Our 2026 open call is live
Date: September 1, 2026 Author: The Supporting Act Foundation
We are thrilled to announce our fifth annual open call for grants is now live, with a total of €600,000 available in unrestricted funding!
At The Supporting Act Foundation, we believe that when artists thrive we all benefit.
Our programs empower emerging artists from underrepresented or marginalized groups and support ambitious arts-focused nonprofits, enabling them to create equitable art scenes, build communities, foster opportunities for growth, and ultimately to expand their own programs.
Our approach is focused on tackling the key drivers of precarity, vulnerability, and discrimination that face artists and arts nonprofits alike. These sources of insecurity erode artists’ ability to invest in the future and to fully realise their potential.
The unrestricted grants we give provide support to our grantees, giving both the artists and nonprofits we support the time, freedom, and structure to focus on what matters most for their creative and organisational development.
The Artist Grant
10 grants of €10,000 will be given to emerging artists from underrepresented groups whose practices involve a form of collaborative, collective, or creative processes that incorporates or benefits their community.
These grants aim to improve living conditions for recipients and to enable them to dedicate more time to developing their practices. The grants are open to artists with 2-10 years of professional experience living in Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, or the UK.
Find out more about the Artist Grant here:
Artist Grant 2026
The Impact Grant
10 grants of €50,000 will be given to arts-focused nonprofits that are already working to support emerging artists from marginalized communities.
These grants are given over a two year period and are designed to support organizations whose aims are aligned with our own: improving living conditions for artists, enabling them to dedicate more time to developing their practices, increasing the visibility of their work, and boosting their self-confidence.
To be eligible nonprofits must have been registered between 2016 and 2024, and be based in Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, or the UK; or have a fiscal host in one of those countries.
Read more about the Impact Grant here:
Impact Grant 2026
Selection committees
Our mission is to create better opportunities for emerging artists from underrepresented groups and foster positive change in the wider arts sector. To support this, our selection process is designed to be consistent, inclusive, and equitable. These are our guiding selection principles:
- Applications are reviewed by fully independent committees made up of artists, curators, and organisers, bringing diverse perspectives and lived experience to the process.
- We include former grantees in our committees in order to bring in their experience into the decision making process.
- Our criteria are publicly available, and every eligible application is scored by at least two committee members in the initial stages of our selection process. The highest-scoring applications are then reviewed by the full committee, which reaches a consensus on the final grantees.
This year, we’ve expanded both committees from five to seven members to bring even more perspectives into the process.
This year’s Artist Grant Selection Committee:
- Beth Davies, strategist for artists & creative organisations
- Emiko Ogawa, head of Prix Arts Electronica
- Imed Alibi, percussionist, composer and artistic director at Tilal Utique
- Irini Papadimitriou, curator and exhibitions director
- Lorena Pires, opera singer - 2025 Artist Grant recipient
- Rawz, multi-media artist - 2025 Artist Grant recipient
- Salim Bayri, visual artist
Read more about them
This year’s Impact Grant Selection Committee:
- Adwoa Amoah, artist, curator and co-director of the Foundation for Contemporary Art, Ghana
- Federico Bomba, artistic director of Sineglossa
- Maka Chkhaidze, founder of InForm - 2025 Impact Grant recipient
- Marie McPartlin, director of Somerset House Studios
- Nicolas Derné, co-founder of Association Zofi - 2025 Impact Grant recipient
- Rocío Mateo-Sagasta, head of music & film at La Casa Encendida
- Tamar Guttmann, founder of Cue Collective - 2025 Impact Grant recipient
Read more about them
Applications open on September 1 and close on October 1, at 11.00 AM CET.
Questions? Check out our FAQ’s or send us a message at hello@thesupportingact.org