Two Contradictory Things Are Both True
Congress funded NIH at $47.22 billion for FY2026, a $216 million increase (roughly 1%) over FY2025. Legislators explicitly rejected the White House proposal to cut NIH by approximately 40%. By that measure, the NIH budget survived. At the same time, DOGE terminated more than 600 NIH grants worth between $6.9 billion and $8.2 billion, and flagged an additional 3,200 grants for further review. Two NIH officials testified under oath that DOGE directly ordered those terminations. Certain research categories, including DEI-related work, vaccine hesitancy studies, transgender health research, and some infectious disease programs, were disproportionately targeted. So the budget line held, but the actual research portfolio shrank significantly through administrative action rather than appropriations. For researchers preparing applications right now, two procedural changes matter regardless of politics: NIH stopped posting funding opportunities to the NIH Guide (see NOT-OD-25-143), and SciENcv biosketches became mandatory for all submissions on January 25, 2026 (NOT-OD-26-018). The rest of this guide covers what happened, what changed, and what you need to do before the June cycle deadlines. Search current NIH opportunities on Funding Landscape
What DOGE Did to NIH Grants
The terminations began in early 2025 and accelerated through the year. DOGE ordered terminations of grants it identified as conflicting with executive priorities. The targets were not random: grants studying vaccine hesitancy, DEI in health research, transgender health outcomes, and certain infectious disease topics were among the most affected categories. The dollar figures are significant. Estimates of the terminated value range from $6.9 billion (NIH's internal accounting) to $8.2 billion (independent analyses). That is not a rounding error; it represents thousands of active projects cut mid-stream. Legal challenges produced mixed results. The Supreme Court, in an August 2025 ruling, allowed $783 million in DEI-linked grant terminations to proceed, finding that the administration had sufficient authority to cancel grants it deemed inconsistent with policy priorities. A separate legal fight over a proposed 15% cap on indirect cost reimbursements went differently: an appeals court upheld an injunction blocking the cap, and Congress added legislative language to the FY2026 appropriations bill explicitly preventing the administration from reimposing it. The indirect cost cap is not in effect. One partial resolution came through a court settlement covering frozen (not terminated) grants. NIH reviewed 146 non-competitive renewals that had been frozen; 135 of the 146 were ultimately funded. What this means practically: if your research touches topics that were targeted in 2025, that political risk exists. It is not possible to predict which grants may be reviewed or terminated in 2026. Researchers in affected areas should document their scientific rationale thoroughly and should not assume approved funding is permanent. NIH currently operates through 27 institutes and centers. The early-stage investigator pipeline shows strain: NIH funded 1,423 Early Stage Investigators in FY2024 but only 1,144 in FY2025, a decline of roughly 20%.
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The Grants.gov Transition: NIH Guide Is No Longer the Source
NOT-OD-25-143, issued in 2025, formalized a change that affects how researchers find opportunities: NIH stopped posting new funding opportunity announcements to the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts. All opportunities are now posted exclusively to Grants.gov. This matters because many researchers had email subscriptions to the NIH Guide or relied on it as their primary discovery tool. Those subscriptions no longer deliver new FOAs. If you have not already migrated your search process to Grants.gov, do it now before the June cycle. Practical steps for the transition: 1. Create or verify your Grants.gov account at grants.gov. The account is separate from your eRA Commons account. 2. Set up saved searches in Grants.gov for your funding categories (CFDA numbers for NIH programs start with 93). 3. Verify that your organization's Authorized Organization Representative (AOR) has an active Grants.gov registration. This is a separate requirement from eRA Commons. 4. System for Award Management (SAM.gov) registration must be current for your institution. SAM.gov registrations expire annually. A lapsed SAM.gov registration will block submission. See our SAM.gov registration guide for renewal steps. Known problems: some researchers have reported Grants.gov account issues, including login problems after the system migration and delays in AOR authorization. Build in at least two weeks before your deadline for any account issues to be resolved. Grants.gov help is available at 1-800-518-4726. Search NIH funding opportunities
SciENcv and ORCID: What Changed on January 25, 2026
NOT-OD-26-018 made SciENcv biosketches mandatory for all NIH grant submissions starting January 25, 2026. Word document biosketches are no longer accepted. SciENcv (Science Experts Network Curriculum Vitae) is a free tool maintained by NCBI. It generates the NIH-formatted biosketch (Form PHS 398) and can pull publication data automatically from sources like PubMed and ORCID. In the same policy update, ORCID IDs became required for all senior and key personnel listed on NIH applications. ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is a free persistent identifier for researchers. If you do not have one, register at orcid.org. If you have one but have not linked it to your NCBI account, do that now. Setup steps: 1. Go to ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sciencv and sign in with your eRA Commons credentials. 2. Create a new biosketch profile. You can import publications from PubMed, ORCID, or manually enter them. 3. Link your ORCID account within SciENcv. This populates the ORCID field automatically on the biosketch. 4. Export the PDF from SciENcv and include that PDF in your application package. Do not convert or reformat it. 5. Every senior and key person on your application needs their own SciENcv-generated biosketch. Common problems: researchers who have not used SciENcv before often underestimate the time required to set up the profile, import publications, and correct any data errors pulled from external sources. Allow at least a week for this step, more if you have a large publication record or if co-investigators need to create their own profiles. If a co-investigator is at a different institution, they need to complete their SciENcv setup independently. You cannot generate their biosketch for them.
The June Cycle: Deadlines and Grant Mechanisms
The next standard NIH application cycle has the following deadlines: - R01 (new): June 5, 2026 - R01 (renewal or resubmission): July 5, 2026 - R21 (new): June 16, 2026 - R21 (renewal): July 16, 2026 - K awards (new): June 12, 2026 - K awards (renewal): July 12, 2026 These are the standing deadlines for parent announcements. Specific program announcements (PAs) and requests for applications (RFAs) may have different deadlines. Grant mechanism summary: R01: The standard research project grant. Budget is $250,000 to $500,000 in direct costs per year (most R01s cluster toward the lower end), for three to five years. No preliminary data is technically required, but in practice competitive R01s almost always include strong preliminary data. Reviewers want to see a well-defined question, feasibility, and a team qualified to execute. R21: The exploratory/developmental grant. Up to $275,000 in direct costs total over two years (roughly $100,000 to $150,000 per year). Designed for early-stage ideas where full feasibility has not been established. Preliminary data requirements are lower, but the scientific premise still needs to be sound. K awards: Career development awards. K01 supports early-career researchers needing protected time. K23 supports patient-oriented research. K99/R00 (the Pathway to Independence Award) supports postdoctoral researchers transitioning to independent positions. K awards typically cover 75% of salary and are not intended for projects that should be R01s. U awards: Cooperative agreements. NIH staff are actively involved in the science. U01 is the most common. These are usually solicited through RFAs rather than parent announcements. On reviewer priorities: reviewers score on significance, investigator, innovation, approach, and environment. Approach receives the heaviest weight. Specific aims pages are read by everyone; the rest of the application is read primarily by your assigned reviewers. A weak specific aims page that fails to communicate the central question clearly is the most common fixable problem in unfunded applications. Contact your program officer before submitting. Program officers can tell you whether your topic fits the institute's current priorities, whether similar work is already funded, and whether an R21 or R01 is the better fit for your stage. This is not optional outreach; it changes outcomes.
What to Do Before the June Deadline
A practical checklist for researchers targeting the June 2026 cycle: Registration (complete these first, they take time): - Verify your institution's SAM.gov registration is active and not expiring within 60 days. See the SAM.gov registration guide. - Verify your eRA Commons account is active and your role is correct (PI, Co-I, etc.). - Verify your institution's Grants.gov registration and that your AOR can submit. - If you do not have an ORCID, register at orcid.org. Biosketch: - Create your SciENcv profile and generate a biosketch now, not the week before the deadline. - Confirm all co-investigators and key personnel have done the same. Finding the right opportunity: - Search Grants.gov (not the NIH Guide) for current parent announcements or specific RFAs in your area. - Filter by CFDA 93.xxx for NIH programs. - Read the full funding opportunity announcement before writing anything. - Find open NIH opportunities on Funding Landscape Pre-submission: - Email your program officer 8-10 weeks before the deadline with a brief paragraph on your proposed research. Ask whether it fits the institute's portfolio. - Get institutional sign-off on your budget well before the deadline. Many institutions have internal deadlines 5-10 business days before the NIH deadline. For researchers working in areas affected by the 2025 terminations, consult with your institution's grants office and legal counsel on how to frame your research. Program officers can also advise on whether a topic is currently supported by the relevant institute. For broader context on HHS-level funding beyond NIH, see HHS grants beyond NIH. For biomedical and healthcare funding sources outside the federal system, see healthcare and biomedical funding.