The National Institutes of Health spent its entire roughly $34 billion external grants budget for the 2026 fiscal year, but a STAT analysis indicates that delayed and opaque decisions are stymying researchers. The agency ended the fiscal year, which concluded Wednesday, with a smaller number of total awards than in previous years, creating uncertainty within the scientific community.
While the NIH continued reducing grant awards involving health disparities, race, and ethnicity, the analysis found little progress toward other Trump administration priorities. These priorities included disbursing funds more evenly across the country and expanding support for early-career scientists. Researchers participating in a survey and interviews reported that delays in the grant review process are slowing their work. They stated these delays make it difficult to propose and conduct the innovative science the agency is designed to support.
The agency funded around 58,000 projects in the 2026 fiscal year. This represents a slight drop from the 61,000 awarded during the 2025 fiscal year and is well below the roughly 63,700 grants awarded annually in years before the second Trump administration. The total number of grants may increase somewhat in coming weeks due to reporting lags in the NIH grants database.
The smaller number of grants potentially resulted from a White House push to fully fund more multiyear grants in advance. This approach meant there was less funding on hand to issue new awards, despite the agency ultimately spending its full budget after a slow start.