Kulturdirektoratet – Statens kunstnerstipend (Government Grants for Artists)

Norway's state artist grants pay for your time as an artist rather than for a project. For a performer that means a funded stretch — months or years — to develop your playing, singing or conducting; for composers, songwriters and producers, the same for writing. There are six grant types. The long ones — a work grant of one to five years, a work grant for newly established artists of one to three years, and ten-year grants for established and senior artists — all pay NOK 342,193 a year in 2026, monthly, taxed as employment income. The two one-off grants, the miscellaneous grant and the establishment grant for artists under 35, cover up to NOK 100,000 of concrete costs: equipment, travel, courses, rent, buying in services. Neither can pay for your own working time, and both need a cost breakdown you must be able to document afterwards.

You have to mainly live and work in Norway, with exceptions where your work has real bearing on Norwegian cultural life, and be professionally active. Studying more than 15 credits a semester rules you out, as does employment averaging over 50% across the grant year for the long grants.

Applications go through Kulturdirektoratet's portal to one of 19 artist groups — musicians, singers and conductors; composers; popular-music composers; folk artists — with a short summary, a description of your practice, artistic plans, a two-page CV and up to five attachments of audio or video. Peer committees judge artistic activity and quality, and are barred from weighing anything else.