Ministry of Defence: Armed Forces Day Events Funding

Currently closed for applications Arts, culture and heritage Communities Cultural, events and festivals Victims and survivors Antrim & Newtownabbey Ards & North Down Armagh City, Banbridge & Craigavon Belfast City Causeway Coast and Glens Derry City and Strabane England Fermanagh and Omagh Great Britain Lisburn and Castlereagh Mid and East Antrim Mid Ulster Newry, Mourne and Down Northern Ireland Scotland Wales Micro (up to £1,000) Small (up to £10,000)

Track grant Notes

Back to grants

Overview

The Ministry of Defence makes grants available to support Armed Forces Day events. Depending on the size and format of the event, this could be up to the value of £10,000. The grant is match-funded. This means, a Ministry of Defence grant could cover up to half of the overall cost of the event, subject to meeting the eligibility criteria. If the overall event cost £7,000 Defence could cover up to £3,500 providing eligibility criteria are met.

To apply for this grant, you must first register your event on the Armed Forces Day website.

Previous years have seen bids from a few hundred pounds for a street party to thousands of pounds to support larger events.

Ministry of Defence funding can be used to pay for:

road closures required to hold an event, including to allow for parades and marches
decorations, flags and banners
newspaper and radio advertisements to promote the event
marshalling, security and first aid arrangements for the event
insurance
PA and communications systems such as hand-held radios or other forms of communication for event organisers

Criteria for grants

The event must be held within 2 weeks of the Armed Forces Day, which falls on 28 June 2025.
Have ‘Armed Forces’ in the event title
Are relevant to today’s serving Armed Forces (and in your application, please indicate how your event is relevant)
Have free access to members of the ‘Armed Forces Family’ – Serving personnel, Veterans, Cadets and their Families (though charges may be made for parking, programmes etc..). You will need to explain how the event provides an opportunity to ‘thank’ the Armed Forces Family
Are not centred around Fundraising or Recruitment
Advice on what your event could look like can be found here.

Please Note:

It can take up to ten working days for an event to be approved and your confirmation email to be sent. If you have not received your email after ten working days, please email the team.

You can check the status of your application at any time using the link in your email.

Keep a record of the postcode you use to register the event. You must use this postcode to log into the grant page, otherwise their security measures will prevent you from checking the status of your application.

Track grant Notes