Window 2 of SFI26 is expected to open on 22 September, and this one is open to everyone. When Window 1 closed at the end of August we went through the 30-day clock on agreement offers and the figures DEFRA had at the time. Those figures have since been published properly, and they are worth a look before you sit down to apply. Window 1 was deliberately narrow — small farms and farms without an existing environmental agreement. That restriction goes. If you are registered with the Rural Payments Agency, have a Single Business Identifier and at least 3 hectares of eligible land against it, you are in scope.
Defra also put more money behind it. The announcement on 29 August added £50 million for Window 2, taking the scheme to £290 million for this financial year. Whatever Window 1 did not spend goes into the same pot.
One caution on the date. Defra's wording is that it is expected to open from 22 September, and the scheme page has not been updated since Window 1 closed. Treat it as the date to be ready for, not a date in stone.
What Window 1 actually did
Defra published the official uptake figures on 9 September, counted at 1 September. They firm up the rounded numbers in our piece from 30 August, and they tell you what a successful application looked like.
7,000 applications went in during Window 1. By 1 September, 3,100 SFI 2026 agreements were live. Of the eligible applications, 87% came from farms with no existing Environmental Land Management agreement, 69% from farms between 3 and 50 hectares, and 55% met both. That is the window working as designed — it was built for exactly those two groups, and that is who it reached.
Put alongside the older schemes, there are now 48,000 live SFI agreements held by 38,300 farm businesses: 25,000 under SFI23 across 23,400 businesses, and 19,900 under the Expanded Offer across 17,900. The gap between agreements and businesses is farms holding more than one.
The number most people want
The average SFI agreement is worth £9,700 a year, or £29,200 over the three years nearly all of them run for.
That is an average across every farm size and every combination of actions, so it will not predict your own figure — a 20-hectare holding doing two soil actions and a 400-hectare arable farm doing eight are both inside it. But it is the honest middle of the scheme, and it is a good deal more useful than the headline budget when you are working out whether the paperwork is worth your evening.
If your current agreement is running out
This is the change that matters most and gets the least attention. From Window 2 there is a start an application early feature for farm businesses whose existing ELM revenue agreement — SFI23, Countryside Stewardship Mid Tier — expires on or before 28 February 2027. You can apply for that land before the old agreement has finished, instead of waiting for a gap to open between the two.
If your agreement ends in that period, this is the window to use.
Dates for the calendar
- 22 September 2026 — Window 2 expected to open, all eligible farmers and land managers
- 28 February 2027 — the cut-off for an expiring ELM agreement to qualify for the early start
- End of March 2027 — the financial year the £290 million covers
Defra has not published a closing date for Window 2. Window 1 ran for eight weeks and closed on schedule rather than on money, but a quarter of its budget went in the first day, so an early application is not wasted effort.
Before you sit down to it
The actions you pick have to match what your land actually does, and two of the numbers you will be asked for are ones our free tools will work out for you: the stocking rate calculator for livestock units per hectare, and the grazing calculator for the days of grazing in front of you. Neither asks for an account.
This is a summary of what Defra has published, not advice on whether to apply or which actions to choose. The scheme rules are the authority: SFI26 scheme information on GOV.UK, and the September uptake statistics for the figures quoted above.