← The Grant Desk (interactive)

Tech and Infrastructure Grants, Fellowships and Residencies

Currently 8 active paid tech and infrastructure grants, fellowships and residencies. Hand-curated and updated weekly. Every entry is funded, no exposure-only calls. Browse the list below, or use the interactive desk for filtering and shortlisting.

Subscribe: RSS feed · Calendar (.ics)

Open calls

  1. Pace Research Fellowship Summer 2026

    Pace · Pace HQ, New York City, US · Deadline: 16 May 2026 · Award: $10,000 stipend + access to compute and the Pace investment-team network

    Four-week paid summer residency for technologists working at the intersection of computing infrastructure, economics and the physical world. Fellows work alongside the Pace investment team and leave with original, publishable research artifacts (one sharp public piece on the systems shaping the next decade). Open to students, researchers, founders and independent thinkers who want real room to go deep on infrastructure and economics questions. Hosted at Pace HQ in NYC.

  2. Internet Society Foundation: Research Grant Program 2026

    Internet Society Foundation · Worldwide · Deadline: 22 May 2026 · Award: $200,000 to $500,000 per project

    Research grants for innovative work deepening understanding of the Internet and its impact on society. Four focus areas: Inclusive Internet (structural barriers to digital participation), Greening the Internet (environmental impact and sustainability), Measuring Meaningful Connectivity (frameworks including AI, cloud, platform ecosystems), and A Trustworthy Internet (reliability, security, accountability). Open to individual researchers and organisations worldwide; underrepresented groups and Global Majority applicants strongly encouraged. Applications via Fluxx in English, French or Spanish. Deadline 22 May 2026, 21:00 UTC.

  3. NGI Fediversity (11th call)

    NLnet / NGI Fediversity (funded by EU Horizon Europe) · Worldwide · Deadline: 01 Jun 2026 · Award: €5,000 to €50,000 per project

    Small to medium-sized R&D grants for projects making federated and self-hosted internet services easier to deploy and operate at scale. Funds practical work on portable Fediverse-style infrastructure, hosted Mastodon-like or PeerTube-like services, secure email, private cloud and other tools that support decentralisation and digital self-determination. Open to individuals and organisations of any type; results released under free or open-source licences. Deadline 1 June 2026, 12:00 CEST.

  4. NGI Fediversity (11th call): Hosting Stack of the Future

    NLnet / NGI Fediversity (funded by EU Horizon Europe) · Worldwide · Deadline: 01 Jun 2026 · Award: €5,000 to €50,000 per project (€450,000 total budget for open calls)

    Small to medium-sized R&D grants for projects that strengthen Fediversity, an effort to bring easy-to-use hosted cloud services with service portability and personal freedom at their core to everyone. Built on NixOS for declarative, reproducible, reliable deployment of Fediverse services (PeerTube, Mastodon, Owncast, Lemmy), email, VPN, private cloud storage, wikis and more. Project results released under open source licences. Deadline 1 June 2026, 12:00 CEST.

  5. NGI TALER (13th call): Privacy-Preserving Digital Payments

    NLnet / NGI TALER (with GNU Taler community, funded by EU Horizon Europe and Swiss SERI) · Worldwide · Deadline: 01 Jun 2026 · Award: €5,000 to €50,000 per project (€676,000 total budget for open calls)

    Small to medium-sized R&D grants for free and open source efforts aligned with privacy-preserving digital payments. Build new GNU Taler capabilities, auxiliary tools, UX, FOSS-app and open-standard integrations (P2P micropayments in messengers, social media, video conferencing), or merchant-backend improvements. All results released under a free or open-source licence. Strong projects can scale up via NGI0 Core. Deadline 1 June 2026, 12:00 CEST.

  6. NGI Zero Commons Fund (13th call)

    NLnet / NGI Zero (funded by EU Horizon Europe and Swiss SERI) · Worldwide · Deadline: 01 Jun 2026 · Award: €5,000 to €50,000 per project (scalable for proven potential)

    Small to medium-sized R&D grants to help reclaim the public nature of the internet across the full technology spectrum: libre silicon, middleware, P2P infrastructure, end-user applications, open standards, open data and AI, open science, creative commons and open educational resources. Project results released under free or open-source licences. Aimed at troubleshooters tackling hard, important internet-commons challenges. Total programme: €21.6m through 2027. Deadline 1 June 2026, 12:00 CEST.

  7. Wikimedia Foundation Rapid Fund

    Wikimedia Foundation · Worldwide (subject to legal eligibility by country) · Deadline: 01 Jul 2026 · Award: $500 to $5,000 USD per grant (distributed in local-currency equivalent at time of application). Per-applicant cap $10,000/fiscal year; individuals may not hold multiple open Rapid Funds, organisations/groups limited to 2 open grants at a time.

    Quick-turnaround grants for individuals, Wikimedia community members, groups and affiliates running short-term, low-cost Wikimedia-focused projects: editathons, workshops, community meetups, education projects, cultural heritage initiatives, gender/diversity programmes, small-scale software development and content campaigns. Five cycles per year; upcoming deadlines: 1 July 2026, 1 September 2026, 1 November 2026, 1 February 2027, 1 April 2027. Approximately 2 months processing time per cycle. Standard track and Technical Projects track (Grants:Project/Rapid/Tech) share deadlines and amounts. Apply via the Wikimedia Foundation Grantee Portal (Fluxx) at https://wmf.fluxx.io/. Transfers run slower in June and December. CEE region applications routed via the CEE Hub from 1 April 2026. Ineligible: General Support Fund grantees, applicants on SDN lists, those with recent UCoC violations.

  8. OTF Internet Freedom Fund

    Open Technology Fund (OTF) · Worldwide · Deadline: Rolling / undated · Award: $10,000 to $900,000 (sweet spot $50,000 to $200,000)

    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.

Related slices