UNICEF Femtech Ventures 2026 Funding Call

UNICEF Femtech Ventures is selecting the second annual cohort of companies using frontier technology to improve the health, wellbeing, and sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and girls in emerging markets. Selected companies will join the Femtech Ventures portfolio and receive up to US$100,000 in funding, 12 months of technical mentorship and access to UNICEF's global network, including relationships with governments that can help solutions move towards scale. The call covers three areas. The first is healthcare access for women and girls, including point-of-care support, affordable screening, maternal and child health platforms, referral and follow-up tools, and supply-planning systems. The second is informed, safe and accessible reproductive health, including personalised information, community health worker platforms, HPV screening, health-finance access and privacy-preserving data tools. The third is mental wellbeing, safety and protection, including digital mental-health support, gender-based violence response, online-safety tools and technology for frontline workers. UNICEF is interested in locally grounded solutions with potential to scale, particularly products suited to low-resource or emergency settings. Technologies may include generative or agentic AI, machine learning, blockchain and data science. Safety by design, privacy, consent and safeguarding are central to the programme. Applicants should complete the official online application linked from UNICEF's programme page by 4 November 2026. UNICEF does not state a closing time or timezone, so applicants should submit early.

Applicants must be companies registered in a UNICEF programme country, have a functional prototype and commit to open-source licensing and principles. The call is open to early- and growth-stage companies in emerging markets whose frontier-technology solutions address one or more of the programme's three pillars and have potential to scale. Women-led startups and young founders under 35 are strongly encouraged to apply, but UNICEF does not describe these as mandatory conditions. Companies without a functional prototype, or those unable to commit to open-source principles, do not meet the stated eligibility criteria.