Canada Council application checklist

Most "grant checklists" list the parts of the application you write. Those are the easy parts to remember, because the form nags you about them. The things that sink a submission are the ones the form assumes you already sorted out weeks ago.

This is a checklist of both, for Canada Council. It assumes you know what your project is.

Before you can apply at all

Register in the client portal and complete your applicant profile. This is separate from any application. Canada Council's own instruction is that you must register and complete the profile before you can apply to anything. It takes longer than you think and it cannot be done at the last minute, because parts of it are validated.

Confirm you are eligible. For individuals that starts with being a Canadian citizen or permanent resident. Eligibility is ultimately the funder's call, not yours and not ours, and the form will happily let an ineligible applicant fill in every box.

Check what you have left this year. Both of the programs below cap you at 3 applications per calendar year, and the count resets on January 1.

Program	Applications per year	Maximum per application
Artistic Creation, in Explore and Create	3	$75,000
Micro-grants	3	$10,000

That is six shots a year across the two, and the overwhelming majority of artists use one or two. Unused slots do not roll over. They just expire on December 31.

The deadline, which is not a deadline

Canada Council intake for these programs is rolling. There is no submission date in the calendar. What the program page says is that the next deadline is any time before the start date of your project or activity.

Read what that actually does to you. You cannot apply for something you have already started, so your project's start date is your deadline, and you set it yourself. There is no external date forcing the work, which is exactly why the application that could be written any time is the one that never gets written.

Pick a submission date. Put it somewhere that will argue with you.

What you write

Draft these outside the portal, then paste in. Every limit is a character count, spaces included.

• Application name, 80 characters
• One-sentence summary, 255 characters, which really is one sentence
• Proposed activities, 7,000 characters, the biggest and most important box
• Capacity and experience, 3,500 characters on Artistic Creation, 1,700 on Micro-grants
• Project timeline and milestones, 3,500 characters, two questions in one box
• Other information, 1,700 characters, and not a spillover box
• A description for every piece of support material, 255 characters each

Artistic Creation adds four respectful and ethical practice questions at 1,700 characters each, and a collaborator question at 1,700. Micro-grants adds a Travel step instead. The full list per program is in the Artistic Creation limits and the Micro-grants walkthrough.

What you assemble

• A budget, both sides. Not an amount: 6 revenue lines and 17 expense lines, with a 500 character note available on each. See the budget guide.
• Your arts CV. Artistic Creation sets a maximum of 3 pages.
• At least one work sample, as a file or as a SoundCloud, Vimeo or YouTube link.
• Collaborator confirmations and bios, if you have named collaborators.
• File formats checked against what the portal accepts. There is no .rtf, and video must be .mp4 or .mov.

The last step nobody drafts

There is a Declaration step at the end of the application. It is a sign-off rather than a question, and it is not something you can prepare in advance. Leave time for it, and do not treat "I have finished writing" as "I have submitted."

The one that costs the most

Keep your submitted application. All of it: the answers, the budget, the sample descriptions, the CV version you used.

The single most expensive habit in Canadian arts funding is rewriting from a blank page every round, when most of a rejected application is reusable. That is a whole subject of its own: reapplying after a rejection.

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Program facts on this page were confirmed against the Canada Council program guidelines and the live applicant portal, most recently on August 3, 2026. Canada Council revises programs. If this page and the funder disagree, the funder is right.