With FY26 federal appropriations bills now signed into law, the R&D funding outlook is brighter than initially feared. Compared to the drastic cuts that were proposed in the spring, the bills show some increases, flat funding, or relatively small reductions for R&D.
ALT Bar chart depicting FY26 Federal R&D Appropriations with entities: NIH, NSF, NASA, DOE, and NIST. NIH shows a slight increase of 0.9%. NSF, NASA, and DOE display decreases of -3.4%, -24.3%, and -3.4% respectively. NIST has a significant increase of 26.5%. Annotations compare budget requests to 2026 law. Features the AAAS logo.