The Hubert Bals Fund, the film-financing arm of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), has selected 20 projects to each receive a development grant of €10,000 ($11,515) under its Development Support Scheme 2026, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The number of supported projects is up by one third: 15 received development grants in 2025, and 20 were chosen this year. The fund — which backs film-makers from countries that fall outside the major producing hubs, offering money at the development stage or later for production and post-production — is run by head Tamara Tatishvili.

Eight of the 2026 projects were selected following a regional focus on Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Two projects each come from Ukraine and Serbia.

Among the grant recipients are several names already familiar to festival audiences. Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias, director of Pepe, is on the list. So is Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir, who directed Mongolia's 2024 international Oscar submission City of Wind. Anka Gujabidze, a Short Tiger award winner whose debut feature is now supported by the fund, is another recipient.

The projects themselves span continents and tones. Babatunde Apalowo's In the Wake of Yesterday follows a woman exiled from a Sahelian settlement after refusing to falsify her record. Dean Wei's The Apple Doesn't Fall… is a comedy set in a dense residential compound in China. Dina Duma, from North Macedonia, received support for As Long As You Can Climb A Tree, described as a tragicomic portrait of ageing.

The 2026 development selection also includes IFFR alumni Dean Wei, Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy, Mina Đukić, Philip Sotnychenko, Nolitha Refilwe Mkulisi, Tomás Espaillat and Nika Zhukova — film-makers whose earlier work has passed through Rotterdam's programmes and who now return with new projects at the earliest stage of their journey to the screen.

The fund operates as part of a wider IFFR ecosystem that includes talent development and CineMart, the festival's co-production market where sales agents and buyers meet to finance films. A development grant is often the first money a project receives — enough to write or refine a script, build a treatment into something a producer can pitch, and begin the long chain of decisions that eventually places a finished film on a screen.

The Hubert Bals Fund was founded in 1988 and has supported film-makers from eligible countries across its history. Its complete results from 1988 to 2024 are published by IFFR. The fund's application deadline for the 2026 Development Support round was 2 April 2026, according to IFFR's website.