Start-up grants and loans in Northern Ireland

What a new business in Northern Ireland can get

Go Succeed Start, free mentoring from your council

Go Succeed is run by Northern Ireland's 11 councils and paid for by the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. Its Start tier is for people with a business idea, people running a side business they want to make a living from, and new businesses. It includes up to 13 hours of one-to-one mentoring, masterclasses and workshops, a business plan your mentor builds with you, and a members' area of short tutorials. All of it is free.

You register at go-succeed.com and someone from the team contacts you within three working days. The business has to be in Northern Ireland, which includes an online business selling abroad. Gambling, money lending, tobacco and vaping are among the few sectors Go Succeed will not support.

The Go Succeed Grant

The Go Succeed Grant pays towards equipment and digital tools for businesses that have been through the mentoring. The 2026 round paid between £1,000 and £4,000, covering up to 50% of capital costs such as specialist equipment, a website or software. To apply, a business had to be actively trading in its council area, have completed at least 60% of its Go Succeed mentoring before applying and all of it before the grant was paid, have identified a barrier to growth the grant would address, and employ, or have the potential to employ, at least one and fewer than 50 full-time staff.

That round closed at midday on Tuesday 13 October 2026, and the next has not been announced. The grant is for trading businesses, so the order that works for a start-up is to register with Go Succeed, start trading, complete the mentoring and apply when the next round opens.

Take a new bakery in Coleraine that wants a £6,000 deck oven. At 50% of the cost, the most a Go Succeed grant could pay is £3,000, so the bakery funds at least the other £3,000 itself. The grant also changes the tax relief on the oven: capital allowances are given only on the part of the cost the business paid, so the bakery claims on £3,000, not £6,000.

Start Up Loans

A Start Up Loan is a government-backed personal loan of £500 to £25,000, delivered in Northern Ireland by Enterprise Northern Ireland. It is unsecured, you need to pass a credit check, and the rate is fixed at 7.5% a year (it was 6% until 6 April 2026). You repay it over one to five years, with no application fee and no fee for paying it off early. You get help writing a business plan for the application, and up to 12 months of free mentoring if the loan is approved.

To apply, you must live in the UK, be 18 or over, and have a UK business, or a plan for one, that has been fully trading for less than five years.

At 7.5%, a £10,000 loan repaid over five years costs £200.38 a month and £2,022.77 in interest in total. Over three years it costs £311.06 a month and £1,198.24 in interest. The shorter term costs less overall, but the higher monthly payment comes out of the business in its first year, when cash is tightest.

The loan is in your own name. If you trade through a limited company, record the money you put in as a loan from you to the company, and the company can pay it back to you later with no tax to pay on the repayment.

Invest NI grants for start-ups that sell outside Northern Ireland

Invest NI's start-up support is for new businesses developing innovative products or tradeable services for customers outside Northern Ireland. A business selling only to local customers, such as a shop, café or salon, is better served by Go Succeed and a Start Up Loan.

Ambition to Grow – Supporting Women opens at 9am on Monday 16 November 2026 and pays up to £30,000: up to £15,000 towards new jobs, up to £10,000 for market, product and skills development, and £5,000 for completing an Export Health Check, an Innovate NI Self-Assessment and leadership development workshops. The business must already be trading, with turnover under £1m or sales outside Northern Ireland under £300,000. Any business that meets the criteria can apply, and Invest NI encourages applications from businesses with a woman in a key decision-making role.

The Business Innovation Grant pays 70% of the cost of a product or process development project, between £5,000 and £20,000, and is open to sole traders. It is for businesses that are not Invest NI clients and have not had an Invest NI grant in the last five years. Its last round closed on 4 September 2026. Groundwork for Growth, which paid up to £15,000 towards market, product and skills work, has also closed. Our guide to Invest NI and Go Succeed grants covers each scheme's rules in full.

Tax on grants and loans

A grant counts in the business's accounts. A grant towards running costs, such as wages or marketing, is taxable income of the business in the year it is received. A grant towards equipment reduces the cost you can claim capital allowances on, as in the bakery example above. A loan is not income, so the money from a Start Up Loan is not taxed.

Your checklist for this month

• Register with Go Succeed at go-succeed.com. The mentoring is free, and completing at least 60% of it is a condition of the Go Succeed Grant.
• Register the business. A sole trader registers for Self Assessment with HMRC by 5 October after the end of the tax year in which trading started. A limited company registers at Companies House and then tells HMRC within three months of starting to trade.
• Keep receipts for everything you buy for the business, including before you start trading. Costs from up to seven years before trading began can be claimed as if spent on the first day of trading.
• If you need to borrow, apply for a Start Up Loan and put the monthly repayment into your cash-flow forecast before you sign.
• If you are trading, have turnover under £1m and plan to sell outside Northern Ireland, set up an Invest NI portal account before Ambition to Grow opens on 16 November 2026.

How Buzz helps new businesses in Northern Ireland

We register new businesses with HMRC and Companies House, keep the books from the first month, and prepare the figures a loan or grant application asks for: a cash-flow forecast, the numbers in the business plan and turnover figures. The mentoring and the applications go through Go Succeed, Enterprise Northern Ireland and Invest NI. For everything else that differs when you run a business here, see our Northern Ireland page.