Science News & Analysis

Year in review: NIH issued 24% fewer new grants in 2025; 7,800+ cancelled or suspended across NIH and NSF (January 20, 2026)

January 20, 2026 — A Nature year-end review found that the NIH issued 24 percent fewer new grants in 2025 compared with the average of the previous ten years — a loss of roughly 2,000 fewer research projects starting from scratch across American universities and medical centers — while simultaneously cancelling or suspending a total of 5,844 grants already in progress. The NSF cancelled or suspended an additional 1,996 grants. Together, across both agencies, more than 7,800 research grants were cancelled or suspended in 2025 alone, with over $5 billion in unspent funds affected. The cuts disproportionately targeted research the administration politically disfavored: vaccine hesitancy, misinformation, infectious diseases, diversity in science, and underrepresented populations research were specifically overrepresented among terminations.

The pattern of cancellations by geography was revealing: New York had the most cancelled or frozen grants — nearly 1,500 — the majority concentrated at Columbia University. The nature of the affected research meant that the damage was not evenly distributed: grants for applied clinical research or infrastructure could sometimes be restarted; grants for basic science investigating cellular processes, genetic mechanisms, or developmental biology — research that cannot be "paused" — represented irreversible losses when terminated, as biological systems and experimental conditions cannot simply be returned to their prior state.

A STAT News national survey of NIH-funded researchers found that despite court orders restoring some grants and Congress increasing the NIH's budget for FY2026, only 35 percent of researchers whose grants had been cut or delayed reported their government funding was fully restored by year's end. A staggering 81 percent of junior tenure-track scientists said they were concerned that disruptions to their research productivity could threaten their tenure prospects — meaning the long-term pipeline of American scientific talent was under structural threat regardless of any near-term funding restorations.