The Linkage Program promotes national and international research partnerships between researchers and business, industry, community organisations and other publicly funded research agencies. By supporting the development of partnerships, the ARC encourages the transfer of skills, knowledge and ideas as a basis for securing commercial and other benefits of research.
The Linkage Projects grant opportunity supports projects which initiate or develop long term strategic research alliances to apply advanced knowledge to problems, acquire new knowledge and as a basis for securing commercial and other benefits of research.
There will be one assessment round for Linkage Projects 2026.
The Linkage Projects scheme objectives are to:
- support internationally competitive research projects and teams on challenges or opportunities of relevance to research end-users;
- foster the establishment and strengthening of research alliances between higher education organisations and research end-users;
- enhance the scale and focus of research, including in Australian Government priority areas.
Applications for funding under the Linkage Projects scheme must include at least one Partner Organisation. The Partner Organisation must make a contribution in cash and/or in kind to the project. The combined Partner Organisation contributions for an application (i.e. the total of the cash and in-kind contributions of the Partner Organisations) must at least match the total funding requested from the ARC.
The Linkage Projects scheme provides project funding of $50,000 to $300,000 per year for two to five years.
This scheme is intended to support researchers from higher education organisations and industry to build partnerships with organisations, to conduct research which will benefit the organisations and Australia.
Key Dates
Applications close: 18 March 2026
Announcement: 10 December 2026 to 9 March 2027