IN Brief:
- The TRIG 2026 competition offers up to £2.385m across 53 projects.
- Freight innovation, maritime decarbonisation, digital twins, critical technologies, and open-call projects are in scope.
- Successful projects can receive up to £45,000 for feasibility studies, proofs of concept, or prototypes.
Connected Places Catapult has opened the TRIG 2026 competition, making up to £2.385m available across 53 early-stage transport innovation projects.
The Transport Research and Innovation Grants programme is delivered with the Department for Transport and supports feasibility studies, proofs of concept, and prototypes tested in laboratory or relevant real-world environments. The latest cohort is seeking projects at Technology Readiness Levels 2 to 4.
Individual projects can receive up to £45,000 in grant funding. Matched funding is not required, although applicants may provide it. The programme is scheduled to run for five months from February to June 2027, with a support webinar set for 19 May 2026.
The 2026 competition is structured around five challenge areas: maritime decarbonisation, freight innovation, digital twins, critical technologies, and an open-call category. The freight stream is seeking projects that improve efficiency and resilience in a multimodal freight system while reducing environmental impact and supporting economic growth.
Maritime decarbonisation projects will focus on rapid emissions reduction in the maritime sector, aligned with net-zero targets and the government’s clean energy ambitions. Digital twin projects are expected to support more connected, resilient, and future-ready networks. The critical technologies stream is aimed at applying artificial intelligence, advanced connectivity, quantum, and other emerging technologies to practical transport problems.
TRIG has become a useful route for smaller technology companies, academic teams, and early-stage innovators that need grant funding and validation before moving towards larger pilots or commercial deployment. The structure gives participants access to monthly virtual meetings with DfT policy leads, selected one-to-one mentoring, in-person events, virtual pitching, advisory board support, and visibility through the Connected Places Catapult innovation directory.
The freight element reflects the way UK logistics innovation is moving away from isolated vehicle or warehouse upgrades and towards systems integration. Operators need better routing, cleaner vehicles, stronger asset visibility, more resilient multimodal links, and digital tools that work across ports, warehouses, roads, rail networks, and last-mile distribution.
Recent automation and digital logistics developments point in the same direction. Aptiv and Comau’s intelligent industrial logistics collaboration showed how AI, edge computing, perception systems, and warehouse software are moving into practical logistics environments. TRIG gives earlier-stage companies a route to test adjacent technologies before they reach that deployment stage.
Freight resilience is also a growing part of the innovation agenda. The UK freight system has been exposed to labour shortages, border changes, port disruption, vehicle regulation, energy transition costs, and rising expectations around emissions reduction. Technology will not remove those pressures, but better data, more flexible assets, and stronger network visibility can improve operational decisions.
The digital twin stream is likely to attract interest from infrastructure owners, logistics planners, and transport technology businesses. Digital twins can help test freight flows, model disruption, plan infrastructure investment, and improve coordination between public and private assets. Their value depends on moving beyond static visual models into decision tools that use current data, reflect operational constraints, and support live planning.
Maritime decarbonisation is also moving from concept to operational pressure. Ports, shipping lines, fuel suppliers, terminal operators, and inland logistics providers all face questions about cleaner fuels, shore power, vessel scheduling, berth efficiency, and cargo handover. Small technology pilots can be useful where they address defined bottlenecks rather than promising broad transformation without deployment detail.
The grant values mean TRIG will not fund full commercial rollouts. Its value lies in reducing the early cost of testing and forcing ideas into a more structured development pathway. Feasibility studies and prototypes can expose weak assumptions early, which is often more useful than keeping an untested idea alive through marketing alone.
The strongest applications are likely to focus on defined operating problems: multimodal visibility, route resilience, port and depot efficiency, emissions measurement, predictive maintenance, cyber-secure data exchange, and automated exception handling. The funding pool is modest, but the scope is wide enough to pull early-stage freight technology into areas where the UK transport system still carries obvious friction.