The Innovator Founder visa, introduced on 13 April 2023 by Statement of Changes HC 1160, consolidated the old Innovator route and the Start-up route into a single entry path for entrepreneurs building a business in the United Kingdom. The route retains the central feature of its predecessors — an endorsement from an approved body confirming that the business idea is innovative, viable, and scalable — but drops the £50,000 minimum capital requirement that defined the old Innovator visa. Successful applicants receive an initial grant of three years, can extend for a further three years, and can apply for indefinite leave to remain after three years if the endorsing body confirms that the business has achieved "significant achievement" against an agreed business plan. The route is governed by Appendix Innovator Founder of the Immigration Rules and the Home Office caseworker guidance updated most recently in April 2025. The fees are substantial: a £1,191 application fee plus £3,105 in Immigration Health Surcharge for a single three-year grant, payable upfront and non-refundable even on refusal.
The April 2023 consolidation: what replaced what
Before 13 April 2023, the United Kingdom operated two entrepreneur routes that had themselves replaced the cancelled Tier 1 (Graduate Entrepreneur) and Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) visas. The Start-up visa, launched in 2019, was a two-year non-extendable route for first-time entrepreneurs with no minimum capital requirement. The Innovator visa, also launched in 2019, was a three-year extendable route to ILR requiring a £50,000 minimum capital investment and an endorsement. The April 2023 changes folded both routes into a single Innovator Founder visa that inherits the three-year extendable structure and ILR eligibility of the Innovator visa but adopts the no-minimum-capital feature of the Start-up visa. Existing Innovator and Start-up visa holders were permitted to continue on their existing routes and to extend or settle under transitional provisions in paragraph IE 1 of the Immigration Rules.
The consolidation was driven by Home Office concern that the £50,000 threshold was deterring genuinely innovative founders while attracting better-funded but less innovative candidates whose business plans were essentially copies of existing UK businesses. Removing the capital test puts the entire weight of the assessment on the endorsing body's evaluation of the business idea. The Home Office also expanded the activities permitted on the route: Innovator Founders may now take on secondary employment outside their business, which was prohibited under the old Innovator visa, although the business must remain the applicant's primary work activity. Each founder must independently meet the endorsement criteria, although two founders may endorse a single business if each has a distinct role.
| Feature | Start-up (closed 13 Apr 2023) | Innovator (closed 13 Apr 2023) | Innovator Founder (current) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Initial grant | 2 years | 3 years | 3 years |
| Extension | Not permitted | 3 years | 3 years |
| Path to ILR | No — must switch route | 3 years | 3 years |
| Minimum capital | None | £50,000 | None |
| Endorsement required | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Secondary employment | Permitted (shortages list) | Not permitted (except shortage occupations) | Permitted in any role at any skill level |
| English level | B2 | B2 | B2 |
| Application fee (per applicant, outside UK) | £496 | £1,021 | £1,191 |
Endorsement bodies: who can sign off your application
The endorsement is the heart of the Innovator Founder application, and only bodies on the Home Office's approved list may issue one. As of 2025 the approved endorsing bodies are three: the UK Endorsement Body (UK EBP), Enactus UK, and the Global Entrepreneur Programme (GEP) operated by the Department for Business and Trade. UK EBP, the largest by volume, charges £500 to £1,500 depending on the assessment stage, runs a written business plan review and a panel interview, and typically takes 6 to 10 weeks to issue a decision. Enactus UK works primarily with applicants who have an existing relationship with a UK university enterprise programme or an Enactus chapter, and routes applicants through a structured mentoring pathway before endorsement. The Global Entrepreneur Programme, aimed at high-growth technology and science ventures, requires the applicant to present to a GEP panel and is the most selective — endorsement is reserved for businesses with clear potential for international scaling.
The endorsement process has two distinct stages that applicants frequently conflate. The first is the initial endorsement, which assesses the business idea and the founder's capability and is required to make the initial visa application. The second is the contact point assessment, which the endorsing body conducts at 6, 12, and 24 months after the visa is granted to verify progress against the business plan. The contact point assessments are not visa renewal events, but the endorsing body can withdraw endorsement — which triggers curtailment under paragraph 322 of the Immigration Rules — if the founder is not making satisfactory progress. The Home Office retains the final decision: an endorsement is necessary but not sufficient, and the Entry Clearance Officer may refuse the visa if the application contains inaccuracies, if the maintenance funds are insufficient, or if the English language evidence is defective.
The three tests: innovative, viable, scalable
Every endorsing body must be satisfied that the business meets three statutory tests set out at paragraph INNF 6.2 of the Immigration Rules. The first test, innovative, requires that the business idea is genuinely new — not a copy or minor modification of an existing UK business — and that the applicant has a credible, original business plan. The endorsing body looks for evidence of intellectual property, proprietary technology, a novel business model, or a clear gap in the UK market. Generic business concepts such as a restaurant, a generic recruitment agency, or an import-export operation for established products will almost always fail the innovative test unless there is a clear differentiator such as patentable food technology, an AI-driven matching algorithm, or a regulatory pathway competitors cannot replicate.
The second test, viable, requires that the business has the resources, skills, and market opportunity to succeed. The endorsing body scrutinises the founder's relevant experience, the realism of the financial projections (typically a three-year cash flow forecast), the existence of any pilot customers or letters of intent, and the founder's access to capital — even though there is no minimum capital requirement, the founder must demonstrate that the business can actually be funded. An applicant with no capital and no investors will typically fail the viability test unless the business model requires minimal capital (such as a software-as-a-service product built by the founder themselves) or the founder has a signed term sheet with a UK angel investor. The third test, scalable, requires evidence of growth potential — typically a plan to create skilled employment in the UK, expand into new markets, or generate significant revenue growth over three to five years. A lifestyle business with no growth plan will typically fail the scalability test even if it is innovative and viable.
Capital, English, and the maintenance funds test
Although the Innovator Founder visa has no minimum capital requirement, the Home Office expects the endorsing body to scrutinise the applicant's funding pathway as part of the viability test, and most successful applicants have either personal savings, investor backing, or a low-capital business model. In practice, applicants with less than £25,000 in accessible funds will struggle to demonstrate viability unless the business is a software-only venture with no inventory or staffing costs in the first 12 months. The old Innovator visa's £50,000 threshold remains relevant in one narrow situation: applicants extending an existing Innovator Founder visa from within the UK under paragraph INNF 9 must demonstrate that they have invested at least £50,000 in the business during the previous period — a remnant of the old Innovator rules that applies only to those who originally entered under that route.
The English language requirement is set at level B2 on the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), one level higher than the B1 requirement for Skilled Worker visas and most other work routes. Applicants can meet the requirement by passing an approved English test at a Secure English Language Test (SELT) centre operated by IELTS SELT Consortia or Trinity College London, by holding a degree that was taught in English and is recognised by Ecctis (formerly UK NARIC), or by being a national of a majority-English-speaking country on the Home Office list (which includes the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and several Caribbean nations). The maintenance fund requirement is £1,270 held for 28 consecutive days if applying outside the UK; applicants already in the UK on a route that required maintenance (such as Skilled Worker) are generally exempt if they have been in the UK for 12 months or more.
The full fee breakdown: £1,191 plus £3,105 in IHS
The total upfront cost of a single Innovator Founder visa application for one applicant applying from outside the UK is £4,296, broken down as follows. The visa application fee is £1,191 (set by the Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations and updated annually), payable to UK Visas and Immigration at the point of online application. The Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS) is £1,035 per year multiplied by the length of grant — £1,035 × 3 years = £3,105 for the standard three-year grant. The IHS is payable in full at the time of application and is refunded pro-rata only if the application is refused or withdrawn before grant; if the visa is granted and the applicant leaves the UK early, no refund is due. Premium service centre appointments at VFS Global can add £260 to £500 for priority processing or £780 to £1,500 for super-priority processing.
For a family of four — the lead applicant, a partner, and two children under 18 — the cost rises significantly because each dependant pays a separate application fee and IHS. The partner's visa application fee is £1,191 and the IHS is £3,105, totalling £4,296; each child's application fee is £1,191 and the IHS is approximately £2,328 (children under 18 pay a reduced IHS rate of £776 per year × 3 years), bringing the total per child to approximately £3,519. The family-of-four total comes to approximately £15,630 before any priority service fees. Endorsement body fees add a further £500 to £1,500 per lead applicant, and applicants who engage an immigration solicitor typically pay £2,500 to £6,000 in legal fees. The all-in cost for a single founder with solicitor representation is typically £8,000 to £12,000; for a family of four, £20,000 to £28,000.
The 3-year ILR path and "significant achievement"
The headline benefit of the Innovator Founder visa is the three-year path to indefinite leave to remain, half the standard five-year settlement period for most work routes. However, the three-year ILR path is conditional: the applicant must obtain a second endorsement from the endorsing body confirming that the business has achieved "significant achievement" against the business plan agreed at the initial endorsement. The Home Office guidance lists non-exhaustive examples, including: the business has generated at least £500,000 in revenue in the most recent 12 months; the business has created the equivalent of at least five full-time jobs for settled workers paying at least £25,000 per year each; the business has generated significant international expansion (defined as entering at least one new overseas market with measurable revenue); or the business has participated in formal research and development resulting in patents, registered designs, or peer-reviewed publications. The endorsing body applies a holistic assessment and is not required to tick a specific box, but applicants who cannot point to at least one concrete achievement typically fail.
The ILR application is made on Form SET(O) and attracts an application fee of £2,885 per applicant, with no IHS charge because ILR is not time-limited. The applicant must meet the continuous residence requirement — no more than 180 days of absence in any 12-month period during the three years — and must pass the Life in the UK test and meet the English language requirement at B1 level (the lower of the two thresholds, since B2 applies only to entry). If the endorsing body declines the "significant achievement" endorsement, the applicant cannot apply for ILR but can extend the Innovator Founder visa for a further three years and re-attempt ILR at the six-year mark. For a full worked timeline of the ILR application and the day-counting mechanics, see our UK ILR calculator and our UK ILR eligibility guide.
Dependants and switching into the route
The Innovator Founder visa permits dependants to apply for entry clearance or leave to remain alongside the lead applicant. A dependant partner must be the spouse, civil partner, or unmarried partner (living together for at least two years) of the lead applicant, and children must be under 18 at the date of application. Each dependant receives a visa valid for the same length of time as the lead applicant's visa, and dependants may work in the UK in any capacity — there is no restriction on the type of employment and no skilled worker sponsor requirement. Dependants do not need their own endorsement, but each must meet the maintenance fund requirement (£285 for the partner and £315 per child if applying from outside the UK, or the standard £1,270 if applying from inside the UK without 12 months' prior residence).
Switching into the route from inside the UK is permitted from most work, study, and family routes, with the principal exception of visitors (who must leave and re-enter) and Short-term Student route holders. Holders of the Graduate route visa, which gives two years of post-study work rights (three years for PhD holders), can switch without leaving the UK, but the time spent on the Graduate route does not count towards the three-year ILR period — the ILR clock starts afresh from the date the Innovator Founder visa is granted. Switching from the Global Talent visa is also permitted, although most Global Talent holders will already have a faster ILR path and will not benefit from switching.
Case studies
A 34-year-old Indian national who completed an MSc in Financial Technology at UCL in 2021 worked for two years on the Graduate route as a payments engineer, accumulating personal savings of approximately £100,000. She developed a proprietary machine-learning model for fraud detection in cross-border remittances, filed a UK patent application in March 2024, and obtained a letter of intent from a mid-tier UK payment processor to pilot the model for a six-month trial covering approximately 250,000 transactions. She applied for endorsement through the UK Endorsement Body in October 2024, paying the £1,200 assessment fee, and was endorsed in January 2025 after a panel interview confirmed that the business was innovative (patented technology), viable (£100,000 in savings, a signed pilot, and a 36-month cash flow forecast showing break-even at month 22), and scalable (18 employees projected by year 3 and entry into two EU markets).
She applied for the Innovator Founder visa from inside the UK in February 2025, paying the £1,191 application fee plus £3,105 IHS for a total of £4,296, plus solicitor fees of £4,200. The visa was granted in April 2025. By December 2027, the business had generated £820,000 in revenue in the most recent 12 months, employed seven settled workers at salaries above £30,000, and signed contracts with two EU-based payment processors — meeting two of the "significant achievement" indicators. The UK Endorsement Body issued the second endorsement in February 2028, and she applied for ILR on Form SET(O) in March 2028, paying the £2,885 fee. ILR was granted in June 2028, three years and two months after the Innovator Founder visa was issued. Total all-in cost: approximately £15,000 in fees and £4,200 in legal costs.
A 42-year-old applicant from outside the EEA applied in September 2024 proposing to launch a B2B logistics platform connecting UK SMEs with regional carriers. The applicant had £200,000 in personal savings — four times the old Innovator visa threshold — and produced a 60-page business plan with five-year projections showing £4.2 million in revenue by year 5. The applicant had no prior experience in the UK logistics sector, had never lived in the UK, and had not conducted primary market research with UK SMEs or carriers. The business plan relied entirely on publicly available market size data without letters of intent, pilot agreements, or evidence of customer conversations. The proposed model — a commission-based marketplace connecting shippers and carriers — already had at least four well-established UK competitors with significant market share.
The endorsing body declined the endorsement on three grounds: not innovative (a replication of an existing UK business model with no differentiating technology or proprietary data), not viable (no UK logistics experience and no evidence of customer traction), and not scalable (financial projections assumed market share gains the endorsing body did not consider credible). The applicant did not lose the £200,000 capital because no visa was granted, but did lose the £1,200 endorsement fee, £4,800 in solicitor fees, and four months of preparation time. The same capital could support a successful application if paired with a genuinely innovative business concept — for example, a logistics platform using proprietary route-optimisation technology — and a co-founder with UK sector experience.
A 29-year-old Canadian national with a PhD in chemical engineering from Cambridge developed a proprietary electrolysis catalyst for green hydrogen production, filing two UK patent applications in 2023 and securing a non-binding memorandum of understanding with a UK utilities company for a 12-month pilot. She applied for endorsement through the Global Entrepreneur Programme (GEP) in May 2024, presenting to the GEP panel in London in July 2024, and was endorsed in September 2024 on the strength of the patent portfolio, the pilot MOU, and the international scaling potential (the technology had attracted interest from utilities in Germany and the Netherlands). She applied for the Innovator Founder visa from inside the UK in October 2024, paying the £1,191 application fee plus £3,105 IHS for a total of £4,296, plus £6,200 in solicitor fees for the endorsement and visa application. The visa was granted in January 2025.
The GEP conducted the 6-month contact point assessment in July 2025 and noted satisfactory progress — the pilot had begun, two engineers had been hired, and a Series A term sheet for £2.5 million was under negotiation. The 12-month contact point assessment in January 2026 found that the Series A had collapsed after the lead investor withdrew, the pilot had overrun budget by £180,000, and the founder had drawn down £95,000 of personal savings to keep the business afloat without notifying the endorsing body. The GEP issued a formal warning in February 2026 and conducted a further review in May 2026, after which it withdrew endorsement on the ground that the business was no longer viable and the founder had not engaged with the endorsing body's mentoring. The Home Office curtailed the visa under paragraph 322 of the Immigration Rules in July 2026, giving the founder 60 days to leave the UK, switch to another route, or apply for a fresh endorsement. She secured a fresh endorsement from UK EBP in August 2026 after restructuring the business as a consultancy, applied for a new Innovator Founder visa in September 2026, and was granted in December 2026 — but the original three-year period restarted, and the ILR clock that began in January 2025 was reset to zero. Total cost of the curtailment and refiling: approximately £9,100 in fresh fees and £4,500 in additional legal costs, plus the loss of 22 months of progress towards ILR.
Common mistakes
- Submitting a generic business plan — Endorsing bodies have seen hundreds of plans and will reject on sight any plan that uses generic market data without primary research, lists competitors without analysing differentiation, or presents financial projections unsupported by unit economics. A bespoke plan with named customers, signed letters of intent, and a bottom-up revenue model is the minimum credible submission.
- Assuming the endorsement is a formality — The endorsement is the application's central assessment, not a box-ticking exercise, and the major endorsing bodies decline between 30% and 50% of initial applications. Applicants who pay the endorsement fee before iterating the business plan with mentors, testing the concept with potential customers, and gathering at least one piece of evidence of traction are wasting their fee.
- Choosing the wrong endorsing body — The Global Entrepreneur Programme is the wrong choice for a domestic services business with no international expansion potential; UK EBP is the wrong choice for an applicant with no UK university or enterprise network if Enactus would have provided the mentoring pathway the applicant needs.
- Conflating the B2 English requirement with the B1 standard — The Innovator Founder visa requires B2, one level higher than the Skilled Worker route. A B1 certificate from a previous application will be rejected and the application refused without refund of the £1,191 fee or the £3,105 IHS.
- Underestimating the contact point assessments — The endorsing body conducts progress assessments at 6, 12, and 24 months, and may withdraw endorsement — triggering visa curtailment — if progress is inadequate. Founders who treat the visa grant as the end of the process risk losing their visa midway through the three-year period.
- Counting on ILR at three years without checking "significant achievement" — The three-year ILR path is conditional on the endorsing body's second endorsement, and founders who reach month 30 with no measurable progress against the indicators will not be able to apply for ILR. The business plan should be designed backward from the ILR indicators so each milestone can be evidenced at the three-year assessment.
When to consult a professional
The Innovator Founder visa is one of the most document-intensive and judgement-heavy UK immigration routes, and most successful applicants engage both an endorsing body mentor and an immigration solicitor before submission. A solicitor consultation is strongly recommended at three decision points: before selecting the endorsing body, because the choice affects the assessment methodology; before drafting the business plan, because the plan must satisfy both the endorsing body's commercial assessment and the Home Office's immigration compliance check; and before the ILR application, because the "significant achievement" assessment requires the endorsing body to weigh evidence against the Home Office guidance. Hourly rates for UK immigration solicitors with Innovator Founder experience range from £250 to £450 per hour plus VAT, and fixed-fee packages for the initial application typically range from £3,500 to £6,000 plus VAT.
Applicants who should engage a solicitor include those with prior UK visa refusals, those with criminal convictions or immigration compliance breaches (overstays, working in breach), those with complex funding structures, and those whose business operates in a regulated sector such as financial services, healthcare, or education. Applicants with a clean immigration history, a simple funding structure, and an unregulated business can reasonably self-represent for the visa application but should not self-represent for the endorsement — the endorsement is the application, and a weak endorsement package will not be saved by a strong visa application.
Frequently asked questions
No. The £50,000 minimum capital requirement was removed when the Innovator Founder visa replaced the old Innovator visa on 13 April 2023. The current route has no minimum capital requirement, although the endorsing body will assess whether the business has a credible funding pathway as part of the viability test. The £50,000 figure remains relevant only for those extending an existing Innovator Founder visa from within the UK who originally entered under the old Innovator route, where the extension requires evidence of at least £50,000 invested in the business during the previous grant period.
Yes. Since 13 April 2023, Innovator Founder visa holders may take on secondary employment in any role at any skill level — a significant liberalisation from the old Innovator visa, which restricted secondary employment to shortage occupations. The business endorsed at the application stage must remain your primary work activity, but supplementary employment is permitted without any separate application.
The endorsing body conducts contact point assessments at 6, 12, and 24 months and may withdraw endorsement if progress against the business plan is inadequate. If endorsement is withdrawn, the Home Office will typically curtail the visa under paragraph 322 of the Immigration Rules, giving the applicant 60 days to leave the UK, switch to another route, or apply for a fresh endorsement from a different endorsing body. In practice withdrawal of endorsement almost always results in curtailment, so maintain close contact with the endorsing body and document progress against the business plan.
Yes. The Graduate route is one of the routes from which switching into Innovator Founder is permitted from inside the UK, and many successful applicants come through this path because they have already built UK sector experience and a network during their two (or three) post-study years. However, time spent on the Graduate route does not count towards the three-year ILR period — the ILR clock starts afresh from the date the Innovator Founder visa is granted. Plan the switch early enough that the three-year ILR period completes before the Innovator Founder visa expires.
For more on the broader UK settlement framework, see our UK ILR eligibility guide, our continuous residence rules, and try our UK ILR calculator to model your absence history against the 180-day rolling limit.
Last reviewed June 30, 2026. This article is informational and does not constitute legal, tax, or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional for guidance specific to your situation.