Taking your work abroad? Gulbenkian has up to €5,000 on the table until 31 October
The Foundation's Apoio à Internacionalização covers travel, accommodation and meals for artists, curators and programmers in performing arts, visual arts, cinema and cross-disciplinary work — and applications must land 30 days before the trip.
Apply / Learn moreOne Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation grant has been open since January and closes on 31 October, and unlike most competitions it has no single submission date: applications to the Apoio à Internacionalização run continuously and a decision follows within 30 days. The reference ceiling is €5,000 per project.
It pays for one specific thing: getting artists, curators and programmers to events run by major international cultural institutions. Performing arts — dance, theatre, contemporary circus. Visual arts, photography, performance and video included. Cinema, on the directing side. And cross-disciplinary projects, provided at least two disciplines meet and the main one belongs to that list.
What the money covers, and what it will not
The support goes mostly on travel, accommodation and meals. The exclusions are the more useful list, because that is where budgets come apart: fees are not eligible, nor equipment or venue hire, nor get-in and get-out costs, nor buying materials, nor communications spend, nor the fixed running costs of a practice, nor anything retroactive. Ineligible items do not sink an application; they simply shrink the amount awarded.
Also out, by nature: commercial projects, anything academic, scholastic or amateur, and projects that sit exclusively in architecture, design, publishing or music.
The 30-day rule is the one that catches people
A project has to be submitted at least 30 days before it happens, and finished within a year. Discover the grant three weeks before you fly and you are late, with no way round it. Projects already under way can apply, but only for the parts that have not happened yet.
Portuguese individuals can apply, so can foreign individuals with tax domicile in Portugal, and so can Portuguese non-profit arts production organisations. One application per entity per year, online only, and in Portuguese — which is worth knowing early if you are drafting in English.
A note about the clock
The grant page gives the deadline as 31 October at 5pm Lisbon time, and the FAQ on that same page says 4pm. It is an hour the Foundation does not reconcile, and Gulbenkian’s own advice is to avoid submitting in the final days, which settles it without anyone having to adjudicate. If you are after funding on a different scale, the €6.2 million PESSOAS 2030 call for supervised-autonomy teams closes nearly a month earlier, on 2 October.
Image: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
