Writing Grants, Bursaries, & Fellowships
Most writers underestimate how much funding is actually available to them. Grants for manuscripts in progress, bursaries for writing residencies you can’t afford, fellowships that cover living expenses while you write professionally, emergency funds for writers dealing with difficult situations.
Regardless of the project you’re working on, there is likely funding out there to support you.
Organizations are actively looking to fund writers at all career stages, including those who are underrepresented, early-career, or simply stretching budgets too thin.
This edition shares with you more than 55 carefully vetted opportunities across the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, and worldwide, all with deadlines between now and November 2026 (plus a few extras) and sorted by location.
When it comes to funding, you just need to know where to look. And that’s where exactly the Freelance Writing Network can help you.
And as always, be sure to read guidelines carefully before submitting your applications!
The full collection of opportunities with links, deadlines, and application details is available below for paid members.
Writing Grants, Bursaries, & Fellowships
New writing grants, bursaries & fellowships in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom & worldwide, with submission dates from September through November 2026.
WORLDWIDE
Rory Peck Trust Crisis Fund
The Crisis Fund gives financial grants to freelance news and current affairs journalists anywhere in the world whose work and livelihood have been put at risk because of their journalism, covering needs such as medical costs, emergency subsistence, legal advice, and relocation. Applicants must have no regular salary or retainer, must have worked as a freelance journalist for at least the past 12 months, and must supply reference letters.
Deadline: Rolling — apply any time.
Free Press Unlimited — Reporters Respond Emergency Fund
Reporters Respond provides rapid emergency and legal support to media professionals worldwide who are in distress as a direct result of their journalism, including employed and freelance journalists, fixers, bloggers, and media organisations. Support covers medical costs, short-term subsistence or temporary relocation, legal representation and court costs, psycho-social assistance, replacement of confiscated or destroyed equipment, family support, and preventive safety measures such as protective equipment and digital tools.
Deadline: Rolling — apply any time.
Pulitzer Center Global Reporting Grants
The Pulitzer Center’s catch-all reporting grants fund in-depth, under-reported stories across print, photography, audio, video, and short documentary, with no restriction on topic or reporting location. Staff and freelance journalists of any nationality may apply, as may newsrooms and universities on a journalist’s behalf. Most awards for international travel fall between $5,000 and $10,000, based on a detailed budget; half is paid once grant paperwork is complete and the balance on submission of the material for publication. Overheads are not allowed, and news organisations are expected to pay journalists for their work, with time stipends considered only in exceptional cases.
Deadline: Rolling — apply any time.
Pulitzer Center Ocean and Fisheries Reporting Grant
The Pulitzer Center is accepting proposals for reporting on ocean health and fisheries, including illegal and unregulated fishing, subsidies, overfishing, marine protected areas, deep-sea mining, pollution, and coastal livelihoods. Freelance and staff journalists from around the world may apply, and collaborative team proposals are welcome; applications from the Global South and from Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific, east and southern Africa, and the Middle East and North Africa are particularly encouraged. Grants cover the hard costs of reporting, with amounts negotiated from a detailed budget.
Deadline: Rolling — apply any time.
Henry Nxumalo Foundation — Southern Africa Accountability Journalism Project Grants
The Southern Africa Accountability Journalism Project awards reporting grants of $1,500 to $3,000, plus editorial and production support, for investigations that expose wrongdoing and abuses of power in the SADC region. Freelance journalists and staff reporters or editors based in South Africa, eSwatini, Lesotho, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, or Mozambique may apply, and cross-border collaborations are favoured.
Deadline: Rolling — apply any time.
MacDowell Fellowship — Spring/Summer 2027
Residencies of up to eight weeks at MacDowell’s campus in Peterborough, New Hampshire, for poets, fiction and creative nonfiction writers, translators, and writers working in theatre, film, and interdisciplinary forms. There are no residency fees, and need-based stipends and travel reimbursement grants are available; the sole selection criterion is artistic excellence. This cycle covers residencies between 1st March and 31st August 2027, and MacDowell accepts applications from artists in all countries.
Deadline: 10th September 2026, 5:00pm EDT.
Fund for Investigative Journalism — Regular Grants
Regular grants of up to $10,000 for freelance journalists, staff reporters, and media outlets producing non-partisan investigative reporting in any format, including print, online, broadcast, books, documentaries, and podcasts. Separate seed grants of $1,000 to $2,500 fund preliminary reporting, and follow-up grants of up to $2,500 support further coverage of investigations FIJ has already funded. There is no nationality restriction, but stories based outside the United States must have a very strong US angle, be published in English, and have a US outlet.
Deadline: 14th September 2026, 11:59pm ET.
The Eccles Institute & Hay Festival Global Writer’s Award
Two awards of £20,000 each, paid in four £5,000 instalments tied to deliverables, plus a residency of up to a year at the British Library with access to its curatorial expertise in the Americas collections. Applications are open to writers based in the UK or Latin America working on a yet-to-be-published book relating to the Americas, and may be submitted in English or Spanish. Applicants must show a commitment to publish with a trade UK and/or Spanish-language publisher. Winners must spend at least 40 working days at the Library, give a Researchers’ Packed Lunch talk, lead a writers’ workshop, and write a 500-word blog, and must fund their own travel and accommodation in London.
Deadline: 14th September 2026.
Fund for Investigative Journalism — Seed Grants
Seed grants of $1,000 to $2,500 to fund preliminary reporting on an early-stage investigation, including open-records requests and initial reporting trips. Freelancers, staff reporters, and independent documentary, podcast, and photojournalism producers may apply, and no letter of commitment from an outlet is required at seed stage, although a recommendation from an editor, mentor, or professor may be submitted. No residency restriction is stated; proposals about stories based outside the United States must show a verifiable connection to a US audience or outlet, and successful seed grantees may later apply for regular grants of up to $10,000 on a rolling basis.
Deadline: 14th September 2026, 11:59pm ET.
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Miles Morland Foundation Writing Scholarships
A scholarship of £18,000 paid in monthly instalments to give writers time to complete a book, open to anyone writing in English who was born in Africa or who has at least one parent born in Africa, with no residency requirement. Fiction scholarships run over twelve months; non-fiction awards may be spread over a longer period of up to eighteen months.
Deadline: 22nd September 2026.
Literature Ireland — Translation Grant Programme (Autumn Window)
Grants to international publishers anywhere in the world towards the translator’s fee for a work of Irish literature translated from English or Irish into another language, across literary fiction, literary non-fiction, children’s literature, poetry, and drama. Applications are accepted only in the two-week windows preceding each deadline, with the autumn window running from 8th to 29th September 2026, and are judged competitively on a translation sample assessed by an independent reader.
Deadline: 29th September 2026 (autumn window opens 8th September 2026).
Wilson Center Research Fellowship
A twelve-month, non-residential fellowship running from 1st June 2027 to 30th May 2028, paying a stipend of $10,000 a month, with the Wilson Center covering trips to Washington, D.C. at the start and end of the fellowship. Between 10 and 20 fellowships are awarded to scholars, practitioners, journalists, and public intellectuals; there is no nationality or residence restriction, but applicants need a PhD plus a substantial publication record, or around ten years of professional distinction in government, policy, or the non-profit sector.
Deadline: 30th September 2026, 11:59pm ET.
Speculative Literature Foundation — Working Class Writers Grant
A $1,000 grant for speculative fiction writers who are working class, blue-collar, financially disadvantaged, or homeless, open to international applicants with no US residency requirement. Applicants submit up to 10 pages of poetry or drama, or up to 5,000 words of prose, plus a short statement on how class has affected their writing life; no prior publishing credits are needed and current financial need is prioritised.
Deadline: 30th September 2026, 11:59pm (UTC−4).
Journalismfund Europe — European Cross-Border Grants
Working grants for cross-border teams of at least two professional journalists and/or independent news outlets from at least two different European countries, investigating topics relevant to European audiences. The programme distributes €280,000 per call from a total budget of €1,680,000 across six rounds in 2026 and 2027. Grants cover research time and costs such as travel, translation, and access to paid databases, but not overheads, equipment, or production costs. At least 80 per cent of the requested budget must go to journalists or media from EU countries, although team members from outside Europe can be included where relevant to the story.
Deadline: 1st October 2026, 13:00 CET.
Alicia Patterson Fellowships
Six-month fellowships paying $20,000 or twelve-month fellowships paying $40,000, funded by the Alicia Patterson Foundation and administered by the Fund for Investigative Journalism, for in-depth written investigative reporting on any topic of public interest. Funds are paid monthly and may cover both reporting and living expenses; fellows must produce two articles over six months or four over a year. Reporting projects must be US-focused and intended for US outlets, and the fellowship is aimed at experienced reporters with a published body of in-depth work; freelancers are strongly encouraged to apply and staff journalists must take leave.
Deadline: 1st October 2026.
Journalismfund Europe — Pascal Decroos Fund for Investigative Journalism
The Pascal Decroos Fund has €270,000 available in 2026, spread over four rounds of roughly €67,500 each, for investigative journalism projects that are newsworthy, original, and too time-consuming to complete without support. It is open to professional journalists, both early-career and experienced, with no stated nationality requirement, but the resulting work must be published in a Dutch-language medium in Belgium. Applications require a project outline, dissemination plan, CV, budget on the fund’s template, and letters of intent from Flemish outlets. Journalists with less than two years’ experience are exempt from the letter-of-intent requirement.
Deadline: 1st October 2026, 13:00 CET.
Journalismfund Europe — Belgian Bridge Programme
This pilot programme, supported by the King Baudouin Foundation, has €100,000 to distribute in 2026 for collaborative investigations that cross Belgium’s language border. Teams must include at least one Dutch-speaking and one French-speaking professional journalist, all legally residing in Belgium, and a bilingual journalist can satisfy the language requirement. Projects must be rooted in a local community while carrying relevance beyond it, and must result in multilingual journalism.
Deadline: 15th October 2026, 13:00 CET.
Journalismfund Europe — The Invisible Life Grant Programme
Journalismfund Europe distributes €150,000 per call, from a €300,000 budget for 2026, to cross-border teams investigating farm animal welfare and related European interests, in or beyond Europe. Applications must come from teams of at least two professional journalists or news outlets legally residing in at least two different countries; freelancers and outlets are both eligible. Supported investigations must be published in at least two outlets in different countries, at least one of them European.
Deadline: 29th October 2026, 13:00 CET.