Cultural Basic Infrastructure (Culturele Basisinfrastructuur, BIS)
Funds Dutch cultural institutions with core multiyear support for arts and culture continuity.
Culturele Basisinfrastructuur (BIS) is OCW's four-year institutional subsidy for the core of Dutch cultural life, covering performing arts, museums, visual arts, film, literature, design, and development and innovation organisations. The ministry makes the allocations and DUS-I handles payment delivery. The current 2025-2028 cycle was fully allocated in September 2024 after an application window that closed in January 2024, and no new applications are open until the next 2029-2032 cycle. BIS is aimed at established non-profit cultural organisations in the Netherlands, not companies or individual practitioners, and it is tied to the country's public cultural infrastructure rather than project-by-project experimentation. The wider OCW cultural system also includes separate project-level routes through the six Rijkscultuurfondsen, but BIS itself is the national backbone for long-lived institutions. Applicants need to fit a long-horizon institutional role in the cultural ecosystem. The programme rewards organisations that can demonstrate continuity, public value, and a clear place in the national framework, because BIS is meant to anchor the system rather than fund one-off artistic activity.
No upcoming rounds verified. Cadence: One-off.