Community grants in Wales: who funds what and what is open now

Community groups in Wales have four main sources of grants: the Wales programmes of the National Lottery Community Fund, Community Foundation Wales and its named funds, the schemes WCVA runs for Welsh Government and others, and the UK-wide trusts that fund in Wales. On 26 October 2026 OpenGrant listed 130 open, rolling and forthcoming schemes for charities and community groups in Wales, 24 of them specific to Wales, with 25 closing in the next 30 days.

The funding picture in Wales

Most money reaching Welsh community groups comes from the same three kinds of funder as elsewhere in the UK, lottery distributors, community foundations and grant-making trusts, but each has a Welsh form. The Wales browse page showed 344 schemes from 102 funders on 26 October 2026, 57 of them Wales-only; the charities in Wales page narrowed that to 130 schemes from 62 funders. Of the 83 with a stated maximum, 14 were under £10,000, 24 between £10,000 and £100,000 and 45 of £100,000 or more, which is a reminder that the big lottery and government programmes sit beside the small local funds.

The regulator is the Charity Commission for England and Wales, so registration and accounts rules match England's. The national infrastructure body is WCVA, working with the County Voluntary Councils as Third Sector Support Wales, and Welsh Government publishes a code of practice for funding the third sector, updated in May 2025. The Welsh language matters to some funders: the National Lottery Community Fund has guidance on delivering your project in Welsh, and the Garfield Weston Foundation publishes its application guidelines in Welsh as well as English.

National Lottery Community Fund in Wales

The Fund's Wales page on 26 October 2026 listed four open programmes:

• National Lottery Awards for All Wales: £300 to £20,000 for projects lasting up to two years, decision in 12 weeks. Open to constituted groups, charities, CICs, schools (for community-benefit projects) and councils, on the same terms as the England programme.
• People and Places: £20,001 to £700,000 for projects that are "accessible, community-led, and focused on the issues that matter most to local people", decision in around 40 weeks.
• Supporting Great Ideas: £20,001 to £500,000 for "bold projects in Wales that aim to create positive, lasting change", decision in 12 weeks.
• Small Eco Awards: £300 to £20,000 for community-led projects tackling the climate and nature emergency in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, decision in 12 weeks.

The Fund also listed a Sustainable Steps Wales green careers programme for Cardiff. For a first grant, Awards for All Wales is the usual starting point; for anything larger, the 40-week timescale of People and Places means applying a year ahead of the work.

Community Foundation Wales

Community Foundation Wales is the national community foundation, managing named funds for donors and companies. On OpenGrant it had eight open or forthcoming schemes on 26 October 2026, including:

• Liverpool Bay CCS Limited Community Benefit Fund, up to £20,000, closing 2 November 2026 at noon.
• Gwent High Sheriff's Community Fund, up to £7,500, closing 16 November 2026 at noon.
• Education Foundation for John Vaughan – Groups and the Thomas John Jones Memorial Fund, up to £3,000, both closing 1 March 2027.

Its live schemes are tagged on OpenGrant as community development, education, religious activities and arts and heritage, all open to charities and VCSE groups. The foundation's site has a grants toolkit and a "what happens next" page for applicants. Both November deadlines are on the November 2026 deadlines page.

WCVA and Welsh Government schemes

WCVA distributes funding itself as well as running Funding Wales. Its funding page on 26 October 2026 listed the Volunteering Wales grants scheme (Welsh Government), Social Investment Cymru (grants and loans for social enterprises), the Landfill Disposals Tax Communities Scheme (community and environmental projects near landfill sites), the National Forests for Wales Landscape Scheme, MARINE Fund Cymru, Comic Relief Cwtch Communities (small grants for grassroots groups), the Wales and Africa grant scheme and a Public Health Wales gambling harms grant. Each has its own page on wcva.cymru with dates. WCVA reported distributing around £29.9 million in 2021/22, which shows the scale of this route.

UK-wide funders that reach Wales

The remaining 106 schemes on the charities in Wales page are UK-wide or GB-wide programmes open in Wales. The ones to check first are the rolling trusts: Garfield Weston Foundation (all year round, with Welsh guidance), Esmée Fairbairn Foundation (£30,000 minimum) and Henry Smith Foundation programmes as they open. The National Lottery Heritage Fund had a Wales-only round, Nature Networks Fund round six at £250,000 to £1 million, closing 3 November 2026; see environmental grants for UK charities for the rest of that field. Trusts that give across the UK can be found through the peers lookup, which shows which funders have published grants to Welsh organisations like yours.

Where to search

• Funding Wales: free after registration, run by WCVA, with news on new and reopened funds and a link to your County Voluntary Council for application support.
• OpenGrant's Wales and charities in Wales pages: free, with status, deadlines and source links, and a weekly alert for the filters you choose.
• The National Lottery Community Fund's Wales page for the lottery programmes.
• Your County Voluntary Council, which WCVA names as the first call for help with an application.

For how community funding works in every nation and region, including how to tell a local fund from a national one, read local and community grants in the UK. For unregistered groups, grants without registered charity status lists what each kind of funder will accept.