibility within 1 to 3 years, AI-first working methods, ability to execute, and high-risk, high-reward potential. ELIGIBILITY: individuals, teams and organisations worldwide; nonprofits and for-profits welcome (for-profits must justify the need for grant funding). Priority goes to applicants who want to work in person at one of the Nodes, but it is not required. Review takes about three months; applications can opt in to sharing with Lightcone Commons. DEADLINE: 31 October 2026, 23:59 PDT.
MIT Solve's annual open innovation call selects tech-based solutions to global challenges and backs them with funding and a nine-month support program. The 2027 cycle runs five parallel challenges on a shared application deadline: the Global Climate Challenge, Global Health Challenge, Global Learning Challenge, Global Economic Prosperity Challenge, and the Indigenous Communities Fellowship. WHAT SOLVERS GET: a USD 10,000 grant funded by Solve for every selected team; access to a pool of over USD 1 million in sponsor prize funding at selection; tailored capacity-building workshops (marketing, PR, monitoring and evaluation, business model and more); leadership coaching; networking with the MIT and Solve community; pro bono resources such as software and legal services; event attendance and media exposure; and permanent Solver status. ELIGIBILITY: open to applicants of all backgrounds worldwide with a technology-based solution addressing one of the challenge areas; teams and organizations at various stages can apply. SELECTION: judged on alignment, impact potential, feasibility, innovation, human-centered design, scalability, partnership potential and technical feasibility. DEADLINE: 2 November 2026 at 12:00 PM EST, shared across all 2027 challenges. Apply via the challenge pages on solve.mit.edu.
NLnet's current open call funds open-source technical development: software and hardware released under free licenses. ROUTES: the Restack fund (open internet stack), the CodeSupply fund, and the general open call for everything else; accessibility and assistive-tech FOSS (screen readers, a11y tooling, accessible interfaces) was repeatedly funded under the predecessor NGI Zero programme and fits via the general route, though Restack's own scope text does not name accessibility, so confirm scope with NLnet before applying. NLnet also provides grantee support services including accessibility audits. ELIGIBILITY: individuals, informal collectives, nonprofits, SMEs and universities from any country; no disability identification required. NOTE: proposals and projects generated with AI/LLMs are ineligible. APPLICATION: short online form at nlnet.nl/propose; decisions within weeks; calls recur roughly every two months, so a missed deadline rolls to the next cycle. DEADLINE: 3 November 2026, 12:00 CET (noon).
The Judson-Morrissey Excellence in New Media Award (JMEM) is the New Media Caucus's scholarship program supporting BIPOC students in new media art fields. It gives multiple unrestricted monetary awards of up to USD 500 each, funded through donor contributions, and features awardees in an NMC Header/Footer Gallery exhibition and a digitally published interview. ELIGIBILITY: BIPOC undergraduate and graduate students working as artists, practitioners, historians and/or critics in new media art. TO APPLY: submit the Google Form with an application letter (max 500 words), a 100-200 word biography, and either 3-5 artwork samples or 2-3 writing samples. DEADLINE: 8 November 2026, 11:59 PM EST. Questions to NMC co-president Chanhee Choi.
Creatives for Our Future is the Swarovski Foundation's global grant programme for emerging creatives aged 21 to 30. Each selected participant receives a EUR 20,000 grant to support their creative project, alongside a mentorship and education programme. DISCIPLINES: fashion, design, art, architecture and engineering, which makes it a direct fit for fashion-tech, wearable and smart-textile projects. ELIGIBILITY: applicants must be aged 21 to 30 at the time of application and working on an initiative that uses creativity to accelerate awareness, technology, or solutions toward the UN Sustainable Development Goals; open worldwide. DEADLINE: 9 November 2026 at 11:59 pm BST.
Zoud GameLab is a month-long virtual game jam run by Global Game Jam and Zoud, the UAE's national financial wellbeing initiative, under the theme Make FinLit Fun. Participants build a game that integrates financial literacy in a meaningful way; this is part of the judging criteria, and a scoring rubric is published on the jam page. WHO: anyone aged 18 or over by 15 November 2026, anywhere in the world; solo developers, teams of any size and studios, each member registering individually. Prior Global Game Jam participation is not required. WHAT YOU GET: a share of up to USD 140,000 in prizes and development-support funding; entrants who want to be considered for development funding submit the game, a concept or design document, a two-minute gameplay video and a game budget. A pre-jam learning programme of webinars, resources and expert sessions ran from September. APPLICATION: register and submit on itch.io (and the Global Game Jam Discord). DEADLINE: 15 November 2026 at 23:59 anywhere on earth (the itch.io counter may show 16 November in some time zones).
The UCLA Library Modern Endangered Archives Program (MEAP), funded by Arcadia, grants its ninth cohort of awards to preserve, document and digitize cultural heritage collections at risk from environmental conditions, political uncertainty, inherently unsustainable media, inappropriate storage, or communal and social change. IN SCOPE: 20th and 21st century materials, including print, photographic, film, video, audio, ephemeral and born-digital objects; all funded materials are published open access in the UCLA Library Digital Collections repository. GRANT TYPES: Planning Grants up to USD 20,000 over one year for organization, survey and inventory work before digitization; Project Grants up to USD 70,000 over two years for digitization and metadata creation on collections ready to digitize, or for curating existing digital assets; Regional Grants up to USD 100,000 over two years for digital collections combining materials from three or more institutions, families or archival repositories around one theme, community or historical event, hosted by an organizing institution with prior MEAP grant experience (consult MEAP staff before applying). There is also an invitation-only Emergency Grant track up to USD 10,000 (email meap@library.ucla.edu), and a new AV Grants track up to USD 100,000 for audiovisual archives opening April 2027 with selections in September 2027. TIMELINE: applications opened 14 September 2026; preliminary application webinar 15 October 2026; preliminary applications due Monday 16 November 2026 at 11:59pm Pacific Time via meap.smapply.io; preliminary decisions December 2026; detailed applications due 12 February 2027; awards announced summer 2027. Applications name teams working with the institutions, families or repositories that hold the collections; read the Program Guidelines and Project Eligibility documents on the MEAP site before applying.
The Mozilla Foundation Incubator's next cohort funds seven Human-Scale AI projects: working AI technologies that are small (small models, less compute, able to run locally or on low-power devices), intentional (users and communities get insight into and control over their data, and systems can be configured, forked or community-governed) and tailored (fit-for-purpose for a specific community, context or problem, with particular interest in resource-constrained regions, people with disabilities and other underserved groups). Projects must already be deployed with the people they serve, even at pilot scale, and show early product-community fit. Not wanted: concepts without working technology, standalone governance or policy work, generic chatbots, or products whose core depends on a frontier model or a slimmed-down version of one. The cohort runs for 12 months from April 2027 with coaching, a Mozilla programme officer, network access and a showcase at the Mozilla Festival; required sessions are about one or two hour-long virtual meetings a month, and teams must work in the open. ELIGIBILITY: worldwide; you do not need to be a nonprofit but the project must have a charitable purpose and you must be legally able to receive Mozilla Foundation grant funds. Applications in English (translation tools welcome). Multi-stage process: an initial project proposal, then a full application for a shortlist. Info session 12 November 2026, 17:00 UTC. DEADLINE: Friday 20 November 2026, 11:59PM PST (UTC-8).
The Mensch Maschine VISIT Residency Program is an annual fellowship offering four fully funded fellowships to artists from around the world, run by the JUNGE AKADEMIE of the Akademie der Künste (Berlin) with VISIT, the artist-in-residence programme of the E.ON Foundation, E-WERK Luckenwalde and Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art (Warsaw). The 2027 edition particularly encourages projects at the intersection of art, energy and ecology exploring the theme ENERGY GHOSTS: the unseen dimensions of energy approached through mythology, cosmology or speculative fiction, the invisible infrastructures, histories and residues that haunt contemporary life, and energy as an ecological, political or spiritual force. Proposals are welcome from visual art, performance, film, installation, sound, writing and new media. WHAT YOU GET: EUR 20,000 per fellow for artist fees and production costs of a new project (research and development, travel, material and presentation costs); three fellows receive studio space and accommodation at E-WERK Luckenwalde (a former power station about 40 minutes south of Berlin), one is accommodated by the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. The three-month residency runs roughly September to November 2027 with on-site presence of at least 75% required, a retreat at Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw in September 2027, events across the three venues, and a closing symposium in October 2027 at the Akademie der Künste where fellows show work in progress alongside the 2026 cohort. JURY: Nolan Oswald Dennis; Chus Martinez (Institute Art Gender Nature, TBA21); Sarah Johanna Theurer (Fondation Beyeler); Anh-Linh Ngo (Akademie der Künste); and Tiara Roxanne. APPLICATION: via the VISIT portal at visit-energy.com/bewerben. DEADLINE: 1 December 2026, 23:59 CET.
The Internet Society Fellowship supports people advancing Internet connectivity, policy or security in their communities. Fellows design and implement a practical project with deliverables such as policy briefs, research reports, training programs, community engagement initiatives, workshops or technical resources, supported by a stipend of up to USD 5,000, a dedicated mentor, weekly virtual training sessions and funded travel to a global or regional Internet event. IMPORTANT PREREQUISITE: applicants must first complete the Pre-Fellowship Training modules; enrollment for the training runs 23 September to 22 November 2026, and eligible participants receive the Fellowship application link by email within 24 hours of completing it. ELIGIBILITY: open worldwide; requires a high level of English reading, speaking and writing, continuous Internet access throughout the program, a valid passport (six months beyond anticipated travel), at least four hours per week over 10 months, and not currently participating in a 2026 Internet Society fellowship. TIMELINE: applications reviewed on a rolling basis and close 18 December 2026; notifications 19 February 2027; program kick-off 22 February 2027; project execution 1 June to 30 November 2027; graduation early December 2027.
The Omidyar Network Tech Journalism Fund offers rolling grants of $5,000-$25,000 for technology journalism projects. Relevant for journalists and media organizations investigating AI, tech policy, and AI's impacts on culture, society, and creative industries. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis through December 31, 2026 — one of the few currently open opportunities with a confirmed near-term deadline. Apply via the application form on omidyar.com.
The Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri funds people and teams to build and launch a tool, workflow or product that helps newsrooms, in three tracks: Individual (USD 75,000), Institutional (USD 75,000, paid to a host organisation or the fellow) and Emerging Technology (USD 100,000, where AI or another new technology must be essential to the solution). The output must be a free, open-source resource usable by US journalists; tools limited to one city or state are unlikely to be funded. The fellowship is remote and runs for eight months from 28 June 2027 with an in-person kickoff at RJI and a couple of paid visits. ELIGIBILITY: anyone, anywhere; no age, background or journalism credential required. Applications open 2 November 2026 on Submittable; a shortlist is invited in early to mid February 2027 to submit a fuller application, with finalist interviews 5 to 23 April 2027. DEADLINE: 8 January 2027 (first round; no time zone stated, RJI is on US Central time).
ARDC funds amateur radio, wireless technology education, and communications research and development, including software-defined radio, mesh and packet networking, and open RF tooling, which puts it squarely at the transmission-art and community-network end of creative tech. WHAT YOU GET: grants with no stated minimum or maximum; the published 2026 portfolio ranges from USD 1,285 to USD 258,000, so both small education projects and major open-source radio infrastructure are funded. CONDITIONS: all funded work must be released openly (GPL, MIT, BSD, CERN OHL or CC licenses). ELIGIBILITY: US 501(c)(3) nonprofits, government agencies, schools and universities, and international nonprofits and schools; individuals, artist collectives and radio clubs must apply through a nonprofit fiscal sponsor, which is routine in the US but adds overhead. APPLICATION: open now on a quarterly cadence; the September 2026 round has closed, so the next actionable deadline is 15 January 2027, with evaluation taking 60 to 120 days.
OSIP is the European Space Agency's standing front door for unsolicited novel ideas, launched in 2019 and now the main entry point for new concepts into ESA, both in response to specific problems and through open calls. HOW IT WORKS: ideas are submitted through two mechanisms. Campaigns are targeted calls responding to specific questions with defined timelines (recent examples include Future Navigation Demonstrators and elements for the EOCognitiveLab mission); Channels are permanently open, open-ended calls on broader topics with no deadline. Submissions can go through an optional community discussion phase, with voting and comments, before expert evaluation by ESA. WHO CAN SUBMIT: individuals, businesses, universities and organisations anywhere in the world. The catch for funding: to implement a funded idea yourself, you must be eligible to do business with ESA under Article 18 of its procurement regulations, which in practice means affiliation with an entity in an ESA member state. WHAT FUNDING LOOKS LIKE: successful ideas are typically supported as co-funded PhD or postdoctoral research (ESA plus a university), early technology development activities, or system studies; amounts vary by route and campaign. WHY IT IS ON THE DESK: this is the one genuinely public, always-open route into ESA for independent researchers, technologists and artists working with space data or space technology concepts; new campaigns appear regularly, so checking the platform periodically is worthwhile. Submit via ideas.esa.int.
Emergent Ventures funds entrepreneurs and thinkers worldwide with highly scalable, zero-to-one ideas for meaningfully improving society. It is aimed at individuals (applicants must be 13 or older) rather than institutions, and international and non-US applicants are eligible; grants are awarded to people around the world. Dedicated support is available for projects focused on India, Africa, the Caribbean or Ukraine. Grant amounts are not disclosed and are set per project. Applications are accepted on a rolling, continuous basis through an online form. The programme launched in 2018 and is administered by Tyler Cowen at the Mercatus Center.
GitHub's Secure Open Source Fund supports maintainers to improve the security of widely-used open-source software, pairing funding with hands-on security training. ELIGIBILITY: individual maintainers or teams of up to three, aged 18 or older, in a region supported by GitHub Sponsors; applicants cannot work for GitHub or its parent company. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis; apply once to be considered for upcoming 2026 sessions. Apply via the GitHub Secure Open Source Fund page.
The Sovereign Tech Fund invests in the open digital infrastructure that underpins the modern internet, funding maintenance, security and development of critical open-source base technologies. ELIGIBILITY: individuals, companies and non-profits maintaining or developing critical open-source infrastructure; open worldwide. Applications are accepted on a rolling, year-round basis via the Sovereign Tech Fund page.
FLOSS/fund, backed by Zerodha, provides financial support to free and open-source software projects and maintainers. ELIGIBILITY: individuals and projects worldwide; applicants apply by publishing a funding.json manifest in their public repository as described on the fund's site. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis with no deadline.
Funds data-driven reporting that uses ML, NLP, satellite imagery, sensors and other computational methods on under-reported issues. Open to freelance and staff data journalists worldwide. Reviewed first-come, first-served on a rolling basis; decisions usually within a month.
Rolling-deadline fund for technology-focused projects that promote human rights, internet freedom and open societies. Funds anti-censorship, anti-surveillance, privacy-preserving and circumvention tools, plus applied research. Two-stage process: submit a Concept Note via the OTF online application system; reviewed monthly with feedback in 6-8 weeks. Open internationally.
The Digital Defenders Partnership runs the main rapid-response fund for digital threats against human rights defenders, journalists, activists and the organisations they work in. The Incident Response Fund covers urgent costs after or during a digital attack, including incident response and forensics, emergency infrastructure or hosting changes, secure devices, account recovery, legal or psychosocial support tied to the incident, and short-term relocation of digital operations. This is the practical counterpart to physical-safety emergency funds for anyone whose work makes them a target online. ELIGIBILITY: human rights defenders, journalists, activists and civil-society organisations facing digital threats or attacks, worldwide. Applications are rolling; DDP aims to respond within two weeks and funds activities for up to four months. DDP also runs a Sustainable Protection Fund for longer-term digital-security capacity building (currently invitation-only in some regions) and an invitation-only Community and Network Fund of up to EUR 15,000 for rapid responders and digital-security facilitators. Contact team@digitaldefenders.org or apply through apply.grants.digitaldefenders.org.
Rest of World is in the third year of its Labor x Tech program, underwritten by the Ford Foundation, commissioning reported stories on the changing nature of work at a moment of upheaval: AI tools and robotics reshaping professions at every rung of society, from self-driving cars replacing drivers to humanoid robots working alongside nurses; lay-offs across the tech industry; and the gig work model continuing to reshape traditional employment. The programme's premise is that this moment needs documenting now, in stories that help prepare society for what comes next. WHAT THEY COMMISSION: reported stories of 800 to 1,000 words from around the world on this beat, at a fee of USD 1,000 per story. WHAT THEY ARE LOOKING FOR, based on previous years: how new technology is transforming existing industries in unique ways and creating unexpected new pockets of employment; how technology is leading to significant job gain, job loss, and government responses to those trends; whether large demographic shifts are following the adoption of new technology or the arrival of new industries; how workplace technology is changing workplace dynamics; how new industries and tools are changing workers' incomes; and the expansion of the gig work model alongside the threats of automation. EXAMPLES of the kind of story they hope to commission, all previously published by Rest of World: workers in Chinese data factories teaching humanoid robots boring tasks; entry-level tech workers describing the AI-fuelled jobpocalypse; Microsoft and Google claiming their data centres create thousands of jobs while their permit filings say otherwise; AI helping judges close cases quickly and lawyers open them quickly; tech workers fuelling a mini baby boom in Taiwan's Silicon Valley; Dubai's robotaxi ambitions coming for human drivers; and the job brokers who run the lives of the migrant workers staffing Taiwan's chip plants. ELIGIBILITY NOTE: the programme is unable to commission reporting in India or from writers based in India for this series. HOW TO PITCH: send 2 to 3 paragraphs laying out the nutgraf of the proposal and explaining how the pitch fits the editorial mission of the programme. Indicate what sources will be used, whether any pre-reporting has been completed, what reporting has already been done on the topic at other outlets, and what the story contributes to the discourse. Pitches go to laborxtech@restofworld.org. Pitching is open on a rolling basis; no closing date is stated.
The ILIAD Intensive is a four-week, full-time, in-person program for mathematically strong researchers interested in foundational AI alignment, running in London (at LISA) and in Berkeley. It runs five days a week, 10am to 6pm, in cohorts of 15 to 30 participants. CURRICULUM, across five clusters: Alignment (decomposing the alignment problem, pretraining, post-training and deployment, reward learning); Learning (deep learning theory, singular learning theory, training dynamics); Abstractions, Representations and Interpretability (mechanistic interpretability, natural latents); Agency (reinforcement learning, decision theory, agent foundations); and Safety Guarantees (debate, steganography, the limits of interpretability). MONEY: no tuition is charged. Each participant receives a USD 5,000 travel and housing allowance, office space at the venue, and lunch and dinner five days a week. Participants book and pay for their own travel and accommodation out of the allowance. ELIGIBILITY: a strong mathematical background, typically graduate-level study or a completed degree in mathematics, physics or theoretical computer science, though mathematical maturity is weighted more heavily than specific credentials. Research experience, general competence and motivation are also assessed. Prior machine learning or alignment experience is not required. DEADLINE: no fixed closing date is published. A single application covers several upcoming programs and applicants indicate their preferred dates and locations; applications are being accepted for the October 2026 and November 2026 cohorts. HOW TO APPLY: through the application portal at iliad.ac/apply. Questions to contact@iliad.ac.
MAGIC Grants, a US 501(c)(3), funds applied privacy-technology research and development through its Monero Fund: cryptographic security proofs, membership proofs, privacy, UX and efficiency improvements, audits, and infrastructure in and around the Monero ecosystem. Grants run USD 5,000-20,000 equivalent and are open to all competent researchers regardless of educational attainment, as individuals or teams, internationally (standard US nonprofit due-diligence and sanctions screening applies). One of the few rolling, individual-friendly privacy-tech research funds; decisions typically arrive within three weeks.
FUTO funds open-source software that challenges the tech oligopoly: privacy tools, secure messaging, alternative operating systems, developer and creative tools. Microgrants of USD 1,000-5,000 support individuals and early-stage projects, while larger grants go to established open-source projects and nonprofits; FUTO has distributed over USD 5 million across 20 projects to date, including Signal and Tor. Applications are genuinely open and rolling (via grantapps@futo.org), with no stated geographic restrictions. Squarely in the NLnet / Prototype Fund tradition of anti-monopoly FOSS funding.
The Disability Chapter of the Awesome Foundation, a trustee-funded giving circle, awards a USD 1,000 no-strings micro-grant every month to a project benefiting disabled people: accessibility and assistive technology, arts and culture, inclusion and advocacy all qualify. ELIGIBILITY: worldwide; individuals, nonprofits or companies; applicants do NOT need to be disabled themselves, though disability-led projects get priority. NOT FUNDED: personal medical needs, rent, repairs and similar personal expenses. APPLICATION: free, via the chapter page; submissions are only accepted from the 1st through the 10th of each month, with decisions by the end of the month. DEADLINE: rolling monthly windows (1st to 10th).