NIH Grant Success Rates Are in Free Fall — And the New Multiyear Funding Policy Is Making It Worse

One in four early-career scientists who applied for a major NIH grant won one two years ago. Now it's fewer than one in five — and the math is about to get worse.

New data from NIH's Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools show that success rates for early-stage investigators seeking R01-equivalent grants fell from 29.8% in fiscal year 2023 to 18.5% in 2025. That's an 11-percentage-point collapse in two years. The number of early-stage investigators actually receiving awards dropped from over 1,400 in 2024 to 1,144 in 2025. At the National Cancer Institute, the odds went from roughly one in 10 to one in 25.

Established investigators weren't spared. Their success rates dropped from approximately 27% to 20% over the same period. Across all categories, the total number of investigators winning R01-equivalent grants fell from 7,720 in 2024 to 5,885 in 2025.

These numbers predate the next hit: NIH's multiyear forward-funding policy, which will eliminate an estimated 970 additional competing grants in fiscal year 2026.

How Multiyear Funding Shrinks the Pool

Traditionally, NIH funds grants incrementally — each year's appropriation covers that year's costs for continuing grants, freeing the rest for new awards. Under the multiyear funding policy, introduced in FY2025 and continued in FY2026, NIH reserves a portion of its budget to fund grants across their entire duration upfront. A three-year R01 might be fully funded from a single year's appropriation rather than drawing from three separate years.

The appeal for NIH is budget flexibility. By front-loading commitments, the agency avoids being locked into future-year obligations that constrain spending decisions. The cost is immediate: upfront funding for multiyear grants consumes dollars that would otherwise support new awards.

The scale of the shift is striking. In FY2024, NIH committed $1.4 billion to multiyear-funded grants, representing 16.2% of new and competing grant funding. In FY2025, that jumped to $3.61 billion — 30.1% of competing grants. The number of R01 grants receiving multiyear funding exploded from 21 in FY2024 to 743 in FY2025.

Congress noticed. The Senate Appropriations Committee expressed concern that the policy "would significantly reduce the number of grants NIH is able to fund" and included language in the final FY2026 bill capping multiyear funding at FY2025 levels. But FY2025 levels are already elevated, and the modeling suggests the cap still translates to roughly 970 fewer competing awards than historical norms would produce.

Who Gets Squeezed

The decline is hitting early-career scientists hardest, which is precisely the population NIH has historically tried to protect. NIH's early-stage investigator (ESI) policy was designed to give new researchers a leg up — ESI applications receive special consideration during peer review, and institutes track ESI funding rates separately.

That safety net is fraying. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute reported its ESI success rate dropped from 31% to 21%. When early-career success rates converge with established-investigator rates, the pipeline signal is clear: becoming an independent NIH-funded researcher is getting dramatically harder.

The downstream effects compound. Fewer funded investigators means fewer labs hiring postdocs. Fewer active R01s means fewer preliminary data sets for the next generation of proposals. Universities that calibrate faculty hiring to NIH funding levels will pull back. The contraction feeds itself.

What Researchers Should Do Now

The funding landscape is tighter, but it isn't closed. Here's how to adapt:

Target institutes strategically. NIH's 27 institutes and centers each set their own paylines and funding strategies. Some institutes are absorbing the multiyear policy's impact better than others. NICHD, for example, published detailed FY2026 guidance explaining how it will prioritize competing awards. Read your target institute's funding strategy page before submitting.

Strengthen your resubmission. With fewer awards available, reviewers can afford to be more selective. If your application scored close to the payline but wasn't funded, a strong A1 resubmission that directly addresses reviewer critiques is your highest-probability path to funding. Don't scatter across multiple new applications — invest in the one that's closest to the line.

Explore ESI-friendly mechanisms. The R21 (exploratory/developmental) and R03 (small grant) mechanisms have different funding dynamics than R01s. The K-series career development awards remain a viable bridge for early-career investigators who need protected time and preliminary data before competing for an R01.

Diversify beyond NIH. NSF, DOD (through CDMRP's $1.27 billion in FY2026 programs), DOE, and private foundations all fund biomedical and health-adjacent research. The MacArthur Foundation just deployed $10 million in AI-for-public-interest grants. The Humanity AI coalition has $500 million committed over five years. If your research intersects with defense health, AI, climate, or technology policy, there are parallel funding streams that don't depend on NIH's constrained paylines.

Build collaborations that extend your reach. Multi-PI grants, center grants, and program project grants draw from different budget pools than individual R01s. If your science fits a collaborative model, the team-based mechanisms may face less compression than single-investigator awards.

The Structural Problem

Congress gave NIH a modest increase in FY2026 — the final bill landed at $47.2 billion, up from $46.8 billion. That's real money, but it's not enough to offset both the multiyear funding drain and biomedical inflation that erodes purchasing power by 3-4% annually. To fully compensate for the multiyear policy's impact and maintain historical grant numbers, appropriations would need to increase by 4-6.7%, according to modeling by research policy analysts.

The political appetite for that kind of increase doesn't exist right now. Which means the squeeze on success rates isn't a one-year anomaly — it's the new baseline.

For researchers navigating this environment, the imperative is clear: write sharper proposals, target strategically, and don't put all your funding eggs in one basket. Tools like Granted can help you discover the federal and foundation opportunities beyond NIH that match your research profile — because in a tighter market, the researchers who diversify their funding strategy are the ones who keep their labs running.