Marie Curie’s Research Grants scheme aims to invest in innovative research that supports system, service and practice changes, to improve palliative and end of life care. This call invites applications on the theme of ‘Care close to home, in and out of hours’. It links closely with Marie Curie’s strategy and mission to close the gap in end of life care by addressing one or more of the following broad areas of evidence need:
- understanding the current provision in primary and community care, alongside patient experience
- developing, evaluating and implementing models of service delivery or interventions.
- reducing inequality in the provision of out-of-hours care
- encouraging economic evaluation, such as cost benefit analyses, to assess service delivery models and their comparative benefits
The funder is particularly interested in receiving proposals for research which address any of the following areas:
- how health and social care teams can provide more coordinated care for people with advance serious illness and how cost benefit analysis might justify care co-ordination time
- ways to improve integration and coordination of primary and community palliative and end of life care, and the impact of this on emergency hospital admissions
- the potential skills and knowledge gaps of non-palliative specialist staff providing care close to home
- ways to improve the safety and effectiveness of care close to home particularly for people with multiple health conditions who have palliative and end of life care needs
- evidence-based models (including digital) for providing 24/7 palliative and end of life care, especially in rural and island areas, areas of socioeconomic deprivation and to those with a noncancer diagnosis
- the most clinically and cost-effective Multi Disciplinary Team (MDT) composition to facilitate continuity and coordination of care close to home for people in the last year of life
Please note that, at this stage, Marie Curie is not seeking research proposals focusing on or incorporating care homes and will look to fill evidence gaps relating to care homes through other routes.
ELIGIBLITY
Expressions of interest are invited from lead applicants at recognised Universities, NHS hospitals, hospices or research institutes within the UK.
The lead applicant must have a post which covers the entire duration of the proposed study.
There are no restrictions on co-applicants and collaborating partners.
As well as relevant research expertise, collaborations should include a focus on evidence users (decision makers and other key stakeholders who sit on the specified pathways to impact for the research and who will use the evidence produced to drive change), as well as people with relevant lived experience to the proposal topic.
VALUE AND DURATION
The maximum limit for individual applications is £150,000, but smaller applications are also encouraged. No minimum or maximum durations are stipulated at this stage.
Note that this award will only pay the directly incurred costs of research. Marie Curie will not pay either directly allocated (including estate costs) or indirect costs on individual research awards.
Up to £500 per applicant team is available to support the involvement of people with lived experience and evidence users in the design and development of the research proposal. This funding is specifically for applicant teams without alternative sources of support for these early involvement activities and should be requested by emailing research.grants@mariecurie.org.uk with a brief description and justification for how the money will be spent. The funding can be requested either prior to submitting an EOI or when developing a proposal from EOI to full application.
Marie Curie is also asking applicants to dedicate 10% of their budget to activities related to producing impact on policy and practice, in addition to any usual dissemination activities that can be requested as part of the usual budget.
KEY DATES
EOI deadline: 17 July 2026
Full applications invited: Early September 2026
Full application deadline: Mid-October 2026
Applicants notified of outcome: March 2027
More information, including how to apply and previous success rates, can be found on the opportunity webpage.
Full guidance is also included below, along with FAQs and the EOI form.