Gates Foundation Grand Challenges

Gates Foundation Grand Challenges — Portfolio

Supports global health innovators through rotating challenge themes in diagnostics, nutrition, and development-focused technologies for public impact.

Eligibility · Global — open worldwide

The Gates Foundation Grand Challenges program is the foundation's principal mechanism for issuing competitive, thematic research funding across global health and development. Launched in 2003 with 14 major scientific challenges and $450 million in initial grants, the program has issued 245 challenge competitions over its history and typically runs 7 to 10 simultaneous open RFPs at any time. Topics are refreshed at the annual Grand Challenges Meeting and on an ad-hoc basis throughout the year; the 2026 cohort includes diarrheal burden estimation, cost-disruptive diagnostics, breakthrough malnutrition treatment innovations, micronutrient absorption, AI for charitable giving, and placental and gut inflammation interventions. Regional variants — Grand Challenges Africa, India, Brazil, and South Africa — issue parallel calls on shared scientific themes, each with a distinct applicant pool.

Awards are structured per individual challenge and range up to $1.5 million per project, with two-year performance periods typical for flagship grants; initial exploration grants have historically been issued at $100,000. Eligible applicants include research institutes, nonprofits, for-profit companies, international organizations, government agencies, and academic institutions. Individual applicants are not accepted. LMIC-based institutions and LMIC-led partnerships are actively prioritized across most calls; no cost-sharing is required. Applications are submitted through the foundation's grant portal at submit.gatesfoundation.org, and each challenge maintains a distinct deadline listed at gcgh.grandchallenges.org/grant-opportunities.

Organizations approaching the Grand Challenges portfolio should treat each thematic RFP as a standalone competition with its own scope, eligibility nuances, and deadline rather than a single rolling window. The strongest proposals are those directly responsive to the challenge's stated scientific question, with meaningful engagement from LMIC researchers or implementing partners and a credible plan to generate outputs usable by in-country policymakers. The program's historical emphasis on locally-led research — reinforced by the 2021 Grand Challenges Global Call-to-Action — means proposals led by or substantially co-designed with LMIC institutions carry a structural advantage.