About the Programme
Are you thinking about additional ways to invest in your future, seize the day and expand employability? RGU Accelerator 2026 Impact North is launching during Scotland's first National Innovation Week! Back by popular demand, the University's central flagship development programme is here for year 8. Excitingly, this year will feature two collaborative cohorts running in tandem with Aberdeen and Scottish Islands based teams, nurturing early-stage innovative ideas across Scotland and supporting economic development.
If you have an early-stage innovative idea, the programme can offer you five-months of flexible entrepreneurial training around work and studies, access to mentors and the opportunity to access equity-free seed funding.
Main benefits of the upcoming RGU Accelerator 2026 programme:
- Equity Free Seed funding £3,000 and win thousands of pounds in Showcase prizes,
- Aberdeen City-Centre & Islands co-working space,
- Mentoring, coaching, confidence building and personal development,
- Ecosystems network access, including 3rd sector,
- Test applied research in industry,
- Collaboration with Scottish Islands – Orkney, Shetland & Outer Hebrides,
- Pathway to research commercialization UKRI, Innovate UK etc.,
- Flexible sessions, gain entrepreneurial skills set for life.
RGU Startup Accelerator Alumni
Our RGU Accelerator Alumni have gone on to raise over 17 million, won national awards like Scottish EDGE Regional 2025 and Converge, taught maths to 68,500 children around the world launching highly impactful ventures. The RGU Accelerator has been instrumental in helping commercialise numerous research projects which have taken part in the programme such as Attendr.
The RGU Accelerator values diversity and inclusion, our cohort is made up of 50% female founder leads and international students are welcome to apply. We offer limited support to UK Global Talent or Innovator Founders Visas, helping start businesses in Scotland. Previous participants on the programme will often come to give back, showcasing their achievements and journey after the programme ends at our activities and events.
RGU Startup Accelerator Alumni News
Programme Eligibility
If you are interested in applying for the competition, our criteria is:
- To participate in the Aberdeen based cohort the business must be RGU staff, students or alumni within 10 years of graduation.
- To participate in Islands cohort the business must be from Orkney, Shetland or Outer Hebrides.
- The project must be early-stage, innovative and have the intention of registering an entity (as a company, social enterprise or otherwise) or commercialise research as a result of the programme.
- A business must be early-stage and must not have raised more than £100,000 in investment or revenue.
- There must be an intention to have at least one founder working on the project full time within twelve months of the end of the programme.
In addition to our formal eligibility criteria, judges may consider applicants wider context such as employment status or barriers to working in order to be inclusive and offer places to applicants who may benefit most from the programme.
Programme Dates
All participants of the programme are required to attend scheduled sessions and accelerator events for the duration of the programme from December 2025 to June 2026. All dates for the next cohort will be confirmed once accepted into the programme.
The programme starts with a bootcamp and, after final selection, will involve a mixture of flexible sessions on Wednesday afternoons, with few evening and weekend sessions during this period balancing wellbeing.
Applications
Applications open 22 September 2025.
If you are interested in applying for a future Accelerator programme or if you need any further information email:
Application Guidance
In order to be successful for the programme, we will look for lots of different factors to be covered in your application form:
- Understanding of the problem: We want to see that you have a clear, realistic and demanding problem to solve, you can use evidence of your research to demonstrate how impactful this is for customers such as research or interviews.
- Ideas which are innovative: We are looking for your idea to be easy to understand, unique and solving a real problem. We want ideas which show innovation and can scale beyond the region. However, applicants must accept that their ideas might change as part of the process.
- Potential for growth in the market or users: We are looking for teams to have an idea of who their target market is and have done some research on if there are competitors. An investable high-growth company needs a sizeable market where there is high earning potential.
- Testing of the business model: We are looking for some evidence that the business could make money, attract funding and that the founders may have made some work towards their vision. This could be through revenue, users, customer interviews, a demo, a rough prototype, a patent, or other research. While we accept early-stage ideas, a little testing can strengthen your application.
- Strong entrepreneurial teams: We are looking for groups of ambitious and creative people with the right attitude and experience to develop their project. We value team over everything else, and you need to be able to take critical feedback and adapt your project.
- Join our upcoming Information Session - Scottish Inventions that changed the world and how you can too
Ecosystem Partners, Mentors & Judges
The RGU Accelerator is supported by a wide industry, academic and political contact network. We are delighted to launch the 2026 programme in honour of Scotland's First National Innovation Week.
Programme Funders
2026 Impact North is delivered by RGU's Entrepreneurship & Innovation Group (EIG) and Islands team, as part of RGU Research, Innovation & Enterprise, funded by the Scottish Funding Council.
Contacts
If you have questions about RGU’s innovation startup support or accelerator programmes, get in touch on innovation@rgu.ac.uk