Phase Two of the UK Artist Touring Fund opens on 26 August, and this round looks different enough from Phase One that artists who were turned down first time, or who never got round to applying, should look again. The cap has risen, the eligibility rules have loosened in ways that materially change who can build a credible application, and the Musicians' Union is running an information session on 27 August for anyone who wants the detail straight from the people who administer the fund. This is not a rewrite of the press release. It sets out the four changes that actually decide whether your tour is worth putting in front of the panel, and how to write the form so it reads as what it is meant to be: a cost of touring paper, not a wish list.

A grant cap that moved from seven thousand to eight

Phase One offered strategic top up support of up to £7,000 per artist, drawn from the Live Trust's initial £125,000 pool, itself funded by a voluntary £1 levy on tickets for UK shows above five thousand capacity. Phase Two raises that ceiling to £8,000. On paper that looks like a modest lift. In practice it changes what a support tour can actually cover.

An extra thousand pounds rarely closes the whole gap between what a fifteen date UK run costs and what the door takes at grassroots venues, but it is often the difference between an artist paying a crew member properly and an artist asking a friend to do sound for petrol money. Applicants who treat the cap as a target, and simply ask for £8,000 regardless of what their tour actually costs, tend to be the ones the panel can see through fastest. The stronger applications work backwards from real numbers: van hire and diesel, overnight accommodation where a show finishes too late to drive home, a modest per diem, and a fair fee for anyone travelling with the artist who is not the artist. Quote the figures you would put in a tour budget spreadsheet, not the figures that feel impressive.

Headline and support dates now sit on the same form

Phase One's structure leaned toward artists who could point to a run of their own headline shows. Phase Two allows a single application to mix headline dates with support slots on someone else's tour, and that is a bigger shift than it first appears. Most developing artists do not build an audience through headline shows alone. They build it by opening for a bigger act in front of a room that would never have come out for them on their own, then converting a slice of that room into people who buy a ticket next time the artist plays under their own name.

The practical effect is that an artist three support slots into a run with a bigger touring act, and about to add four headline dates of their own off the back of it, now has a properly fundable itinerary rather than two half formed ones. Present the mixed run as a single story rather than two separate lists. Explain what the support dates are building toward, and be specific about which headline dates depend on the audience those support slots generate. A panel reading dozens of applications a week responds to a tour that reads as a plan, not a diary.

Festivals are in, and that changes the touring maths

Festival dates now count within a Phase Two application, where Phase One's language pointed almost entirely toward club and venue touring. This matters because festival economics work on a different model to a headline show. A festival slot usually pays a flat fee agreed in advance, with no door risk and no promoter guarantee to negotiate, but that fee is frequently lower than what the same artist could take home from a well attended headline date, and it rarely covers a full touring crew on its own.

Where festivals earn their place in a Phase Two application is reach rather than income. A single well placed festival slot can put an artist in front of more new listeners in one afternoon than three headline shows combined, which is precisely the kind of audience building the fund exists to support. The mistake to avoid is padding out a thin routing with festival dates that do little more than fill space on the form. If festivals are in your application, be ready to explain what each one adds that a club date would not, whether that is scale, a new region, or a crowd outside your existing base.

Pencilled dates work if you confirm before the award

One of the more practically useful changes in Phase Two is that dates do not need to be fully locked at the point of application. A pencilled date, meaning a promoter has provisionally held it for you but not yet issued a signed offer, is acceptable at the application stage provided it is confirmed before any award is made. This solves a real problem that put off a lot of Phase One applicants: touring plans are rarely finished six weeks before a deadline, and asking artists to have every date contracted before they can even apply shut out anyone whose booking process moves at a normal pace.

The condition still carries risk that applicants should take seriously. If a pencilled date falls through between application and award, and the routing that made the tour worth funding depended on it, the award itself can be affected. Treat every pencilled date as a live task rather than a box already ticked, and keep whoever is booking your tour aware of the timeline the fund is working to, so a promoter who is slow to confirm does not quietly cost you the grant.

Treat the application as a cost of touring paper

Every one of these four changes points to the same underlying shift. The fund is asking applicants to submit a cost of touring paper, not a wish list of dates an artist would like to play. That distinction shapes everything from the numbers you include to the tone of the supporting statement. A wish list describes ambition. A cost of touring paper describes a specific tour, what it costs to run properly, where the shortfall actually sits, and what the grant closes that nothing else would.

Kelly Wood, National Organiser for Live, Theatre and Music Writers at the Musicians' Union, has described the launch of the fund as a moment of real significance for musicians facing what has been an extremely difficult few years for touring costs. The Musicians' Union is running an information session on Phase Two on 27 August, and it is worth attending even if your application is already half written, because the panel's own guidance on what a strong submission looks like tends to answer the questions that generic advice cannot. Applicants who have already worked through what a properly costed tour budget looks like, an exercise we set out in our piece on rethinking touring strategy around grassroots venues, will find most of the hard work for this application is already done.

Phase Two is a better designed fund than Phase One, and a more forgiving one for artists whose plans are still taking shape. It is not, however, a fund that rewards optimism. Cost your tour with precision, be specific about where the money goes, and treat the deadline as the moment your routing needs to be real rather than the moment it needs to be finished. Do that, and an application built around this year's changes has a markedly better chance than last year's did.