Opstart

Opstart was the Nordic Culture Fund small, fast-turnaround programme for getting new Nordic collaborations off the ground, historically open on a rolling basis with awards up to DKK 25,000. DO NOT RELY ON THAT RIGHT NOW. The Fund states on its own site that, as part of implementing its 2026 to 2030 strategy, it is updating its grant-making approach and programme portfolio, that the Opstart and Project Funding programmes will be revised, and that there will be changes to the application deadlines this autumn while the new framework is finalised. As of 18 October 2026 Opstart no longer appears in the Fund funding menu at all, which now lists only ENTER and NEMO, so treat both the rolling status and the DKK 25,000 ceiling as stale until the revised programme is published. What is live instead: ENTER, described as the first launch in the new portfolio, for ambitious ideas that need collaboration to be explored and tested in practice, whose autumn window ran 14 September to 16 October 2026; and NEMO, the Northern European Mobility Opportunity, a mobility and artistic exchange programme for individual artists and arts practitioners in the early stages of their careers, run with the arts funding agencies of Ireland, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. For scale, the Fund grants around DKK 30 million a year, receives about 1,500 valid applications and funded 248 projects in 2025. Watch the Fund site for the revised Opstart framework and its new deadlines.