For the grantee

The grant must be used according to the plan laid out in the grant application and in accordance with the grant decision.

It is not necessary to notify the Cultural Foundation upon accepting the grant.

Grant-funded work may begin, and expenditure grant may be used, as follows:

• January round of applications, from mid-May at the earliest
• March round, from June at the earliest
• August round, from November at the earliest
• October round, from February at the earliest

Timeline for using the grant:

• The grant must be activated and its first instalment drawn within three years of its award date.
• The last grant instalment must be activated and drawn within five years of its award date.
• The final instalment of a multi-year grant must be drawn within five years of its first award date.

Extensions to the three- and five‑year deadlines may be granted only for exceptional reasons, such as serious illness or multiple consecutive parental leaves. Extension requests are made on the Online Service for Grantees. Receiving another grant or employment is not grounds for an extension.

The grant may be a working grant, an expenditure grant, or a combination of the two.

Grant payment proposals are made on the Online Service for Grantees. The grant money is transferred to a single IBAN bank account submitted by the recipient. The transfers from the Cultural Foundation bank account are made on the first working day of the month and weekly on Wednesdays. July instalments are paid during the last week of June.

The grants are paid in one or more, minimum of 2 000-euro instalments according to a timetable dictated by purpose of use and actual use. It is advisable to allocate the payments in such a way that during each tax year only the amount to be used that year is drawn. The full payment proposal does not need to be submitted at once.

The grant payment proposal must be completed using a form if the recipient is:

• an organisation
• under 15 years of age
• without Finnish online banking credentials.

For organisations, the form is available on the Online Service for Grantees. In other cases, the Cultural Foundation can send the form via secure email upon request.

The Cultural Foundation understands that plans laid out in the grant application can evolve before or during the use of the grant. Some changes may be implemented by the recipient themselves, but others require the recipient to contact the Cultural Foundation.

The following changes may be implemented without contacting the Cultural Foundation:

• scaling the work or project plan in accordance to the overall funding received
• changing venue or implementation location (e.g. a gallery or a university)
• clarifying the purpose of use
• budget reallocations (between cost types)
• changes in working group member time allocations with short-term (less than 4-month) grants
• work or project schedule adjustments

The following changes require contacting the Cultural Foundation:

• change in the purpose of the grant
• change in the working percentage
• changes in the working group composition or the person responsible
• change of an organisation’s contact person
• non-use of a grant or its part
• suspension of grant use due to, e.g. full-time employment, other equivalent funding, family or sick leave, or paid annual leave

A grant awarded for personal work cannot be applied to be moved to a different individual to use. A grant that has in its entirety been awarded for a certain purpose of use, for example for doctoral dissertation work, for postdoctoral research or as an expenditure grant, cannot be later applied to be used for a completely different purpose.

Contact with the Cultural Foundation is made on the Online Service for Grantees. Responses to amendment requests are provided promptly – no later than two weeks.

The report on the use of the grant is done when the grant has been fully used. In addition, large grants require a progress report, which is noted in the grant decision.

The grant and the Finnish Cultural Foundation or the regional fund that awarded it should be mentioned in different contexts, and the source of funding included in a scientific thesis or publication, concert programme, exhibition catalogue, or any such document. The logo of the fund that awarded the grant must be used in press releases, on websites, brochures, publications, etc.

Printable logos of the Finnish Cultural Foundation’s Central Fund and the Regional Funds may be found here.

On social media, use the hashtags #kulttuurirahastontuella or #skr2025 (the year the grant was awarded).

In foreign-language contexts, use the following translations of the Finnish Cultural Foundation:

• Suomen Kulttuurirahasto
• Finska Kulturfonden
• Finnische Kulturstiftung
• Fondation Finlandaise pour la Culture
• Fundación Finlandesa para la Cultura
• Fondazione Culturale Finlandese

Grants awarded for studies, scientific research, or artistic work are tax-exempt up to the amount equivalent to state artist grant.

The Cultural Foundation notifies the Finnish Tax Administration of a grant or an award if the amount paid within the tax year is at least 1 000 euros (National Board of Taxation’s decision 1052/2003). The notification is made after the closing of the tax year in January and includes the name, the personal identification number, and the address of the grant recipient, the purpose of the grant, and the amount paid during the tax year.

Grants are deemed as income for the tax year during which they are paid. Therefore, it is advisable to time grant withdrawals so that only the amount intended to be using during the tax year is withdrawn.

A grant paid by the Cultural Foundation appears in the grant recipient’s pre-completed tax return as a taxable grant – even if the grant is tax exempt.

The Cultural Foundation submits a notification of a grant awarded to a working group under the personal identification number of the person responsible of the working group. The person responsible may make changes to the tax return on MyTax (OmaVero) or by using a separate form, according to the instructions of the Tax Administration. A working group member having received grant money must respectively notify the Tax Administration of a grant received during the tax year not shown in their taxation.

More information on the taxation of grants and awards may be found on the website of The Tax Administration and The Association of Finnish Foundations.

Enquiries regarding grant instalments and payment schedules should primarily be directed to apurahainfo(at)skr.fi and other enquiries concerning the use of the grant to the Online Service for Grantees.