UK Artist Touring Fund: £8k Top-Ups, Apply by 11 SeptThe FAC's touring top-up reopened this week with £300,000 from the ticket levy and an £8,000 ceiling. Here are the rules from the guidance document, how the 75 to 2,000 capacity window maps onto the rooms we list, and what a headline date in them pays right now.
The short version
The Featured Artists Coalition's UK Artist Touring Fund reopened on 26 August with £300,000 from the LIVE Trust ticket levy, up from £125,000 in the spring. An artist can ask for £1,000 to £8,000, capped at 40 per cent of tour costs, for a UK run with at least three headline shows in rooms of 75 to 2,000 capacity. Applications close on 11 September 2026.
Below: what changed and what the first round actually paid for, the eligibility rules taken from the FAC's own guidance document rather than the press release, how the 75 to 2,000 window maps onto the rooms in our directory, what a headline date in those rooms pays right now from our own fee data, and what to do before the deadline.
- £300kLIVE Trust contribution to UKAT round two, collected from the voluntary £1 ticket levy, per the FAC and Music Ally
- £8,000Maximum request per artist, or 40 per cent of total tour expenditure, whichever is lower, per the FAC guidance
- 11 SeptApplication deadline for round two. Funded dates must be completed by 30 April 2027
- 211 showsDates the first round kept on the road, from £125,000 shared by 26 artists, per the FAC
- 1,239 roomsDirectory venues whose listed capacity sits inside the 75 to 2,000 window, from 1,454 with a capacity on file (census 29 August 2026)
- 2,620+Grassroots venues in the GigXchange directory across 90+ cities, read live
Fund figures and rules are from the FAC guidance document and the coverage linked in the body. Capacity counts are a dated census of the GigXchange venue directory and only count rooms with a capacity on file. Fee medians are GX Index UK values refreshed 29 August 2026, each with the number of observed bookings behind it. Directory totals are read live as the page loads.
1. What changed this week, and what round one paid for
If you have three headline dates pencilled for the autumn and the sums do not add up, this is the week to read the small print. On Monday 24 August Music Ally reported that the LIVE Trust has more than doubled its support for the UK Artist Touring Fund (UKAT), the top-up scheme run by the Featured Artists Coalition with the Music Managers Forum and the Musicians' Union. Access All Areas put the new money at £300,000, collected from the voluntary £1 ticket contribution on arena and stadium shows by artists including Harry Styles, Take That, Wolf Alice, Lorde and Radiohead.
The application window opened at 10am on Wednesday 26 August and, per Mixmag, closes on Friday 11 September. The form is a Typeform and the rules are in an eight-page application and budget guidance PDF. I have read the PDF rather than the press coverage, because TheTicketingBusiness and the guidance disagree on one of the numbers, and the guidance is the version an assessor will use.
£125,000 became £300,000, a 140 per cent rise
UKAT launched in March. Music Week covered the first window opening on 11 March with support of up to £7,000 per artist, and Clash carried the FAC's own framing: a rapid-response first phase for UK-based artists on domestic headline runs in small to mid-sized venues, with shows to be completed by 31 October 2026. The pot, per the same Clash report, was £125,000 channelled from the LIVE Trust.
Round two is £300,000, which the FAC describes in the Access All Areas piece as a 140 per cent increase, and the per-artist ceiling moves from £7,000 to £8,000. TheTicketingBusiness adds a second change: the FAC has partnered with the Northern Music Export Office, run by Generator, to co-fund successful applicants based in the North East, Tees Valley and West Yorkshire. More on why that matters for routing in section 3.
Round one: 26 artists, 211 shows, and 5 per cent of the ask
The FAC published the first-round results in April. Record of the Day carried the release: 26 artists received up to £7,000 each, covering 211 shows at grassroots and mid-sized venues that, in the FAC's words, might otherwise have been cancelled. That is roughly £592 per show if you divide the pot evenly, which nobody did, but it gives you the scale.
The number that matters more is the one Music Ally pulled out of the same announcement. More than 250 artists applied to the first phase, with a combined shortfall of £2.3 million, and the fund could meet about 5 per cent of it. Round two has 2.4 times the money, and the FAC's David Martin told Music Ally this week that demand is still expected to outstrip supply. Apply on the basis that it is competitive, because it is.
2. Who qualifies, from the FAC guidance rather than the headlines
The eligibility section of the application is a set of yes or no questions, and the guidance is blunt that a single no ends the application for this round. The table below is my reading of Parts 2, 4 and 5 of the guidance PDF. Where the trade press differs, I have gone with the PDF.
| Rule | What the guidance says | Where people trip |
|---|---|---|
| Who | A releasing artist, solo or group, aged 18 or over, resident in the UK with the right to work here and a UK bank account. At least one original release in the last three years on a chart-eligible streaming service. DJs whose primary performance is DJing are included. | Covers, tribute and function acts are named as not suitable. A manager can submit, but every criterion applies to the artist and the award goes to the artist. |
| The tour | A minimum of three UK headline shows, in venues of 75 to 2,000 capacity. Support, co-headline and festival dates can sit in the same application with no capacity limit on them. | Headline dates under 75 or over 2,000 must be left out of the budget entirely. Showcases and non-UK dates are excluded. |
| Booking shape | At least 75 per cent of dates promoter-booked with guarantees. No more than 25 per cent self-promoted or dry-hire. | TheTicketingBusiness reported the dry-hire ceiling as 35 per cent. The guidance says 25. A run you have promoted yourself on door splits is outside the fund. |
| Confirmation | Three headline shows confirmed at the point of application. Pencilled dates can go in the budget, but every date must be confirmed before money is released. | You can apply on holds, but you cannot be paid on them. |
| The money | Minimum £1,000, maximum £8,000, and never more than 40 per cent of total tour expenditure or more than your evidenced shortfall. | Merchandise income and costs are excluded from the budget. Access costs go through a separate Access Fund, not the main budget. |
| Other funding | No substantial touring support from a label, publisher, sponsor or public funder for the same activity, and no significant personal backing. | Modest label tour support does not disqualify you, but it must be declared and UKAT cannot fund the same line twice. |
| Timing | All UKAT-supported dates completed by 30 April 2027. | A spring tour that runs into May is not eligible for the May dates. |
UKAT round two eligibility, from the FAC's application and budget guidance (August 2026)
The three-headline-show rule is the one that decides most applications
Everything else in the table is a detail you can check against your own situation in a minute. The three-show rule is different because it is a routing problem, not a paperwork one. You need three confirmed headline dates, with a promoter and a guarantee on at least three-quarters of the run, in rooms whose capacity sits between 75 and 2,000. If you have two confirmed, the fund is closed to you this round. Once you have three confirmed, further dates on hold can go into the budget, but every one of them has to become a contract before any money moves.
The guidance also says something the press coverage skipped: UKAT is not for a first, speculative or developmental tour. The FAC wants a track record of touring as well as releasing. If this autumn is your first run, the honest move is to build the three-date habit now and apply in a later phase.
The 40 per cent cap, worked through with the FAC's own numbers
The guidance gives three worked examples, and they are worth reading because the cap bites in a way people do not expect. In the FAC's first example a tour costs £18,000 and brings in £11,000 of guarantees, so the shortfall is £7,000. Forty per cent of £18,000 is £7,200, which is under the £8,000 ceiling, so the artist can ask for the full £7,000 shortfall. In the third example the tour costs £16,000 and brings in £9,000: the shortfall is again £7,000, but 40 per cent of £16,000 is only £6,400, so £6,400 is the most that can be requested and the artist has to explain how the remaining £600 gets covered.
Turn that round for a grassroots-scale run and the arithmetic gets tight. To ask for the £1,000 minimum, 40 per cent of your total costs has to reach £1,000, so your documented tour expenditure needs to be at least £2,500 and your shortfall at least £1,000. Three dates at our pub and bar median for a three or four piece (section 4) bring in £1,050 of guarantees, which means the run only qualifies if you can evidence costs above £2,050 and, for the cap, above £2,500. Van, fuel, accommodation and fair pay for the people in it will get you there quickly, and the guidance says fair pay is not optional: the budget must show no unpaid labour.
What rules you out before you start
Three things in Part 2 of the guidance are absolute. You are a covers, tribute or function act. You have no touring history and want to fund a first tour. You already have substantial backing for these dates from a label, a publisher, a sponsor or a public funder such as Arts Council England or PRS Foundation. The guidance is careful on the last one: modest label support that covers a small share of costs is fine if you declare it, but the fund will not pay for a line another body is already paying for.
One more that is easy to miss. Merchandise is out of the budget on both sides. You do not get to count the merch table as income, and you do not get to claim the cost of the stock. The shortfall is calculated on fees and guarantees against the cost of delivering the shows, full stop.
3. The rooms that count: our directory against the 75 to 2,000 window
The capacity window is the part of the criteria I can actually put numbers against, because the GigXchange grassroots venue directory holds a capacity for a large share of the rooms in it. On 29 August 2026 the directory held 2,628 active venues, of which 1,454 carry a capacity figure. The table below is those 1,454 rooms sorted into the fund's bands. It is a census of what we hold, not a count of every room in the country, and rooms without a capacity on file are left out rather than guessed.
| Listed capacity | Rooms | Share of rooms with a capacity | UKAT headline eligible? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 75 | 163 | 11.2% | No |
| 75 to 199 | 516 | 35.5% | Yes |
| 200 to 499 | 431 | 29.6% | Yes |
| 500 to 999 | 168 | 11.6% | Yes |
| 1,000 to 2,000 | 124 | 8.5% | Yes |
| Over 2,000 | 52 | 3.6% | No |
| Inside the window | 1,239 | 85.2% |
GigXchange venue directory by listed capacity, rooms with a capacity on file (census 29 August 2026)
Two things stand out. The median room in the directory holds 200 people, which is the low end of what a promoter would call a grassroots headline room and comfortably inside the window. And the fund's floor of 75 excludes 163 of the rooms we list, most of them pub back rooms and cafes. If your usual circuit is that size, a UKAT run means stepping up a room, which is exactly the shape of tour the FAC says it wants to fund.
By nation, using postcode areas, 993 of the 1,166 English rooms with a capacity sit inside the window, 154 of 183 in Scotland, 60 of 67 across Wales and the Welsh border postcodes, and 28 of 34 in Northern Ireland. Four rooms with no usable postcode are left out of that split. The proportion is between 82 and 90 per cent in every nation, so within our directory at least this is not a window that quietly favours one part of the UK.
Where a three-date run fits: 74 hubs with three or more eligible rooms
The three-show rule does not say the shows must be in different cities, but a tour that plays the same room three times is not a tour, and the guidance encourages applicants to highlight tours that reach underserved regions and venues. So the useful question is how many places have enough eligible rooms to anchor a date. In the same census, 86 of our directory hubs have at least one room inside the window, 74 have three or more, and 61 have five or more. London leads with 156 eligible rooms, then Glasgow with 78, Manchester 71, Leeds and Liverpool 47 each, Edinburgh 40, Birmingham 35, and Sheffield and Bristol 33 each.
The long tail is where the routing opportunity is. Blackpool has 21 eligible rooms, Margate and Exeter 18 each, Inverness 14. A three-date run that avoids the obvious cities is easier to get promoter-booked with a guarantee, because the promoter is not competing with four other shows that night, and it reads well against the guidance's request to highlight underserved audiences, regions or venues. The gig directory shows what is already on sale in each of those hubs, which is a quick way to see who is promoting where.
North East, Tees Valley and West Yorkshire: the co-funded regions
Round two's partnership with the Northern Music Export Office means applicants based in the North East, Tees Valley and West Yorkshire are jointly funded by NMEO and the FAC. The guidance says you do not apply separately: eligible applications are picked out in the standard process. Generator's Mick Ross, quoted by TheTicketingBusiness, framed it as helping Northern artists reach national audiences and build towards being export-ready.
The rooms are there to route through. Our census puts 44 eligible rooms across the NE, DH, SR and TS postcode areas and 63 across LS, BD, HX, HD and WF. If you are based in those regions, a run that starts at home and reaches out is the natural shape, and it is one the co-funding is designed for.
4. What a headline date in those rooms pays right now
The shortfall is a costs-minus-income sum, and the income side is the guarantee. The GX Index tracks what UK bookings actually pay, by setting and act size, from observed gigs rather than asking rates. These are the pub and bar medians refreshed on 29 August 2026, with the number of bookings behind each, plus the one club figure with enough observations to be worth printing. They are the guarantees a grassroots headline run is realistically built on.
| Setting and act size | Lower quartile | Median | Upper quartile | Bookings observed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pub or bar, solo | £150 | £250 | £310 | 232 |
| Pub or bar, duo | £300 | £375 | £500 | 45 |
| Pub or bar, trio or four piece | £250 | £350 | £600 | 187 |
| Pub or bar, five or more | £400 | £525 | £1,125 | 157 |
| Club, trio or four piece | £450 | £600 | £1,463 | 11 (thin, treat as indicative) |
GX Index UK fee medians for pubs and bars, and clubs, by act size (refreshed 29 August 2026)
Read the trio and four-piece row against the fund. Three headline dates at the £350 median is £1,050 in guarantees. Three at the upper quartile is £1,800. Either way the income side of a three-date grassroots run is four figures at best, and the cost side, once you pay the four people in the van, runs well past it. That gap is what the FAC means by the cost of touring crisis, and the Culture, Media and Sport Committee inquiry, whose 2024 report Clash says the FAC cites as the fund's origin, identified the same pressures on artists.
Two practical uses of the table. First, put the median in the budget as your realistic income, not the offer you hope to get, because the guidance asks for confirmed and realistic guarantees and an assessor who sees £600 a night from a pub will ask where it came from. Second, use the rate calculator to get the per-head figure for your line-up before you fill in the fair-pay lines, which the form asks you to evidence. The full city-by-city matrix is in the GX Index rates post, and the calculator sits with the other free tools.
Why the shortfall exists even when the room is full
Take a 200-cap room at, say, £10 a ticket. It grosses £2,000 on a sell-out, before VAT, PRS, the promoter's costs and the venue's cut. The artist's guarantee comes out of what is left, which is why the observed median for a four piece in a pub or bar is £350 and not £1,000. The FAC's line in the Access All Areas report is that for the vast majority of artists the fixed costs of performing in small and medium venues far outweigh ticket income or guarantees. Our numbers do not contradict that. They put a figure on the guarantee half of it.
5. What this means for each role
UKAT pays artists, but a top-up on the artist side changes the sum for everyone else in the run. Here is the short version by role.
6. Also this week: Grassroots Networking Day returns on 13 October
Music Venue Trust, the Association of Independent Promoters, the Association of Independent Festivals and the Entertainment Agents' Association have confirmed a second Grassroots Networking Day in London on 13 October 2026, per Festival Insights. The format is a day of meetings between booking agents, promoters and festival programmers, aimed at putting better shows into grassroots rooms and independent festivals. Tickets are £30, with travel bursaries for delegates outside London, and members of the four organisations get booking details in early September.
It belongs in the same post as UKAT because the fund's hardest rule, three promoter-booked headline dates, is a relationships problem before it is a money problem. A room full of the people who write guarantees is where those relationships start. If you are a promoter or agent working grassroots rooms, the ticket price is the cheapest route to the next round's applicants I can think of.
7. What to do before 11 September
- Read Parts 1 to 3 of the guidance before you open the form. The FAC guidance PDF says so itself, and the eligibility questions in section 1 end the application on a single no.
- Count your confirmed headline dates and check each room's capacity. Three or more, promoter-booked, 75 to 2,000 cap. The venue directory lists capacity where we hold it, and the venue's own site is the authority where we do not.
- Build the budget from the FAC template with real income. Use the touring budget template on the UKAT hub, confirmed guarantees on the income side, and every person in the touring party paid on the cost side. Merch out, access costs in the separate Access Fund section.
- Check the 40 per cent cap against your own numbers. Your request is the lowest of £8,000, 40 per cent of total expenditure, and your evidenced shortfall. If a gap remains after the award, the form asks how you will cover it, so have an answer.
- Price the dates from data, not hope. UK gig rate data by setting and act size, and the rate calculator for the per-head sum the fair-pay line needs.
- Submit before Friday 11 September. The application form is a Typeform. Round one had more than 250 applicants for 26 awards, so a complete, early application is an edge you control.
If UKAT is not for you this round, the Liveline Fund post covers Music Venue Trust's loss-cover streams, and the ticket levy post explains where the £300,000 came from and why it exists at all. The money in the grassroots this year is real and it is being handed out by people who know the circuit. The rooms to spend it in are in the directory, and the August round-up has the levy totals that fed this round. If you play open mics rather than headline rooms today, the open mic finder is where the three-date habit usually starts.
Frequently Asked Questions
Annual refresh commitment
This guide was published on 29 August 2026 and is refreshed every August. Fund rounds, levy totals and fee medians move month to month, so annual verification matters. We re-verify every reference, recommendation, and data point once a year. Next scheduled refresh: August 2027. If any claim is outdated before then, email support@gigxchange.app and we will update it within 24 hours.
