Business grants in Northern Ireland: Invest NI and Go Succeed

Two systems, and most businesses only qualify for one

Go Succeed is delivered by Northern Ireland's 11 local councils, launched in November 2023 and funded with UK government money. Its bar for entry is low by design: a legally registered Northern Ireland business, including an online business selling abroad, with only a short list of sectors excluded — gambling, money lending, adult entertainment, tobacco and vaping, and unauthorised cannabis products. Its three tiers, Start, Grow and Scale, track a business from an idea through to one with a realistic prospect of £1m or more in turnover within three years.

Invest NI sets a genuinely different bar. To become an Invest NI client your business has to be in manufacturing or tradeable services, with the potential to achieve at least 25% of sales to customers outside Northern Ireland — or a minimum of £250,000 in external sales, whichever figure is lower — and the potential to employ at least 10 staff within five years. Invest NI's own guidance is explicit that this excludes "businesses which provide services to customers that must travel to Northern Ireland to consume them", which is its plain-English way of ruling out tourism, hospitality and retail. If your growth plan doesn't involve selling outside Northern Ireland, Invest NI isn't the right door, however good the business is.

Go Succeed Start: mentoring first, a grant only when one is open

The Start tier is aimed at anyone with a business idea, a side hustle they want to scale, or an existing small business that needs a next step mapped out. It includes up to 13 hours of one-to-one mentoring from a business adviser paired with a sector-matched mentor, masterclasses and events, help building a business plan, and access to a members' area of tutorials. All of it is free. You register online at go-succeed.com and a member of the team is in touch within three working days.

Capital grants sit alongside the mentoring, but they run in funded rounds rather than being available on demand, and require match funding from the business. Go Succeed's own FAQ states plainly that the grant is currently closed. The most recent confirmed round, delivered through Ards and North Down Borough Council on behalf of all 11 council areas, offered up to £3,000 covering up to 50% of eligible capital costs — specialist equipment, digital tools such as computers or software, or website and e-commerce work. To apply you needed to be actively trading, have completed at least 60% of your Go Succeed mentoring, have identified a specific barrier to growth the grant would address, and employ between one and 49 full-time staff. Awards went through a competitive process and were paid retrospectively, after the project was finished and checked. That round closed at noon on 30 May 2025. Terms change between rounds, so the right move is to register, work through the mentoring, and let your adviser tell you when the next window opens rather than planning around last time's numbers.

Invest NI: the Business Innovation Grant, for businesses that aren't clients yet

Not every Invest NI grant requires client status first. The Business Innovation Grant, delivered through the Innovate NI programme, is open to sole traders, micro-businesses and SMEs based in Northern Ireland, at a 70% grant rate on eligible project costs, between £5,000 and £20,000. It funds market research and validation, innovation management audits, minimum viable product development, process design, market entry planning, supply chain work, trade fair attendance, product launches, and professional consultancy to support product development. It specifically excludes primary agriculture, forestry, logging, fisheries and aquaculture, and it is not open to current Invest NI clients or anyone who has had an Invest NI grant in the last five years — which makes it a genuine entry point rather than a top-up for businesses already inside the system. Applications are currently closed, with free innovation workshops planned for autumn and winter 2026 to help businesses prepare for the next round.

Ambition to Grow: open now, closes 1 October 2026

This is the live one. Ambition to Grow offers up to £45,000 to Northern Ireland micro, small and medium enterprises that sell, or genuinely intend to sell, outside Northern Ireland. The funding comes in three parts: up to £30,000 for new employment creation, up to £10,000 for business development covering market, product or skills work, and a further £5,000 for completing an Export Health Check, an Innovate NI Self-Assessment and two workshops.

To qualify, the business must be based in Northern Ireland with at least one director, proprietor or partner resident here, have fewer than 250 full-time equivalent staff, already be generating sales, and have annual turnover under £2m or existing sales outside Northern Ireland under £250,000. It has to manufacture products or provide tradeable services, and commit to creating at least three new full-time positions paid at the Real Living Wage — or one management-level role at £35,000 a year or more — while generating new sales directly to customers outside Northern Ireland within two years. A specific list of sectors is ineligible: cosmetic and beauty services, distribution, retail, tourism accommodation, primary agriculture, steel, and fishery and aquaculture, among others set out in the full guidance. Applications go through an eligibility checker and then Invest NI's customer portal. The current round opened at 9am on Monday 7 September 2026 and closes at noon on Thursday 1 October 2026 — there is no indication a missed deadline reopens.

Worked example: what the £30,000 employment strand is actually worth

Illustrative business, real figures. Take a Ballymena engineering firm turning over £650,000 a year, entirely from Northern Ireland and GB customers so far, that wants to take on three fabricators to start quoting for export work. The Living Wage Foundation's Real Living Wage, the rate Ambition to Grow requires for the three new posts, is currently £13.45 an hour outside London. At a standard 37.5-hour week, that's £504.38 a week, or £26,227.50 a year gross, per role. Three roles come to roughly £78,683 in first-year gross pay, before employer's National Insurance, pension contributions and any other on-costs.

Assuming the firm also completes the business development strand and the Export Health Check, Innovate NI Self-Assessment and two workshops, the maximum available under the scheme is £30,000 + £10,000 + £5,000 = £45,000. That's just over half the direct first-year wage cost of the three hires, funded before a penny of employer NIC, pension or the rest of the on-costs of employment is even counted — which is the gap the scheme is designed to close, not the whole cost of growing the team.

Which one actually fits your business

• Have an idea but haven't started trading yet, in any non-excluded sector? Go Succeed Start.
• Running a shop, café, salon or other business that trades locally, with no realistic export plan? Go Succeed — Invest NI's own guidance rules this kind of business out.
• A sole trader or micro-business with a specific product or process to develop, and not currently an Invest NI client? The Business Innovation Grant, when the next round opens.
• A manufacturer or tradeable-services business already selling outside Northern Ireland, or genuinely able to within two years, with capacity to hire? Ambition to Grow, now, before 1 October 2026.
• On a trajectory toward £1m+ turnover within three years but not there yet? Go Succeed Scale is the bridge before you meet Invest NI's client criteria.

Your checklist for this week

• Work out which side of the Invest NI line you're on: 25% of sales outside Northern Ireland (or £250,000 minimum) and the potential to employ 10 within five years, or not.
• If you're not there yet, register with Go Succeed today — the mentoring is free and the 13 hours is worth using regardless of grant timing.
• If you are, and you can commit to genuine new roles or a management hire and new export sales within two years, run the Ambition to Grow eligibility checker before 1 October 2026.
• If your plan is R&D or product development rather than hiring, register interest in the Business Innovation Grant's autumn/winter 2026 workshops ahead of its next round.
• Whatever you apply for, check whether it pays retrospectively — most of these do — and make sure the business can cash-flow the spend before the grant lands.

Where we stop, and who takes over

The mentoring, the sector advice and the application itself come from Go Succeed or Invest NI directly — that's what those services exist to do, and we won't duplicate it badly. Where Buzz helps is the numbers behind the application: turnover and export sales figures for an eligibility check, costing new hires properly (see what a new hire actually costs), and making sure a retrospective grant doesn't leave a cash-flow gap while the project runs. We also handle the payroll and pension side once new roles are actually in place. For the wider differences running a business in Northern Ireland involves, start at our Northern Ireland page.