Creative Fellowship Fund 2026 - Round 1

25 fellowships totalling $650,000 have been offered to support artists, practitioners, and collaboratives to develop, innovate, and create across three funding pools (Ngā toi Māori, Pacific arts, and General arts). We received 409 eligible applications, with a total of $14,375,000 requested.

Funding type summary

• Ngā toi Māori: 6 fellowships were offered funding totalling $225,000
  $2,600,000 was requested by 64 applicants
• Pacific arts: 2 fellowships were offered funding totalling $75,000
  $1,325,000 was requested by 34 applicants
• General arts: 17 fellowships were offered funding totalling $425,000
  $10,450,000 was requested by 311 applicants

Artform summary

• 3 – Craft/Object
• 1 – Customary Māori arts
• 1 – Dance
• 4 – Literature
• 3 – Multidisciplinary arts
• 5 – Music
• 2 – Theatre
• 6 – Visual arts

Key themes and round observations

The Creative Fellowship Fund is focused on support for artists, practitioners, and groups of collaborators for a period in which to explore, create and develop fresh ideas and approaches to their work.

In this round we received the most applications from visual arts practitioners, followed by literature and multi-disciplinary arts. Assessment sought to ensure a spread of results across region, career stage and genre as much as possible, with consideration to Creative New Zealand’s investment through other funds and channels.  

Strong applications in this round demonstrated these characteristics: 

• They proposed works likely to be of national significance and high quality.
• They supported knowledge retention or knowledge gathering by and for communities.
• They showed timeliness or urgency, including consideration of presentation and an applicant's stage in practice.
• Supporting material demonstrated the applicants' artistic vision, and the support in place for the work to be developed and produced
• They were compelling and generated a strong sense of excitement among the panel.
• They explored new knowledge or experimentation through craft and form.
• They were well articulated and supported by relevant material that provided specific insight into the proposal.
• They had a clear and detailed plan and purpose for experimentation and growth of practice.
• They supported a pivotal moment in an artist’s practice.
• They included clear and articulate descriptions of the conceptual underpinnings and thinking that would support innovative practice.
• They articulated the case for support beyond just needing time and space to create.
• They promised a significant impact from ongoing work, benefit to communities, practice or their artform.

Fellowship recipients

The list of recipients will be published here on Friday, 22 May.