This article explains what the UK government’s Creative Industries Sector Plan says it will fund for film and television, music and video games, and what official skills data say about the workforce behind them. It describes UK government policy only; other countries run different schemes.
What is the Creative Industries Sector Plan?
The Creative Industries Sector Plan is a policy paper published on GOV.UK on 23 June 2025 by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and other departments, as part of the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy. Its stated aim is to make the UK a leading global destination for investment in creativity and innovation, and it sets a target for 2035.
According to the government’s announcement of the plan, the headline commitment is £380 million of support, and the target is to raise annual business investment in the creative industries from £17 billion to £31 billion by 2035. Illustrative arithmetic: that is a rise of £14 billion, or about 82% of the starting figure (14 ÷ 17), which is consistent with the government’s description of it as nearly doubling investment.
How does the government define the creative industries?
The definition matters, because the plan covers far more than the screen and stage. In DCMS-based skills analysis published by the government in October 2026, the creative industries cover advertising, architecture, crafts, design, film, music, video games, performing arts and visual arts.
Online creators do not appear as a named category in the sources reviewed here. Readers who work as creators may nonetheless find that the work around them, such as editing, music production, design and games development, sits inside these definitions. That link is this article’s own reading, not a statement made in the plan.
What does the £380 million include?
The June 2025 announcement lists several named measures. The table below summarises the main ones as the government described them at that date.
| Measure | Amount stated | What it is said to cover |
|---|---|---|
| Creative Places Growth Fund | £150 million | Six regions outside London, devolved to Mayoral Strategic Authorities |
| Creative Industries Clusters | At least £50 million | A new wave of clusters, with UKRI cluster investment doubling to £100 million |
| CoSTAR R&D labs | £25 million | Five new UKRI labs and two showcase spaces |
| Screen Growth Package | £75 million | An enlarged UK Global Screen Fund and a scaled-up BFI Film Academy for 16 to 25 year olds |
| Music Growth Package | Up to £30 million | Touring, performance, mentoring and export support, plus extra funding for grassroots venues |
| Video Games Growth Package | £30 million | Expansion of the UK Games Fund and support for the London Games Festival |
| National Film and Television School | £10 million | Training for 2,000 trainees and apprentices over a decade |
| Creative careers service | £9 million | Raising awareness of creative careers and pathways for young people |
The announcement also mentions a Creative Content Exchange, described as a marketplace for selling, buying and licensing digitised cultural and creative assets, with no funding amount given, and increased support for creative businesses through the British Business Bank.
What has happened with the games money?
Games is the strand with the clearest published follow-up. A GOV.UK announcement dated 13 April 2026 says the £30 million package comprises £28.5 million for the UK Games Fund and £1.5 million for the London Games Festival. Checking the sum: 28.5 + 1.5 = 30.
The announcement describes three grant tracks, with applications opening on 14 April 2026:
- Entry Track: grants of up to £20,000 for newly formed companies with limited track records but strong growth potential.
- Emergent Track: grants of up to £100,000 for prototyping new games.
- Expansion Track: grants of up to £250,000, described as the largest the Fund has provided, to take games to completion and help studios scale up.
The same page says the festival money is £1.5 million over three years, intended to double private investment deals at the festival to £30 million a year. It also reports more than 2,000 gaming companies in the UK and £8.8 billion spent by gamers per year, and says the Chartered Trading Standards Institute is developing guidance on gamers’ consumer rights.
How big is the sector, and why do the numbers differ?
Two government pages give different headline figures for the sector’s economic weight, and the difference is a useful reminder to check the date and measure behind any statistic.
The June 2025 announcement says the creative industries contribute £124 billion a year and support 2.4 million jobs. The October 2026 skills assessment, which uses 2024 data, puts the contribution at over £146 billion, about 5.5% of UK Gross Value Added, and employment at 2.4 million people, or 7.1% of the national workforce. The employment figure is the same in both; the economic figure differs, most likely because the two publications use different years or measures. The pages themselves do not explain the gap, so that explanation is this article’s inference.
The skills assessment adds that employment was stable between 2023 and 2024 and up by more than 300,000 (14.7%) since 2019.
Who works in the sector, and where are the skills gaps?
The skills assessment, updated on 6 October 2026, offers a detailed picture of the workforce:
- 30% of workers are aged 25 to 34, compared with 23% across the UK workforce, and under-25s make up 6%.
- 63% of the workforce is male, compared with 52% across the UK.
- London has 10.7% of its workforce in creative roles, with the South East next at 5.4%.
- Of employers that recruited in the past two years, 32% reported difficulty filling vacancies in 2025, mainly because candidates lacked the right mix of skills rather than specific qualifications.
- Skills gaps are most acute mid-career: 37% of employers reporting gaps said they affect staff five to 10 years into their careers.
The assessment projects about 416,000 additional jobs (27%) across 30 priority occupations between 2025 and 2035, plus replacement demand of 49,300 a year. It notes that its employment data cover VAT- and PAYE-registered businesses and may under-represent freelancers and micro-businesses, which matters in a sector where freelance work is common.
Is artificial intelligence changing creative jobs?
The skills assessment treats AI as a major source of uncertainty. Its projections were not adjusted for AI because the evidence was not yet strong enough, and it warns of a heightened risk that projections for AI-exposed digital occupations are too high.
It reports that uptake is fastest in film, music, games and advertising, and slower in heritage, theatre and smaller arts groups. It also says entry-level roles are under pressure, with fewer freelance writing and image jobs available, and that some roles are shifting from making outputs to directing AI tools, described as moving from “makers” to “directors” of AI outputs.
Questions about how creative work may be used to train AI sit under copyright law, which is outside the scope of the funding figures above. For the UK rules on using other people’s work, see this site’s guide to UK copyright exceptions for parody, quotation and review.
What does this mean for creators and small teams?
The sources describe funding aimed at companies, regions, training bodies and programmes rather than individual online creators. Nothing in the pages reviewed says creators can apply directly to the Screen, Music or Games packages, and eligibility rules for each scheme sit with the bodies that run them.
Still, the plan shapes the environment around creative work: training places, regional clusters, grassroots venues and games grants. Readers interested in how creator income works today can read about how creators make money, the roles behind a creator’s output and how trends spread across platforms.
Conclusion: a funding plan with figures still to be tested
As of October 2026, the published record shows a £380 million plan with a 2035 investment target, a games package that has opened for applications, and a skills assessment flagging mid-career gaps and AI uncertainty. Whether investment reaches £31 billion is not something the documents can answer yet, and headline sector figures vary by year and measure.
This article is general information based on published government documents, not advice. Funding schemes, eligibility and policy change, so check the relevant GOV.UK pages before relying on any figure.
Sources: GOV.UK (Creative Industries Sector Plan); GOV.UK (£380 million boost for creative industries to help drive innovation, regional growth and investment); GOV.UK (£30 million funding boost to help the next generation of games developers take their ideas to the next level); GOV.UK (Sector Skills Needs Assessment: creative industries)
