UKRI PhD Stipend 2027/28: What UK Doctoral Students Really Get Paid

Ask anyone "how much does a funded PhD pay in the UK?" and the honest answer starts with one number: the UKRI minimum stipend. UK Research and Innovation funds the majority of UK doctoral studentships through its seven research councils, and it sets a single floor rate that every university receiving its training grants must pay at least. It is not a salary for work done; it is a tax-free living allowance paid while you study, and your tuition fees are covered separately on top of it.

The current rate: £21,805 from 1 October 2026

For the 2026/27 academic year, UKRI raised its minimum doctoral stipend by 4.9 per cent to £21,805 per year, up from £20,780 in 2025/26. Students based in London receive an additional £2,000 weighting, taking their minimum to £23,805. The increase followed an unusually generous 8 per cent rise the year before, which UKRI described at the time as its largest real-terms increase since 2003 and which lifted the stipend roughly level with the national living wage.

The 2027/28 rate has not been announced yet. UKRI typically confirms it early in the calendar year, ahead of the 1 October start, so students starting in autumn 2027 should watch for the announcement around February 2027. Projections based on previous inflation-linking suggest something in the region of £22,400, but treat that as arithmetic, not policy — only the UKRI announcement settles it.

The full rate history

Two things stand out in that table. First, the 2025/26 and 2026/27 increases were deliberate catch-up after a decade when the stipend barely moved. Second, the London weighting has been frozen at £2,000 since 2006, which is why student unions in the capital have been campaigning against it — £2,000 no longer covers the real rent gap between London and the rest of the country.

Stipend or salary? The difference matters

A studentship stipend is a training award, not employment income. In practice that means it is generally paid tax-free and without National Insurance deductions, and it arrives even in months when your experiments fail or your fieldwork is rained off. It also means you are not usually classed as an employee for things like statutory sick pay, although the 2025/26 terms and conditions did improve matters considerably — students can now take up to 28 weeks of medical leave on full funding, and there is stronger support for disabled students.

Some studentships do pay more than the floor. Industry co-funded projects, Wellcome-funded programmes, and universities with their own enhancement funds routinely top up the stipend by £1,000 to £3,000, and a handful of medical programmes pay considerably more. The UKRI figure is the minimum, not the market.

Who is not bound by this rate

The UKRI minimum only covers students on UKRI training grants. If your funding comes from a charity, a university scholarship pot, an overseas government scheme or your own savings, your funder sets its own rate and there is no legal floor. Most reputable funders track the UKRI number closely because it has become the de facto benchmark — but if an offer letter quotes a stipend well below it, that is a signal to ask questions before signing.

How to actually get a UKRI-funded studentship

You cannot apply to UKRI directly. The money flows from UKRI to universities through Doctoral Landscape Awards and similar training grants, and the universities advertise individual funded projects. You apply to the project or the doctoral programme, compete with other applicants for the studentship attached to it, and if you win, the university pays you the stipend and your fees from the grant. We keep a running list of these funded projects on our funded PhD listings, including current rounds at Exeter, Kent, Lancaster and Edinburgh.

If you are weighing a funded studentship against borrowing instead, read our guide to the Postgraduate Doctoral Loan — the two cannot be combined, so it is worth understanding both before you choose a route.

Stipend budgeting: what £21,805 actually buys

Run the rate against real costs and the picture sharpens. Outside London, a single PhD student in cities like Sheffield, Glasgow or Nottingham lives on roughly £1,100 to £1,400 a month with shared accommodation, so the £1,817 monthly stipend covers rent, bills, food and a modest social life with something left to save. In London the same £1,983 monthly allowance (with the weighting) collides with rents that routinely start at £1,000 for a room, which is precisely why the frozen £2,000 weighting has become the sector's sharpest grievance. Part-time work helps — PhD students on student visas can work up to 20 hours a week in term time — and our guide to working during a UK PhD sets out the boundaries. When you compare offers, always normalise to monthly money after rent: a "lower" stipend in a cheap city frequently beats a bigger headline number in an expensive one.

For international applicants, one more line item matters: the UKRI rate is a floor for the studentship, but your visa maintenance evidence is calculated separately, so a funded offer does not automatically satisfy the financial requirement for family members — our dependants guide explains how the two systems interact.

UKRI-funded studentships open right now

Every studentship below pays at least the UKRI package, and each one is live in our database with a deadline we have checked against the official page. Open the card, save it, and plan backwards from its cutoff.

• UCL EPSRC Doctoral Landscape Awards at University College London 2027 — EPSRC-funded UCL studentships across engineering and the physical sciences
• CREATES NERC Doctoral Landscape Awards, Cambridge 2027 — NERC DLA projects at Cambridge for climate and environmental science
• E5 NERC Doctoral Training Partnership at University of Edinburgh 2027 — Edinburgh's NERC doctoral training partnership. Deadline: 2 December 2026, 12:00 GMT.
• ESRC White Rose DTP Studentships 2027/28 at the University of Leeds — ESRC White Rose DTP studentships in the social sciences at Leeds. Deadline: 17:00 (UK Time) 20 January 2027.
• UBEL ESRC Doctoral Studentships Main Competition 2027 — UBEL ESRC studentships spread across London universities. Deadline: Pre-registration: 30 October 2026, 23:59 GMT; preliminary application: 9 November 2026, 23:59 GMT; full application: 1 February 2027, 23:59 GMT.
• South West ESRC Doctoral Training Partnership Studentships, UWE 2027 — South West ESRC DTP studentships at UWE Bristol. Deadline: 12 January 2027, noon GMT.