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

This report details the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget and appropriations process with a focus on FY2025 and FY2026 request. NIH is the primary federal agency charged with conducting and supporting medical, health, and behavioral research. It 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. 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 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies (INT) Appropriations Act and a mandatory budget authority for type 1 diabetes research. FY2025 Enacted and FY2026 Request 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 $46.995 billion in FY2025, $357 million (-0.8%) 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 is $48.495 billion, or 0.7% less than the FY2024 NIH and ARPA-H funding level. The FY2026 budget request proposes an NIH program level of $27.915 billion, a decrease of $19.1 billion (-40.6%) from the FY2025 enacted level. The FY2026 budget request also proposes to restructure NIH. Four ICs would be eliminated, while 19 would be consolidated into eight restructured ICs. Two NIH components would be moved out of NIH to other parts of HHS: the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and ARPA-H. In FY2026, all eight proposed ICs would see funding decreases (ranging from -21% to -44%) from comparable FY2025 levels. Trends NIH has seen periods of high and low funding growth during the years covered by this report, as illustrated in Figure 2. From 1998 through 2003, Congress and the President doubled the NIH budget to $27.167 billion in FY2003. In each of FY1999 through FY2003, NIH received annual funding increases of 14% to 17%. 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%. NIH saw slight decreases in both FY2024 (-0.7%) and FY2025 (-0.8%) from the prior year’s enacted funding level. 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. In FY2025, the inflation-adjusted NIH program level based on BRDPI projections, is estimated to be 8.8% less than the FY2003 peak level. The FY2026 request would provide an inflation-adjusted NIH program that is 47.3% below the FY2003 peak level.