> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.stagewhispers.co.uk/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Repayable grants return: who the 400-seat rule leaves out - URL: https://www.stagewhispers.co.uk/repayable-grants-return-who-the-400-seat-rule-leaves-out/ - Published: 2026-09-20T13:40:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-22T13:40:11.000Z - Description: The Arts Council has found a way to spend the same money twice. Whether any of those shows ever reach your town comes down to a single number buried in the eligibility rules. - Author: James Farwood - Tags: Theatre News The Arts Council's Incentivising Touring scheme is open for a third round, with a budget of around £2.4m that the Arts Council says may grow as money from earlier rounds is repaid. That last part is the genuinely unusual bit. Incentivising Touring is the Arts Council's first **repayable** grant programme. A producer can apply for up to 25% of a production's capitalisation costs, capped at £500,000\. If the show recoups, the producer pays back their commercial investors first and the Arts Council second, and that money is then recycled into the next round. Two pilot rounds have already put roughly £4.4m into 23 productions, including tours by Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, the National Theatre and Emma Rice Company. So public money is behaving like investment capital rather than a gift, on the theory that mid-scale touring fails not because the shows are bad but because the risk of putting them on the road is too great for any single board to carry. ### What the eligibility actually says A funded tour must visit at least four permanent ticketed venues in England, each with *more than 400 seats*, outside inner London, and not owned by the producer. Read that from the other direction and it is a map of where this work will land. If your local theatre seats 150, 200 or 300, it is not on the route, and it will not be on the route for any future round either unless that number changes. That is not a scandal. The scheme is explicitly aimed at mid-to-large scale productions with commercial potential, and those shows need the seats to make the sums work. But it is worth naming clearly, because "investment in regional touring" is easily heard as "shows are coming to a town near you", and for most towns that is not what it means. ### What a small venue can take from it The mechanism is more borrowable than the money. The scheme exists because someone sat down and worked out that a tour fails on cash flow and risk appetite rather than on audience demand. The same is true at village-hall scale. If your group has an ambitious show it keeps not doing, the blocker is usually who carries the loss if it half-sells, not whether anyone wants to see it. A guarantee-against-loss from your own reserves, agreed in advance and written down, is the same idea with three fewer zeros, and it is the single most effective thing a committee can do to let a nervous director programme something interesting. ## Find out more about this *Incentivising Touring Scheme* - [Incentivising Touring Scheme](https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/our-open-funds/incentivising-touring-scheme?ref=stagewhispers.co.uk) — Arts Council England - [Incentivising Touring Repayable Grants for Theatre and Dance, Round 3](https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/our-open-funds/incentivising-touring-scheme/incentivising-touring-repayable-grants-theatre-and-dance?ref=stagewhispers.co.uk) — Arts Council England - [Arts Council England invests further £2.5 million in productions to tour every UK nation and Ireland](https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/creative-matters/news/arts-council-england-invests-further-ps25-million-productions-tour-every-uk-nation-and-ireland?ref=stagewhispers.co.uk) — Arts Council England, 11 December 2025 - [Arts Council England announces 'repayable grant' assistance for touring shows](https://www.whatsonstage.com/news/arts-council-england-announces-repayable-grant-assistance-for-touring-shows%5F1706343?ref=stagewhispers.co.uk) — WhatsOnStage