Innovate UK is pleased to announce the launch of the GeoAI Festival – a six-month long unique initiative that would support the rapid development of novel commercial solutions to real-world challenges across agriculture, nature and finance.
The World Economic Forum estimates that by 2030 the global value of Earth Observation (EO) data could exceed $700 billion while eliminating 2 gigatonnes of GHG emissions (source). Whilst geospatial data underpins a vast array of applications, Artificial Intelligence (AI) enables powerful analysis at speed, allowing for automation and faster extraction of insights.
To realise new products and services that leverage geospatial AI and EO data, the GeoAI Festival aims to bring together specialists and experts with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and esteemed partners through three exciting challenges that form the GeoAI Build and Pitch Programme:
🌱 Harnessing GeoAI for a resilient and sustainable Agri-Food System
🌐 Next-gen spatial planning: GeoAI solutions for land, ocean, and climate
🔗 Unlocking nature-based markets with EO and AI
As part of the GeoAI Festival, we also look forward to welcoming members of the public to the Explainable Earth Webinar series to spark conversation, thought leadership and knowledge sharing on topics such as agentic GeoAI and multimodal AI for planetary insights.
For the GeoAI Festival we are very proud to collaborate with these esteemed partners:
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)
- Growth Studio
- Lloyds Banking Group
- Satellite Applications Catapult (SAC)
- Space-Comm London
- Telespazio
- UK Open Multimodal AI Network (UKOMAIN)
Who is the GeoAI Build and Pitch Programme for?
Professionals, start-ups, and innovation teams from SMEs and established organisations, universities, research groups, and end users from the EO, geospatial and AI communities that have expertise in:
- EO and remote sensing
- GIS and geospatial analytics
- Machine learning and AI
- Software/App development
- Cloud computing
- UX/UI design and data visualisation.
What does the GeoAI Build and Pitch Programme involve?
Between January and March 2026, up to 20 teams will participate in a three-day in person sprint event in Leeds and a 6-week development period, that will cover design thinking methodologies to help teams rapidly prototype, test assumptions, and iterate based on user needs.
Through a combination of technical mentorship and business support, teams will be guided to accelerate both the technical development and commercial readiness of their solutions with support from industry experts from our partner ecosystem. Furthermore, teams will have access to a wide range of EO datasets and cloud computing services credits as well as weekly expert led sessions with the GeoAI Festival partner ecosystem.
The culmination of these activities will result in the participation of the GeoAI Build and Pitch Programme teams at the GeoAI Showcase at Space Comm Expo Europe in March 2026 in London for the chance to win tailored Commercialisation Credits for Satellite Applications Catapult’s Space Commercialisation Engine valued at up to £80k per winning team.
Application deadline: 9 November 2025
For further information and to submit your application, please visit Innovate UK Innovation Exchange (iX) platform and select the relevant challenge
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