Danish Ministry of Culture & Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Cultural Activity Funds (autumn deadline)

This is Denmark's fund for international cultural collaboration, run jointly by the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. For a musician it covers the practical costs of taking a project abroad with partners there: travel and accommodation at state rates, local transport, communication, documentation and PR, entry authorisations where relevant, and professional networking events tied to the project. Projects taking place inside Denmark are not eligible, and neither are film or media production, sport, or food and gastronomy.

You need to be a professional artist or cultural operator with a professional affiliation to the Danish art and culture scene. Crucially, you do not apply directly: applications go through a Danish embassy or cultural institute, which only forwards those that meet the criteria and make sense in the local context. In practice that means getting your material to the relevant embassy roughly a week before the Danish deadline so staff can review it and suggest changes.

There are two deadlines a year, 9 February and 24 October at 2pm Danish time. The minimum total request is DKK 20,000. No ceiling is published, but the split matters: requests up to DKK 150,000 are decided by the Danish Agency for Culture and Palaces within about four weeks, and anything above that is assessed by the two ministries and takes around eight. Full financing is never available — partners are expected to put in their own resources and to seek primary funding elsewhere, such as the Danish Arts Foundation. The application needs a project description and a budget on the Agency's forms, showing every major cost and a finance plan covering Danish and local partners' contributions. Assessment weighs professional quality, genuine collaboration and local interest, network and long-term perspective, and how well the project will be communicated.