By Kritika Agarwal
A new AAU analysis of publicly available data from the National Institutes of Health shows a significant slowdown in the rate of competitive awards made by the agency so far this fiscal year. The data show that NIH has issued 66% fewer grant awards in FY26 by the end of February than it did, on average, during that same period in FY21–24. (The federal fiscal year begins on October 1.) The monetary value of those awards has also declined by 54% compared to the average from FY21-24, the data found.
The slowdown in awards is massively disruptive for the United States’ biomedical research enterprise. NIH-funded basic and clinical research has provided the scientific basis for the majority of the advances the United States has seen in treating our deadliest chronic and infectious diseases.
Without NIH grants, researchers trying to develop new treatments and cures for patients could be forced to cut lab spending; pause hiring; or layoff students, staff, or trainees. Even minor delays in grant funding can compromise ongoing research and wreak havoc on long-term innovation.
Why Grantmaking Has Slowed
The slowdown in awards has been attributed to multiple reasons. Both Nature and Science have reported that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) had placed a hold on releasing funds appropriated by Congress to the NIH, thus preventing the agency from spending the money. (Congress provided $47.2 billion to the NIH in FY26.)
At a hearing that took place on March 17, House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) said that “OMB finally approved NIH’s apportionments” on March 16. “We are nearly halfway through the fiscal year, and NIH’s grantmaking is well behind schedule,” she noted.
Additionally, the delays likely owe in part to the recent layoffs and departures of thousands of NIH staff members. The agency has lost more than 4,000 employees – or nearly 20% of its workforce – over the past year. The 43-day-long government shutdown that took place last October and November is also partly responsible for the delays.
NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya assured the subcommittee during the March 17 hearing that the agency has its funding for the year and that his “job is to make sure every single dollar goes out.”
Why NIH Grantmaking Trends Have Researchers Worried
Despite Bhattacharya’s assurances that the agency will spend every dollar it has received from Congress, the scientific research community has good reasons to worry that current NIH grantmaking trends spell continued troubles for the biomedical research enterprise.
Increased Use of Multi-Year Funding: FY25 also began with a significant slowdown in NIH awards; the agency, however, sped up grantmaking during the last quarter of the fiscal year and eventually spent its FY25 budget, awarding $36.58 billion in research grants. But, as The New York Times reported, “To spend its budget, the NIH made an unusual number of large lump-sum payments for many years of research, instead of its usual policy of paying for research one year at a time.”
This use of multi-year funding led to an overall smaller number of grantees last year. According to United for Medical Research, only 17% of research-grant applicants received an NIH award in FY25 – the lowest success rate in 30 years.
This has already had an impact on early-career scientists who are less likely to be awarded multi-year grants; the NIH acknowledged that, during FY25, only 18.5% of early-stage investigators were successful in receiving a substantial NIH grant. This is significantly lower than the 29.8% of early-stage investigators who were successful in receiving such grants in FY23.
Fewer NIH awards result in fewer “shots on goal” for discovering new diagnostics, treatments, and cures that improve people’s lives. Each grant represents a chance for scientists to test a promising idea, gather data, and move closer to real breakthroughs. Fewer grants mean fewer opportunities for students and early-career researchers to gain hands-on experience and build the skills needed to sustain the future biomedical workforce.
While Congress has limited the number of grants receiving multi-year funding in FY26 to the same percentage of grants to which the agency awarded multi-year funding in FY25, it is likely that the agency will, once again, award more money to a smaller number of researchers in order to fully spend its appropriated budget this fiscal year.
Limited Funding Opportunities: The NIH is also publishing significantly fewer Notices of Funding Opportunities. NOFOs tell researchers about the areas of study that the NIH has deemed important and in which it is seeking to fund grants. According to Elizabeth Ginexi, a former NIH program official, “A Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) is how the NIH tells researchers what the agency needs. It specifies a research problem, explains why it matters, describes the approach the NIH is looking for, and sets aside dedicated funding to solve it.” NOFOs typically focus on soliciting grants for problems that are not being addressed by unsolicited grant applications.
Ginexi calculated that, as of March 15, the NIH has published only 14 NOFOs in calendar year 2026. In comparison, the agency published 756 NOFOs in 2024. The agency has noted that it has reduced the number of grant solicitations as “part of a wider strategy across NIH to simplify and streamline the application process.” Last November, the agency also implemented a “unified funding strategy” – an agency-wide framework that standardized how NIH institutes and centers make grant-funding decisions.
NIH’s move to a unified funding strategy, combined with fewer clearly defined NOFOs, means researchers have to increasingly anchor applications to broad, generic opportunities instead of tailored announcements, making it harder to know exactly how their work is being evaluated. Nature reported an NIH agency official as saying that a smaller number of NOFOs “could widen knowledge gaps in understudied areas of science, such as rare and neglected diseases.”
Ginexi noted that another reason for the smaller number of solicitations is backlogs caused by new requirements that NOFOs be approved by political appointees at the NIH, the Department of Health and Human Services, and OMB. This contravenes the merit review standards that have historically ensured American scientific excellence.
Biomedical Innovation at Risk
In sum, despite the NIH director’s assurances that the agency will spend every dollar appropriated to it by Congress, questions remain about whether the pace of awards will pick up, what types of research will be funded, and whether the grants that are made will be concentrated among a smaller subset of scientists.
A recent national survey of nearly 1,000 NIH-funded researchers by STAT found that scientists are reeling from cuts to NIH grants because of changes in federal priorities as well as the ongoing slowdown in awards. The survey found that, despite courts reversing some grant terminations, “just 35% of respondents whose grants were cut or delayed said their government funding had been fully restored by the end of 2025.”
That uncertainty about continued funding is translating into existential risk for many research programs. STAT found that some labs may shut down permanently, with early-career researchers and students especially expressing alarm about their future prospects in biomedical science. “This is like the Titanic hitting the iceberg,” a scientist from the University of California, Los Angeles, told the publication. “People are still eating at the table, music’s still playing, and yet the ship is sinking.”
Kritika Agarwal is assistant vice president for communications at AAU.
AAU analyzed NIH RePORTER data, downloaded on March 16, 2026, to document the cumulative number and total approved value of competitive (type 1 and type 2) awards administered by the NIH through February. Timeframes are calculated based on the award notice date. The analysis was conducted by AAU Research Analyst Graham Andrews and Junior Research Analyst Amanda Shaffer.