Ukraine – UNESCO IPDC Call for Project Proposals 2026

• Eligibility criteria: Local media in developing countries, countries in transition, and countries in conflict and post-conflict situations worldwide.
• Type of Funding: Grant
• Target Region: Ukraine.
• Application Language: English

Call for project proposals from Ukraine that will be supported by UNESCO’s International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC) in 2026.

The IPDC supports projects that aim at:

• Supporting media pluralism, gender equality, independence, and innovation: Ensuring diverse voices and perspectives in media, promoting equal gender participation and representation in and through media, independence from political or economic influences, and fostering innovation in media practices and platforms.
• Promoting the safety of journalists: Promoting the protection of journalists from violence, intimidation, and harassment, with special attention to women journalists and countering sex-based threats and violence, allowing them to work freely and safely.
• Supporting media viability: Strengthening the financial and institutional resilience of independent public interest media. This ensures that media outlets can remain sustainable, adaptable, and free from undue political or economic pressure.
• Countering hate speech, promoting conflict-sensitive journalism, and cross-cultural dialogue: Addressing and mitigating hate speech, promoting balanced reporting in conflict situations, fostering understanding across cultures through media, addressing misinformation and disinformation and promoting media and information literacy.
• Supporting law reform: Advocating for legal frameworks and regulatory environments that guarantee freedom of expression, access to information, and the protection of media workers and foster media viability and transparency of digital platforms.
• Promoting access to information: Ensuring the public’s right to access accurate and timely information, crucial for democratic participation and informed decision-making.
• Supporting journalism education: Ensuring that journalism education institutions are equipped to form a diverse, gender inclusive, qualified and adaptive media workforce skilled 4 to produce public interest journalism sustainably, especially in resource-poor, fragile, and crisis-impacted settings.
• Tackling emerging media policy issues: Addressing emerging and evolving media policy issues arising from technological advancements, regulatory changes, and societal shifts that impact and challenge the media landscape globally. The Windhoek+30 Declaration, adopted by UNESCO in 2021, recognises the need to address new media-related challenges, particularly media viability and internet transparency.
• Supporting media assessments and research based on UNESCO indicators: Supporting the use of UNESCO’s frameworks such as the Media Development Indicators (MDIs), the Gender Sensitive Indicators for the Media (GSIM), Journalists’ Safety Indicators (JSIs), Media Viability Indicators (MVIs) to enable local organizations to perform diagnostics, assess and improve media environments, ensuring alignment with international standards.

Gender-transformative projects (addressing the cause of inequality) are strongly encouraged. All projects must be at least gender-sensitive.

IPDC strongly encourages project proposals to consider the adaptation and/or use of UNESCO resources such as UNESCO’s journalism education handbooks and other publications, while also considering innovative dimensions and approaches. You are also invited to continue addressing specific gender-related challenges and integrating the issue of media viability, where relevant.

How to apply

Project proposals from Ukraine can be sent to  d.moshkovska@unesco.org and m.zhakova@unesco.org in English, until 8 February 2026, using the templates (applicant ID form, project proposal template and budget template). The budget available for projects approved by the IPDC is between US$ 10,000 and a maximum of US$ 35,000.

Please make sure the proposals meet IPDC’s criteria and quality standards.  The IPDC Bureau will be meeting in June 2026 to consider the projects.

For more information, please visit this page