This is how the application process works
After you have submitted your application via our application system, we will send it for peer review. Peer review is carried out either within the nationwide evaluation process or within a regional fund’s evaluation process.
Your application will be processed and evaluated in confidence, in accordance with strict rules on conflicts of interest.
Our evaluation panels, which consist of experts in different fields of research or the arts, will recommend applicants for funding. The final decision on grants awarded is made by the Finnish Cultural Foundation’s Board of Trustees.
When announcing our grant decisions, we will publish the grantee’s degree or profession, name, potential artist name, place of residence, the intended use of the grant and the sum awarded on our website. We will also send the same information to the media.
How will your application be evaluated?
Peer review means that your application is evaluated by other researchers or artists. At the Finnish Cultural Foundation, an application is usually evaluated by two peer reviewers. An expert may evaluate applications in no more than two application rounds. After their second peer review assignment, they are subject to a three-year period of non-availability.
We select the experts for our panels from our pool of experts, who come from all over Finland.
For science and research experts, the criteria are a doctoral degree and active involvement in research. Art experts should generally have at least five years of professional experience in artistic practice, other professional activity or research in their field.
How Different Grants Are Evaluated at the Finnish Cultural Foundation
All applications are peer-reviewed by evaluation panels specific to each scientific and artistic discipline. Science and research applications will be reviewed within the nationwide evaluation process, whilst art applications will be reviewed within the nationwide evaluation process or a regional fund’s evaluation process, depending on the sum applied for and whether the applicant is a private individual, a working group or an organisation. Applications are allocated to the different regional funds primarily according to the location where the project will be carried out. Other potential criteria include the applicant’s place of residence or some other connection to the region.
We will notify applicants of the grant decisions in early February and announce them publicly at the end of February.
If you have been awarded a multi-year grant, you are required to submit a separate continuation application for each year included in the original plan. The online form is open throughout the year. Applications will not be re-peer-reviewed. You will be granted an extension year if your work has progressed well and you have not received alternative funding for it.
We make decisions once a month, except in July. The processing time is approximately two months from the date the application is submitted. We will notify you of our decision after processing your application.
The application form for mobility grants for artists and art critics will be open throughout the year from 1 October 2026. Applications are peer-reviewed and applicants are notified of the decisions three times a year.
Residency applications are evaluated in two stages. They are first peer-reviewed at the Finnish Cultural Foundation, after which the best applications are forwarded to the residencies for evaluation. They then select the final participants in accordance with their own procedures.
We will announce the decisions and publish the names of the selected artists during the autumn as and when the residencies confirm their selections.
The Finnish Cultural Foundation’s collection of musical instruments has a five-member committee of experts who make recommendations on borrowers. The committee members represent a broad spectrum of string instrument professionals in Finland.
We will notify applicants of the decisions in good time before the loan period begins.
How do we deal with conflicts of interest?
We inform the experts evaluating the applications of the kinds of circumstances that mean there is a conflict of interest. If there is a conflict of interest, the expert does not evaluate the application in question. If a conflict of interest is identified in good time, the application is allocated to another evaluation panel.
In some cases of conflict of interest, the application is not processed at all. Grants are not awarded to the Finnish Cultural Foundation’s trustees, staff or their close relatives.
An expert or a trustee in a regional fund may, however, apply for a grant from the Finnish Cultural Foundation themselves, but the panel of which they are a member cannot evaluate their application.
What influences our grant decisions
The Finnish Cultural Foundation’s statutory mission is to “promote and develop cultural and economic life in Finland.” In practice, this means that we fund research and artistic projects whose creators are Finnish or live in Finland, or who have a clear, strong connection to Finland or Finnish culture.
Grant decisions are also influenced by the wishes of donors. A donor can request that their funds are allocated to a specific purpose, such as a particular field of research or art. The Finnish Cultural Foundation has around 1,000 donor funds. The purposes for which these funds are allocated play a part in determining the fields to which we award grants. However, applicants do not need to consider which donor fund their work might fall into when applying, nor can they choose one themselves in their application.
In addition to the purpose, the Finnish Cultural Foundation is guided by a strategy whose priority areas are ‘All of Finland’, ‘The best of the future’ and ‘Strong science and art’. The strategy specifically sets the course of the foundation’s own activities in research, the arts and culture, but we also monitor our implementation of the strategy by collecting data related to these strategic themes on grants.
Our grant decisions are based on peer reviews. We encourage the experts evaluating the applications to select the projects and applicants they personally believe in and wish to give a chance to.
A good application demonstrates the applicant’s competence and why the project is important. The application should be clear and well-presented, and the work plan, timetable and budget should be credible. We recommend you let your personality shine through your application.
Competition for grants becomes fiercer every year. We receive around 20,000 applications annually, of which fewer than ten per cent are successful. Due to their large number, we are unfortunately unable to provide feedback on individual applications. You can find statistics on the grants we have awarded on our website. You can also browse all the awarded grants (in Finnish), for example by year or field.
Artificial intelligence in grant applications and evaluation
We use AI responsibly and systematically to support the application process. The experts and the Finnish Cultural Foundation’s staff can utilise AI, for example, to structure, summarise and verify the information in applications, as well as to identify any emerging themes. We may also utilise AI when assessing how applications relate to the purposes of our nearly one thousand donor funds. An AI-based chatbot is available during the grant application period.
We do not use AI to make decisions on applications. Data from the applications is not used to train language models. The evaluation and decisions are always made by a human.
If you wish, you can use AI to help you prepare your application, for example to support brainstorming, text editing, language checking or the clarity of your application’s structure. In the Grant Service for Applicants, you can use AI to generate keywords.
Please note, however, that you yourself are always responsible for the content and accuracy of your application, and for ensuring that it reflects your work and objectives.