For any organisation that depends on regular Arts Council funding, the launch of the next National Portfolio investment round is one of the most significant dates in the calendar, and for many, it underpins the ability to plan more than a season ahead.
Last week, Arts Council England published the first details of the new programme. Full applicant guidance will follow in September, and a good deal of information is still to be confirmed, but there's enough available now to start working out where you stand before the window opens.
The National Portfolio provides multi-year investment that gives organisations the stability to plan and build resilience. The next programme runs for five years, from 1 April 2028 to 31 March 2033.
It will be shaped by the Arts Council's new Strategic Framework, which replaces Let's Create while a longer-term strategy is developed. The Framework sets three objectives that the whole Portfolio should deliver: support excellence, deliver for everybody and reach everywhere. No single organisation is expected to meet all three points on its own, but every application will be read against them.
One key change to note: organisations that support the sector, previously called Investment Principles Support Organisations, will now be classified as NPOs and apply in the same way as everyone else.
The Arts Council has shared the following dates (subject to change according to government timetables) for your diary:
If you've applied before, the window will feel short. The Arts Council's reassurance is that the application will be easier and quicker to complete, and the questions will be available from September so you can prepare. The guidance is being written in plain English and will be user-tested before it goes live.
In terms of amounts, you can apply for a minimum of £50,000 a year, with no maximum. If you're a current NPO, you'll be given a planning figure in September, set at your current level of investment for 2026/27 including the recent 5% uplift. You can ask for more, but bear in mind that your main application has to be viable in its own right rather than dependent on extra investment coming through.
There's no need to wait for the guidance to be released to start getting ready. Here’s what you can do now:
If you use a box office and CRM platform like Ticketsolve, much of this is already close at hand. Audience numbers, where people are travelling from, what you’re programming and what income looks like across your programme sit in your reporting, ready to pull when you need to evidence your experience, your reach and your financial position.
Until the full guidance lands, the Arts Council has confirmed the five areas the application will cover:
Two things it has said it won't ask for: no attachments or templates at application stage, and no detailed delivery plan unless you're offered funding.
This will probably be a welcome reduction in effort for many organisations, however do bear in mind that with fewer supporting documents to help make your case and less room to explain, the strength of a bid rests on you being able to clearly showcase your work, and provide key info about your audiences and your finances.
The Arts Council has been candid that this will be a competitive programme. In the 2023-26 round it funded 985 organisations from 1,730 applications, and was asked for just over £2 billion against an available budget of £1.34 billion. It expects the same pattern again: more strong applications than it can fund, and difficult decisions about who is funded and at what level. Every applicant is being asked to plan for the possibility of an unsuccessful bid.
The detail that matters most, the assessment and decision-making criteria, will be released with the full Applicant Guidance in September. We'll follow up then with more information and how Ticketsolve can support your application. Until it's published, the Arts Council's key information page has further information.
In the meantime, if you'd like to see how Ticketsolve helps venues keep audience and income data close to hand, take a look at how the reporting works or get in touch for a chat.