Two tracks, two ranges
Ukraine's updated state grant programme has applied since 1 September 2026 and splits by business stage:
| Track | Base amount | Maximum with supplements |
|---|---|---|
| Business start-up | UAH 100,000 – 300,000 | up to UAH 500,000 |
| Scaling | UAH 500,000 – 1,500,000 | up to UAH 2,500,000 |
Applications go through the Diia portal with a business plan, processed via partner banks.
The scaling track requires creating at least one new job. The base start-up track carries no mandatory job creation — but jobs feed the supplements, so "not required" and "does not matter" are different statements here.
Where the gap between base and maximum comes from
The headline numbers, 500,000 and 2.5 million, are base plus supplements rather than what an average applicant receives. Supplements attach to applicant category: age, veteran status, displaced or relocated business, VAT registration, a registered patent, frontline regions, restoration of damaged production, priority sectors.
The exact rate for each category is worth checking against the current programme terms — they moved when the programme did, and secondary sources quote them inconsistently.
What follows from that in practice: the grant amount is a function of your profile, not of your ambition. Two businesses in neighbouring districts can face materially different maximums on the same plan. Budgeting a project from a maximum figure read in a news item is the most expensive mistake available at this stage.
What you sign up to alongside the money
A state grant is not repayable while the conditions hold. Those conditions typically cover an operating period, tax payment, and job creation at no less than the minimum wage.
Breaching them means returning the money, with a penalty.
This is the part to price before applying rather than after approval. A job is not a one-off payment; it is salary plus contributions every month for the whole obligation period. If your model only carries that on the assumption that revenue grows to plan, what you have taken on is debt with extra steps, not a grant.
Total the obligations across the full term and set them against the grant. Sometimes a smaller amount with lighter requirements is the better deal.
Where applications actually die
Most rejections are not about the quality of the business plan. They happen on formal criteria checked before anyone reads the content: activity codes, company age, headcount, region, outstanding tax debt, grants already received.
That is good news, though it does not sound like it. A formal criterion can be checked yourself in an hour, unlike plan quality, which another person judges on their own reasoning.
On the odds, plainly: no consultant can quote you a probability of approval. Anyone who does is inventing it. What can be stated is whether you pass the formal criteria, and what would have to change so that you do.
Before you apply
- Write out your activity codes and check them against the programme list.
- Verify company age, headcount and region — the three most common automatic filters.
- Cost the obligations over the full term, not the grant.
- Check for tax debt, which closes the application without discussion.
- Only then start the business plan.
The order matters. A business plan written before the criteria are checked is two weeks of work that may turn out to be unnecessary.
Terms as at 15 September 2026, per official announcements from the Cabinet of Ministers, the Ministry of Economy and the Diia portal. The programme changed recently, so verify against the official portal rather than news summaries.