National Portfolio extended until March 2028, arts council confirms

Arts Council England has confirmed that its current National Portfolio investment programme will be extended until 31 March 2028.

The arm’s-length body had been due to launch the next National Portfolio round in April 2026, but announced earlier this year that it was in discussions with the UK Government about extending the current portfolio. It was due to confirm the changes following the announcement of the Spending Review on 11 June.

In a statement this week, the arts council said the government had now approved the extension.

It said: “We are now able to confirm that the National Portfolio will be extending across 2027/28, and we will be running an extension application process to enable this.”

The current National Portfolio is made up of nearly 1,000 organisations of all scales in every part of England.

The arts council said: “This is our biggest, most diverse, and most varied portfolio to date. Over the last two years, they have been delivering on the vision set out in our strategy, Let’s Create: of more people in more places having access to the very best of creativity and culture.

“Recent data shows more than 73 million people attended over 84,000 events put on by arts organisations, libraries and museums during 2023/24. A further extension is an opportunity to continue this progress.”

Explaining why it was making the changes, the arts council said: “In December 2024, we announced that we would launch the next National Portfolio Investment Programme in April 2025. We said at the time that we’d keep this timeline under review, and since sharing it, our external context has changed.”

The arts council said that, although the government had completed its Spending Review, the details of its funding from 1 April 2026 are not yet known. 

It cited the independent review of the Arts Council, led by Baroness Margaret Hodge, as another reason for the delay. The review is currently underway and due to report to government in the autumn, with publication due in 2026.   

The government has also published a Devolution White Paper in which it outlines its proposed devolution framework. “This is likely to have a significant impact on local government structures, and on how we work with them,” said the funding body.

The statement concluded: “The combination of these factors meant that National Council decided not to proceed with the previous timeline for the National Portfolio Investment Programme.”

“National Council took the decision that the most appropriate course of action was to recommend to government that we extend the 2023-2026 National Portfolio through to 31 March 2028.  This extension has now been confirmed by the government.”

Grantium outage

The funding body has also apologised for the continuing outage of its Grantium online application platform, which has been offline since the evening of 23 July due to technical difficulties.

In its latest update on Friday 1 August, the arts council confirmed that the funding portal will remain unavailable to external users until midday on Wednesday 6 August. Alternative solutions have been put in place for some funding programmes, said the organisation.

Those awaiting funding decisions from the Museum Renewal Fund will now receive notification by email on 4 August rather than via Grantium.

Meanwhile the deadline for the Creative Foundations Fund has been changed to 1500 on Monday 4 August.

The arts council said information already submitted by applicants is “safe in our systems”, and advised those wishing to submit an expression of interest from scratch should contact its Customer Services team.

Prospective applicants to the Museums Estate and Development Fund, which closes on 2 October, are asked not to log into Grantium to make an application for the time being.

The arts council said: “We know how much disruption issues with Grantium are causing, and we sincerely appreciate your patience as we continue our work to put things right. 

“We have alternative solutions in place for some funding programmes… As we develop additional solutions, affected user groups will hear from us directly.   

“We will provide a further update for you on our progress on Tuesday 5 August. Again, we wish to apologise for this, and thank you for your ongoing patience.”