R43341 — National Institutes of Health (NIH) Funding: FY1996-FY2026

This report details the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget and appropriations process with a focus on FY2025 and FY2026. NIH is the primary federal agency charged with conducting and supporting medical, health, and behavioral research. The agency consists of 27 Institutes and Centers (ICs) plus the Office of the Director (OD). In addition, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), first funded in FY2022, is established as an independent agency housed within NIH to advance “high-potential, high-impact” biomedical and health research. As of FY2023, nearly 82% of the NIH budget funds extramural research through grants, contracts, and other awards to universities and other research institutions. About 11% of NIH funding goes to intramural researchers at NIH-operated facilities. Almost all of NIH’s funding is provided in the annual Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies (LHHS) Appropriations Act. NIH also receives smaller amounts of funding from the Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies (INT) Appropriations Act and a mandatory budget appropriation for type 1 diabetes research. FY2025 and FY2026 In FY2025, NIH was primarily funded by the FY2025 full-year continuing resolution (CR; Division A of P.L. 119-4). The CR, for the most part, provided NIH with full-year FY2025 funding at the same levels and subject to the same conditions as provided in FY2024 appropriations (P.L. 118-47). The main exception was for the NIH Innovation Account; a provision in the FY2025 CR reduced the FY2025 NIH Innovation Account appropriation to the level authorized in the 21st Century Cures Act for FY2025 (a $280 million decrease to precision medicine and brain research). Accounting for transfers, NIH received a total program funding level of $47.035 billion in FY2025, $276 million (-0.6%) less than the FY2024 final level. Accounting for an ARPA-H appropriation of $1.5 billion, the final NIH and ARPA-H FY2025 funding level was $48.535 billion, or 0.6% less than the FY2024 NIH and ARPA-H funding level. The FY2026 budget request proposed an NIH program level of $27.915 billion, a decrease of $19.1 billion (-40.6%) from the FY2025 final level. The FY2026 budget request also proposed to restructure NIH. Four ICs would have been eliminated, while 19 would have been consolidated into eight restructured ICs. Two NIH components would have been moved out of NIH to other parts of HHS. In the FY2026 budget request, all eight proposed ICs would have seen funding decreases (ranging from -21% to -44%) from comparable FY2025 levels. FY2026 enacted appropriations (P.L. 119-75 and P.L. 119-74 ) provided NIH with a total program funding level of $47.493 billion in FY2026, $458 million (1.0%) more than the FY2025 final level. Accounting for an ARPA-H appropriation of $1.5 billion, the same level as FY2025, the final NIH and ARPA-H FY2026 funding level is $48.933 billion, or 0.9% more than the FY2025 NIH and ARPA-H funding level. NIH was funded according to the preexisting structure, and FY2026 enacted appropriations did not incorporate the restructuring proposed in the FY2026 budget request. Trends NIH has seen periods of high and low funding growth during the years covered by this report. From 1998 through 2003, NIH’s program funding level doubled to $27.167 billion in FY2003. From FY2003 to FY2015, NIH funding increased more gradually in nominal dollars. In some years (FY2006, FY2011, and FY2013), agency funding decreased in nominal dollars. From FY2016 through FY2023, NIH saw funding increases each year ranging from 3% to 9%. Since FY2024, NIH funding has been relatively flat, with slight increases or decreases from year to year (not accounting for ARPA-H funding). When looking at NIH funding adjusted for inflation (in preliminary constant FY2024 dollars using the Biomedical Research and Development Price Index; BRDPI), the purchasing power of NIH funding initially peaked in FY2003—the last year of the five-year doubling period—and then declined fairly steadily for more than a decade until funding increases were provided (at a rate higher than inflation, as measured by the BRDPI) in each of FY2016 through FY2023. The inflation-adjusted FY2026 enacted program level is estimated to be 10.3% below the FY2003 peak level.

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