HRC Project Grants

HRC Project Grants are the main investigator-led route for discrete biomedical, public health, and clinical studies under the Health Research Council of New Zealand. The council uses them for work with a realistic chance of improving New Zealand health outcomes, and the route sits in the Ideas Funding stream. Awards go up to NZD 1.2 million. The mechanism usually runs over three years, although HRC can stretch the project to five years when needed. The annual 2026 round used an expression-of-interest stage followed by full applications, with the EOI opening in mid-August 2025 and full applications closing in December 2025. Universities and research organisations in New Zealand are eligible, while for-profit companies and individuals are not. This is the right route for a defined research question with enough scale for a substantial study but not the five-year programme level of the Programme Grants call. Strong proposals will usually show a clear path to health impact, a team with the right discipline mix, and a project shape that fits HRC's peer-reviewed, investigator-initiated model.

Each grant below is a distinct funding opportunity with its own eligibility, scope, and deliverables.