Capital funding

Capital funding is additional, targeted funding that the government provides to support sustainable investment in higher education.

It supports capital expenditure – that is, money used to acquire or maintain fixed assets, such as land, buildings and equipment, which is normally capitalised in the provider's audited annual accounts.

It does not include expenditure on rent, or hiring or leasing of equipment and facilities.

How we allocate funds

We distribute capital funding in two ways:

1. A small annual formula allocation to all eligible providers.
2. In response to bids in a competitive exercise. This accounts for most of the funds we allocate. 

The guidance we receive from government specifies the capital funding available for us to distribute.

Our 2021 consultation on capital funding explains more about how we developed our current approach.

Funding for 2026-27

For the financial year 2026-27, we have £88 million to distribute. The financial year runs from April 2026 to March 2027.

Formula funding

The total amount of formula funding for 2026-27 is £7.75 million, which is the same amount as in 2025-26. The maximum allocation per provider should be £30,000, and the minimum should be £10,000 – we will confirm these thresholds in the autumn when the allocations are calculated.

This year, we are again allocating £3.5 million to Jisc. 

Jisc provides UK universities and colleges with shared digital infrastructure and services, such as the superfast Janet Network. The capital grant to Jisc is supporting network upgrades, cybersecurity and learning analytics.

Bidding competition

Our aim for the capital funding competition is to help raise the quality of learning and teaching facilities and support high quality, skills-based education for students.

The competition for 2026-27 will run during the summer, with the deadline for bids on 4 September 2026.

We are aiming to confirm the successful projects and all capital funding allocations for this financial year by the end of October 2026.

Monitoring capital funding

All providers that receive capital funding must report on how they use it at the end of each financial year.

Our annual capital funding monitoring guidance document explains the monitoring process for the year and how to return information to us.

Providers must spend in full all the capital funding we allocate to them, in accordance with our terms and conditions of funding, by 31 March 2027. The deadline for submitting this year's reports to the OfS portal is due to be 20 April 2027. We will publish guidance on how to submit these reports to us in February or March 2027.

See last year’s Monitoring of capital funding guidance document.

We proactively monitor the progress and spend of the projects we are supporting, so that we can provide advice and guidance as and when required throughout the funding period.