Kone Foundation – Annual grant call (1–15 Sep 2026)

A Finnish foundation with a wider remit than most: it funds research in the humanities, social sciences and environmental sciences, artistic research, and professional artistic work in every field of art, plus cross-disciplinary and multidisciplinary work spanning those areas. For a musician the relevant route is professional artistic work, or a project sitting between art and research.

The window is short and fixed. The annual grant call runs 1 to 15 September 2026, and the application form is only accessible on the online grant service while the call is open — so drafting in advance genuinely matters.

Applicants can be an individual, a working group, or a legal entity with a Finnish business ID.

The Foundation publishes separate pages on eligibility criteria, on the values and focuses that guide what it funds, and on how applications are evaluated. All three are worth reading, because the Foundation is explicit that its strategic values steer decisions rather than a simple scoring rubric, and it says it encourages boundary-crossing and new initiatives.

Assessment is by peer review, with reviewers drawn from research and the arts and changed each year. Funding decisions are announced in early December. The Foundation also invites the public to propose people it should invite as future peer reviewers.