Artists who can’t to tour invited to apply for latest in £300k funding: “An even bigger step to making live

UK artists who are struggling to afford to tour have one last chance to apply for the latest round of cash from the Featured Artists Coalition’s UKAT fund – aiming to take “even bigger step to making live music more inclusive”.

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Back in March, the FAC launched their first phase of offering up grants from a “seriously game-changing” £125,000 fund to help beat “the cost of touring crisis”.

In partnership with Music Managers Forum (MMF) and the Musicians’ Union (MU), the programme was funded by money collected from LIVE Trust in donations as part of a voluntary “levy” ticket contributions from the likes of Harry Styles, Radiohead, Lorde, Kasabian, Wolf Alice, and many more.

The LIVE Trust have distributed more than £500,000 so far via this and other ambitious schemes involving Music Venue Trust, with millions more said to be on the way.

Now, artists have until 11. 59pm on Sunday September 13 to submit a proposal for a share of an increased £300,000 total, to provide them with “top up” financial support to cover shortfalls in their touring budgets.

Now, as part of phase two, artists can apply for up to a maximum of £8,000 (or up to a maximum of 40 per cent of total eligible tour expenditure – whichever is lower), to fund a combination of headline, support and festival shows.

Unconfirmed/tentative show bookings (which must be confirmed prior to the award of funds) can also be included in funding applications.

Martin hailed this as “an even bigger step to making live music more inclusive and accessible to all” – with UKAT funding available for “artists of all genres, from all regions and from all backgrounds”.

In thanking the big name artists who donated money from their arena and stadium gigs, Martin said that “it’s thanks to those shows, the fans and the LIVE Trust that we can do this”.

Harry Styles has again agreed to contribute £1 from every ticket sold to his upcoming London shows in 2027 to the fund, among other charities.

While the much-discussed levy is proving a success, there remains mounting pressure for the government to make it mandatory for all gigs at arena level and above to contribute £1 from each ticket sold to supporting grassroots artists and venues.

While Martin agreed that he wanted to see a “blanket” approach, he would rather big companies come around the table to make it happen without slowing things down through government intervention.

Martin added: “It’s a positive expansion of the principles of developing artists’ careers, developing new audience pipelines and ensuring the supply chain of personnel and services is getting work.

That’s what we’re trying to achieve with UKAT by putting that funding in the artists’ hands and making that activity happen.”.

Artists have until 11. 59pm on Sunday (September 13) to apply for UKAT funding and can do so here. To qualify, tours must have a minimum of three UK headline shows in venues of between 75 and 2,000 capacity, shows must be completed by April 30 2027, and all artists, musicians, managers and crew involved must receive fair and reasonable pay – covering show days, travel days and rehearsal time.

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