Gambling Harms Research Grants

Gambling Harms Research Grants

Supports United Kingdom researchers through gambling-harms funding focused on prevention and policy-relevant innovation.

The Gambling Harms Research Grants 2026 program is a cross-council initiative led by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in partnership with the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Medical Research Council (MRC), and UKRI, designed to build a coordinated UK research base on the prevention and treatment of gambling-related harms. Awards are up to £2,000,000 per project at full economic cost, with UKRI funding 80 percent and the host institution contributing 20 percent. Projects are funded for three years. The program opened on May 18, 2026. The expression of interest deadline is July 17, 2026 at 4:00 pm UK time; full applications are due December 8, 2026 at 4:00 pm UK time. Panel assessment meetings are scheduled for March 2027, with decisions communicated by end of April 2027 and awards expected from July 2027.

The project lead must be based at a UK research institution eligible for UKRI funding — including UK higher education institutions, UKRI institutes, independent research organizations, public sector research establishments, and NHS bodies. Charities, third sector organizations, government departments, and businesses may join as project co-leads but cannot be the lead applicant. Every team must include people with lived experience of gambling harms as active participants. Gambling Commission licence holders subject to the statutory gambling levy face additional eligibility restrictions and are required to review UKRI guidance before applying.

The program's interdisciplinary scope — spanning arts and humanities, social sciences, and medical research — means competitive proposals will typically assemble teams that bridge qualitative social research, epidemiology, and clinical or public health expertise. The mandatory inclusion of lived-experience participants reflects a co-production standard that reviewers will assess substantively, not as a checkbox. Organizations best positioned to lead are those with existing infrastructure for interdisciplinary collaboration on health harms research, established relationships with gambling addiction treatment providers, and capacity to embed lived-experience advisors meaningfully in research design from the outset.