The FY2026 Science Budget Is Signed — Here Is How Every Agency Landed

The White House wanted to cut the National Science Foundation by 57 percent. Congress gave it a 3.4 percent trim. The administration proposed slashing NIH by 40 percent. Congress increased it by $216 million. The EPA was supposed to lose more than half its budget. It lost 3.5 percent.

On February 3, President Trump signed the FY2026 Consolidated Appropriations Act into law, finalizing budgets for 11 of the 12 federal spending bills in a single package. The twelfth — the Department of Homeland Security — remains unfunded and is now the subject of a separate shutdown. But for the vast majority of federal science and research agencies, the fiscal year is finally settled.

Here is where the money landed, what it means for active grant programs, and where the compressed timeline creates both risk and opportunity.

NIH: $47.2 Billion and a Structural Victory

The National Institutes of Health received a base budget of $47.22 billion, a $216 million increase over FY2025. That sounds modest — less than 1 percent growth — but the context makes it significant.

The administration had proposed cutting NIH's topline by nearly 40 percent, to roughly $27.9 billion. That proposal would have eliminated thousands of active grants, frozen new competitions, and restructured the agency from 27 institutes and centers into 8 consolidated entities.

Congress rejected every piece of it. The 27 institutes remain intact. The budget increased. And critical language was included to block the administration from imposing a 15 percent cap on indirect cost reimbursements — protecting the overhead payments that keep university research infrastructure operational.

Several institutes received targeted increases:

• National Cancer Institute: +$128 million
• National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke: +$155.6 million
• National Institute of General Medical Sciences: +$25.3 million
• National Institute on Allergy and Infectious Diseases: +$23 million

The bill also requires NIH to notify Congress before terminating any grants — a provision aimed at the administration's controversial practice of freezing awards related to topics it deemed politically disfavored.

What grant seekers should know: NIH must now obligate all remaining FY2026 funds before October 1. Expect compressed timelines for new funding opportunity announcements, accelerated review cycles, and potentially faster award decisions through the spring and summer.

ARPA-H: $1.5 Billion for Health Moonshots

The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health maintained its $1.5 billion appropriation through September 2026 — a notable win given the administration's request of $945 million. ARPA-H continues to fund high-risk, high-reward biomedical projects across five focus areas: chronic disease, rural health access, proactive wellness, healthcare security, and frontier health technologies.

Active programs with open solicitations include the Augmenting Interventional Radiology (AIR) program, with proposals due March 18.

What grant seekers should know: ARPA-H operates more like DARPA than NIH. Awards are managed by program managers who recruit performers, not through standing study sections. If your work fits one of the five focus areas, monitor arpa-h.gov/explore-funding for new program announcements.

NSF: $8.75 Billion — Surviving the Deepest Proposed Cut

The National Science Foundation received $8.75 billion, including $7.18 billion for research and related activities and $938 million for education programs. That education figure is worth pausing on: the administration proposed slashing NSF education funding by 75 percent. Congress preserved it at roughly current levels.

The overall NSF budget is down about 3.4 percent from FY2025's approximately $9 billion — a real cut, but one that looks trivial next to the 57 percent reduction the White House requested. The Graduate Research Fellowship Program was maintained at $285 million.

NSF will support nearly 10,000 new awards and fund more than 250,000 scientists, technicians, teachers, and students across FY2026.

What grant seekers should know: The slight funding decrease means somewhat tighter competition, but the core programs — CAREER, standard research grants, GRFP, AI Research Institutes — are all funded and operating. Watch for new solicitations from the TIP directorate, which continues to ramp up.

DOE Office of Science: A Quiet 1.9 Percent Increase

The Department of Energy's Office of Science received a 1.9 percent increase, continuing its multi-year growth trajectory. This is on top of the $320 million in Genesis Mission AI investments announced in December and the new Genesis Mission Consortium launched in February.

DOE's annual open solicitation covering Advanced Scientific Computing Research, Basic Energy Sciences, Biological and Environmental Research, Fusion Energy Sciences, High Energy Physics, Nuclear Physics, and Isotope R&D remains active throughout the fiscal year.

What grant seekers should know: If your research involves AI for science, energy materials, climate modeling, or fusion, DOE is quietly becoming one of the most dynamic funding sources in the federal portfolio. The Genesis Mission is creating new partnership pathways through the TechWerx-administered consortium.

The Rest of the Scorecard

• NASA: 1.6 percent cut. Still substantial overall, but science mission directorates were largely protected.
• NIST: 2.3 percent increase. Good news for measurement science and standards-related research.
• NOAA: Flat funding. Climate and ocean research programs continue at FY2025 levels.
• EPA: 3.5 percent reduction, with $744 million for science and technology programs. The deepest cut among science-adjacent agencies, but far less than the 50+ percent the administration proposed.

The Compressed Timeline Problem

Here is the piece that most grant seekers are underestimating: the FY2026 budget was not signed until February 3 — four months into the fiscal year. Agencies that were operating under continuing resolutions since October 1 now have just eight months to obligate an entire year's worth of appropriations.

For NIH, that means the review panels that were delayed, the funding opportunity announcements that were held back, and the awards that were waiting for final budget numbers are all going to compress into the March-through-September window. This creates a surge of activity that rewards prepared applicants.

If you have been waiting for clarity before starting a proposal, the clarity has arrived. The numbers are locked. The programs are funded. The question now is whether you can move fast enough to take advantage of a system that is about to accelerate — and Granted can help you find the right programs and deadlines before the window narrows.