Grant Сall for Investigative Media

The EUACI is a collaborative initiative funded by the European Union and the Government of Denmark, with the aim of supporting Ukraine in its efforts to reduce corruption at both national and local levels. The new phase, launched in January 2024, focuses on key strategic objectives: reducing corruption in Ukraine, advancing anticorruption reforms, and implementing reconstruction efforts in war-affected areas with a strong emphasis on transparency, accountability, and integrity.

The EUACI operates across four intervention areas:

1. Support to independent state institutions fighting and preventing corruption
2. Transparency and accountability of the reconstruction process
3. Support for cities in war-affected areas to enhance integrity in the reconstruction process
4. Civil society and media engagement in preventing and fighting corruption

Investigative Media Grant 2026 is announced under Intervention Area 4: Civil society and media engagement in preventing and fighting corruption.

Background

Investigative media play a crucial role in Ukraine by uncovering corruption and promoting transparency and integrity. Strong and capable investigative journalism is essential for strengthening democratic governance, fostering public trust, and empowering citizens to demand accountability. Since 2017, EUACI has supported the work of investigative media, providing assistance to some of the largest national and regional investigative teams. The primary objective of this grant is to strengthen investigative media in Ukraine and enhance their capacity to expose corruption and promote accountability.

Objectives and priority issues

The goal of the Investigative Media Grant 2026 is to strengthen investigative journalism in Ukraine journalists to conduct in-depth corruption investigations.

Key objectives of the grant competition include:

• Supporting high-quality, evidence-based anti-corruption investigations at national level.
• Enhancing the capacity and overall performance of investigative media organizations and journalists in Ukraine.
• Raising public awareness and fostering a culture of integrity and accountability among citizens.

Geographic Scope:

Applications from regional investigative media outlets are welcome; however, priority will be given during the evaluation process to investigative media operating at the national level.

Budget

• Total competition budget: EUR 200,000
• Expected number of grants: 2-3
• Optimum grant size: up to EUR 80,000
• Maximum grant size: EUR 100,000
• Implementation period: The project duration is a maximum of 9 months, depending on the planned activities, and all projects must be completed by 31 December 2026.

Eligibility criteria

Applicants must:

• Be a legal entity officially registered according to Ukrainian legislation
• Be a nonprofit civil society organization with codes 0032, 0034, 0036, 0038, 0039.
• Have proven experience in the investigative media
• Have proven organizational capacity to manage and implement grants.

Please note! Applications may be submitted individually or in consortia/partnerships/networks

A positive financial assessment by the EUACI of the selected project will be a condition for receiving support.

Evaluation criteria

Proposals will be evaluated based on:

• Compliance with formal eligibility criteria
• Relevance to the objectives of the call
• Experience and expertise of the organization
• Project feasibility, clarity, and potential for impact
• Budget clarity and cost-effectiveness
• Sustainability and scalability of proposed solutions
• The level of the thematic expertise of the organization and experience in the anticorruption sphere.

Evaluation will be conducted by a Selection Committee composed of external investigative media experts, along with EUACI team members.

The evaluation of received proposals will be based on the following overall criteria:

Eligibility of costs

Only eligible costs can be covered by a grant. See Annex E. Applicants may include costs for organizational development, strategic planning, fundraising events, and similar activities in the project budget.

Ethics and code of conduct

Grant applicants are expected to live up to high ethical standards as well as organisational integrity, including respect for human rights as well as environmental legislation, compliance with core labour standards and zero-tolerance for sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment (SEAH), corruption, money-laundering and terrorism. Applicants may be excluded at any stage of the selection process if they do not live up to requirements in this area.

Duration, grant size and number of proposals to be selected

The planned duration of the proposal must not exceed 9 months and all projects must be completed by 31 December 2026.

The overall indicative amount made available under this Call for proposals is 200 000 EUR.

Application and selection process

To apply for this call for proposals applicants must provide information about the organisations/entities involved in the proposal by completing the Background information form (see template in Annex F).

The MFA is not obliged to fully support the proposals submitted. Hence, the MFA will inform the lead applicants that have been preselected, about their tentative level of funding and give feedback to the concept note. However, the MFA shall not define any activity and/or output, as this would constitute grounds for a procurement process instead of a grant award.

Applicants must complete the Project Proposal (Annex 1) and Project Budget (Annex 2), Background information (see template in Annex F) forms in English and submit them via email to: [email protected] and cc [email protected] with the subject line: Investigative Media Grant 2026  

Applications received after the deadline or without a detailed budget will not be considered.

If you do not receive a confirmation of receipt within 3 working days, please contact: [email protected] and [email protected]

Information Session

A presentation of the grant call will be held on January 26, 2026, at 11:00 Kyiv time in both online and offline formats.

• Online broadcast: EUACI YouTube channel and Facebook page
• Registration link: https://forms.gle/j56yp3MbRNbEhPUP9

Questions and Clarifications

Questions in English or Ukrainian should be sent to [email protected]  and [email protected] no later than February, 23, 2026, at 17:00 Kyiv time with a clear reference to the title of the call Investigative Media Grant 2026. EUACI may decline to respond to questions submitted after this deadline.

Please note that EUACI will not provide prior assessments of applicant eligibility or proposal content.

The project proposal will be evaluated and scored by the MFA Evaluation Committee.

The MFA will make the final selection of application(s) based on the scoring of the full project proposals. The MFA will inform the applicants about the outcome of the evaluation by March 23, 2026.

The MFA reserves the right to reject applications that do not conform to the instructions at any stage of the selection process.

Final eligibility assessment

Before the final award of grant, the MFA must conduct a final eligibility assessment, e.g., by requiring supporting documents and initiating further inquiries as part of the MFA’s obligation to carry out a partner assessment/ due diligence review (cf. MFA Financial Management Guidelines for Development Cooperation)[1].  The purpose of this assessment is to ascertain grant recipients’ financial, operational, organisational capacity and compliance with general safeguards and MFA requirements.

Administration and dialogue with the MFA

The call for proposals and the subsequent project/grant will be managed by Component 4: Civil society and media engagement in preventing and fighting corruption.

The grant will be administered according to the Guidelines for bilateral cooperation Guidelines for Programmes, Projects, Country Strategic Frameworks & Hard Earmarked Multilateral Support]

Tentative timetable for the application and selection process

[1] https://amg.um.dk/bilateral-cooperation/financial-management