Applications Invited for UNHCR Innovation Accelerator

About the Organization

With record numbers of people forced to flee around the world while humanitarian resources continue to shrink, innovative solutions are more essential than ever to address pressing humanitarian challenges.

The Innovation Service supports UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, in finding truly transformational ways of solving these challenges by ensuring colleagues as well as forcibly displaced and stateless communities are equipped with the funding, expert guidance, and training they need to explore innovative solutions.

About the Fellowship

The UNHCR Innovation Accelerator is a collaborative initiative led by UNHCR Innovation, in partnership with internal and external stakeholders, and supported by the Government of Luxembourg.

It is designed to help tested; high-potential innovations move from successful pilot implementation toward sustainable scale and long-term operational impact. The Accelerator complements UNHCR’s wider innovation ecosystem by supporting initiatives that have already demonstrated proof of concept and are ready to strengthen their pathway toward broader adoption and implementation.

Through a structured scaling pathway, the Accelerator provides selected initiatives with tailored support to strengthen their readiness for scale, sustainability, and institutional uptake.

Support may include:

• Technical guidance and operational support
• Catalytic funding and mentoring
• Partnership brokering and consortium-building
• Access to wider networks, expertise, and learning opportunities
• Evidence generation and learning support to strengthen adoption and long-term impact

The Accelerator brings together a diverse ecosystem of actors, including UNHCR operations, refugee-led organizations, governments, UN agencies, NGOs, academia, development actors, and private sector partners.

Its approach is grounded in three core principles

Diverse Partnerships:

• The Accelerator promotes partnerships between UN agencies, NGOs, refugee-led organizations, governments, academia, and the private sector to combine expertise, strengthen delivery, and support scale. Collaboration and consortium-building help initiatives move beyond isolated pilots.

Evidence and Learning:

• The Accelerator supports evidence-based scaling through learning on impact, adoption, operational effectiveness, and sustainability across different contexts. Shared learning and storytelling help strengthen initiatives and support scale-up.

Sustainability:

• The Accelerator supports innovations in moving from pilots toward sustainable scale and long-term impact. It emphasises engagement with refugee-led organizations (RLOs) and community actors, alongside operational readiness, financing approaches, and pathways to scale.

Accelerator offers

Selected teams can expect the following support:

• Strategy and Governance: The Accelerator helps teams strengthen their overall approach for growing and sustaining their innovation, refining the overall value proposition. This includes support on objective setting, planning for scale, multi-year programming, integrating solutions into wider delivery in displacement settings, building evidence, and navigating different processes where needed.
• Partnership Brokering and Ecosystem Navigation: The Accelerator connects teams with refugee-led organizations, donors, researchers, private sector partners, and UNHCR colleagues to support testing, improvement, and scale.
• Technical Support: Teams receive access to technical expertise and practical advice to help refine their solutions, adapt them to new contexts, strengthen operational readiness, and plan for long-term sustainability.
• Learning: The Accelerator supports teams to capture lessons, measure progress, and build evidence on what works. It also helps teams strengthen storytelling, communications, and visibility so they can share their experience and attract wider support.
• Resource Mobilization: The Accelerator helps teams identify fundraising opportunities, engage potential donors and partners, and strengthen pitches and presentations to mobilise additional support for scaling.
• Financial Support: Selected initiatives may receive some catalytic funding to support activities such as testing in new locations, technical improvements, partnership development, operational preparation, and evidence generation. Funding levels will depend on the needs and scale of each initiative.

Eligibility

The Accelerator selection process is multi-stage and designed to identify high-potential scaling initiatives while strengthening collaboration between organizations throughout the process.

Stage 1 – Expression of Interest

• The Expression of Interest (EoI) stage is open to organizations with proven concepts supporting forcibly displaced people that are ready to scale.
• Applicants are encouraged to form collaborative partnerships bringing together operational, technical, strategic, and community expertise across UN agencies, NGOs, private sector companies, academia, development partners, and community-based organizations.
• Through the online platform, applicants submit evidence on their proof of concept, operational relevance, scaling ambition, partnership ecosystem, and expected impact.
• Applications are screened for eligibility, technical readiness, and strategic relevance, while the Secretariat also identifies opportunities for thematic collaboration and partnership-building across submissions.
• Selected applicants may then participate in networking and collaboration processes to strengthen proposals ahead of the Full Proposal stage.

Stage 2 – Full Proposal

• Selected applicants are invited to submit Full Proposals. Applications at this stage must be led by – or jointly submitted with – either UNHCR teams or refugee-led organizations (RLOs).
• Partnerships between humanitarian, development, and other actors are strongly encouraged where they demonstrate shared ownership and clear pathways to scale.
• UNHCR applicants may include country operations, regional bureaux, HQ divisions, or cross-functional teams, with clear institutional ownership and implementation arrangements.
• Projects must demonstrate an existing proof of concept or pilot implementation, including operational testing, preliminary results, and user validation. Concept-only proposals are not eligible and may be better suited to the Innovation Incubator or associated Innovation Funds.
• Teams will further develop a structured scaling proposal outlining their pathway to scale, partnership approach, financial considerations, risks, and intended impact. Proposals will be reviewed by technical experts from inside and outside UNHCR to develop a shortlist of high-potential initiatives.
• Meaningful engagement with refugee-led organizations and community actors throughout design, implementation, and scaling is strongly encouraged.

How to Apply

The Expression of Interest form for the Innovation Accelerator is now open.  The application deadline is 12 July 2026 at 11:59 PM CEST (Geneva time).

Express your interest today!

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