Black-Owned Business Grants Open Right Now — 2026

Every Black-owned business program, its status, and the month it reopens

All 17 programs are printed below with the status GrantCompass verified on August 24, 2026 and re-checked on October 1, 2026 and, for the 10 that run on a documented calendar, the months their window has historically occupied. A slice where almost everything is shut needs a different instrument from a slice where things are open: the useful question here is not which of these can I enter, it is when do I set the reminder. The selector answers that. Program names link to the GrantCompass record for that program, where the eligibility detail lives.

• Tier 1 — the program’s own rules name Black or African American owners: 11 programs, 0 with an open application.
• Tier 2 — Black founders are one named priority among several: 3 programs, 0 open.
• Tier 3 — Black-focused capital and free programs, no deadline to miss: 3 programs, all 3 open.

The last open deadline: Camelback Ventures Fellowship

Our catalog rates Camelback at 7 out of 10 for ease, 5 out of 5 for competition, and roughly twelve hours of work, with cohorts of fifteen to twenty-five Fellows. That combination — a hard ceiling on cohort size, a national applicant pool, and a personal-narrative application — is what a five-out-of-five competition rating means in practice. GrantCompass carried the award at $25,000 until August 24, 2026; Camelback’s own page states $50,000, and the verified figure is what appears in the table above and in the ledger below.

The reason this single row carries the page is arithmetic rather than enthusiasm. Every other cash program aimed at Black-owned businesses in the catalog is shut too, and the next one likely to open is the NAACP Powershift Entrepreneur Grant, whose window has historically fallen in October; as of October 1, 2026 no 2026 cycle has been announced. Knowing which one or two windows to wait for is worth more than a list of twenty programs that cannot be entered.

Is Black Ambition accepting applications in 2026?

The distinction between paused and ended matters for how you use your calendar. A paused program with a documented January-to-May cadence is worth a reminder set for January 2027 and nothing else; an ended one is worth deleting. Black Ambition sits in the first category on the evidence available: no closure statement exists, the organisation continues to operate, and the language on its own page points forward. GrantCompass will move the row when a 2027 window is published or when the organisation says otherwise, and the change will appear in the ledger below with its date.

Two practical notes for founders who had Black Ambition on their list. The Prize was non-dilutive, which is rare at that award size, and the HBCU track meant an affiliated founder had a materially smaller applicant pool to compete against. Neither feature is replicated by anything currently open in this slice. Founders who were building toward it should read the NBMBAA Scale-Up Pitch Challenge row above — a $50,000 non-dilutive grand prize on a spring-to-summer cadence — as the closest structural analogue, while noting that we could not read a 2026 deadline from the organiser’s own site.

What happened to the Fearless Fund Strivers Grant

It remains, two years on, the single most common stale entry on Black-business grant lists, and it is the reason this page exists in its current form. A founder who spends an evening preparing a Strivers application in 2026 has lost that evening to a document that no aggregator has bothered to correct. GrantCompass keeps the row visible at the Fearless Fund record rather than deleting it, on the reasoning that the searches sending people there are still running and a truthful dead end beats a 404.

The wider pattern is worth stating without overstating it. Two of the eleven dedicated programs in this slice have ended outright — Strivers by settlement, and the SoGal Black Founder Startup Grant, whose page has returned a 404 since May 2026. Two more are dormant with no cycle in roughly two years. That is four of eleven gone or silent, which is a real contraction, but it is not the same as the whole category disappearing: six programs closed a 2026 cycle they are expected to run again, and the calendar section below says when.

Which programs still name Black founders in their rules

The table reads each funder’s own wording. It does not say which programs are taking applications; the calendar at the top of this page does that. For the legal background, including the Fearless Fund settlement and the 2026 change to SBA 8(a), see race-specific grants after the Fearless Fund ruling. For Black women, the women-of-color program fit table goes further.

The decision rule: when a program’s qualification list names Black ownership, identity gets you in the door and the contest is about your business. When it does not, check revenue, product and place first, because those are the gates you can fail. The full list of Black-owned business grants carries every program and the federal routes.

When the closed programs have historically reopened

Programs whose window spans several months are counted in each month it touches. Rolling programs and those with no fixed month are excluded from this chart.

The clustering has a cause. Most of these are corporate and foundation programs whose windows are set by marketing calendars rather than fiscal ones, and two calendar events anchor the year: Black History Month drives a February and March push, and National Black Business Month in August drives a late-summer one. Tarte’s Shape Your Future awards historically opened on August 1 for exactly that reason, which is also why its silence this August was meaningful rather than incidental — its page still shows 2024 honorees and we found no 2025 or 2026 cycle at all.

The October outlier is the one to diarise now. The NAACP Powershift Entrepreneur Grant is tied to Black Entrepreneurs Day and awards a flat $25,000; the NAACP’s own grants page stated the grant was not open when we checked on August 24, 2026, and as of October 1, 2026 no 2026 cycle has been announced, so this is the month to watch for it. Two more NAACP-adjacent rows sit on separate clocks: the NAACP and L’Oréal USA Inclusive Beauty Fund closed its 2026 cycle on April 23, 2026 with a 2027 cycle expected in the first quarter, and the Power Forward Small Business Grant runs New England rounds on no fixed month at all.

Which of these are actually worth a Black founder’s evening

Three picks from reading all 17 rows against ease, hours, competition and ceiling — and one group to stop chasing. Written by hand once and preserved when the counts above are recomputed. It is an opinion about the data rather than an output of it.

Black-owned banks and Black-led CDFIs: how to find one and what they lend

1. Banks: open the FDIC’s MDI list (a quarterly Excel file). Code 1 means Black or African American owned. Code 6 means a majority African American board serving a mostly minority community.
2. Credit unions: the NCUA’s MDI page covers credit unions whose members, board and chartered community are mostly from minority groups, Black Americans among them.
3. Loan funds: the CDFI Fund’s certified list does not record who leads each lender, so read the board and mission. Black-focused CDFIs on this page include HOPE in the Deep South and the Black Business Investment Fund in Florida and Georgia.

From the FDIC’s second-quarter 2026 MDI list. * qualifies through a majority African American board serving a mostly minority community rather than 51% ownership. The FDIC refreshes the file every quarter, so check the current one before you call.

What they lend. A bank lends what banks lend: accounts, credit lines, equipment and real-estate loans (the CDFI and MDI comparison sets out the difference). The Black-focused CDFIs lend smaller, earlier and with coaching attached. HOPE Credit Union lends up to $250,000 for real estate, vehicles, equipment and secured or unsecured business purposes in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee. BBIF calls itself a non-profit CDFI working through microfinance and business education. Florida’s program routes state money through certified lenders to Black businesses that banks have turned down.

Which to call first: a bank on the list in your state when you have a year or more of business bank statements and want a credit line or equipment. A CDFI when you are newer, your credit file is thin, or a bank has already said no. If no bank on the list is in your state, find a CDFI on the CDFI Fund’s certified list.

Supplier-diversity programs are sales channels, not grants

Grant or contract, in numbers: a $25,000 Powershift grant is the whole prize. A corporate catering account worth $3,000 a month is $36,000 a year in sales, before costs. At an assumed 30% margin that is about $10,800 a year of profit, so the account passes the grant’s $25,000 during its third year and keeps paying for as long as the buyer reorders. Certification is what lets that buyer find you; it does not win the account. NMSDC also tests control as well as ownership: the owners’ authority must be “real, substantial, and continuing”, so a Black owner on paper with someone else running the company will not pass.

What changed on this page, and when

Every dated change to the Black-owned slice of the GrantCompass catalog since August 23, 2026 is recorded here, newest first. The ledger is append-only: monthly recomputation adds entries rather than editing them away, so our corrections stay visible instead of quietly disappearing.

• October 1, 2026Re-checked all 17 programs against the GrantCompass catalog. 3 are open, all of them lenders or free programs; the Camelback Ventures Fellowship now counts with the 7 programs closed for the cycle. The NAACP Powershift Entrepreneur Grant’s historical October window has arrived with no 2026 cycle announced, so it stays closed.
• September 26, 2026Cohort 18 closed on September 18, 2026 and no next cycle has been announced; the Camelback Ventures Fellowship is back to between intakes, and no dated cash deadline in this slice is open today.
• August 24, 2026The Camelback Ventures Fellowship was found reopened during the GrantCompass sweep that re-checked all 215 non-active catalog records, with Cohort 18 applications running through September 18, 2026. It had been carried as between intakes, which would have hidden the only live deadline in this slice.
• August 24, 2026Camelback’s award was logged for correction: our catalog held a $25,000 seed grant, while Camelback’s own application page states Fellows receive $50,000 in capital. The verified figure is what this page prints.
• August 24, 2026The NAACP Powershift Entrepreneur Grant was re-checked at source. The NAACP grants page states the grant is not currently open, and the $25,000 flat award was confirmed on the same page.
• August 24, 2026Tarte’s Shape Your Future awards were moved from between intakes to dormant. The program historically opened on August 1 for National Black Business Month; on August 24, 2026 the page carries 2024 honorees and no application, and no 2025 or 2026 cycle could be found.
• August 24, 2026digitalundivided’s BREAKTHROUGH row was corrected twice over: the catalog listed Houston, Atlanta and Detroit cohorts, while digitalundivided ran Northern California and Nashville with sessions between July 27 and August 14, 2026. The row now reads closed for the cycle.
• August 23, 2026Black Ambition was re-verified as running no 2026 Prize Competition, in the organisation’s own words on its application page, and kept as paused rather than ended because no closure statement exists.
• August 23, 2026The Fearless Fund Strivers Grant was re-confirmed permanently terminated under the settlement announced September 11, 2024, and the SoGal Black Founder Startup Grant was kept in the ended column with its page still returning a 404.

The numbers behind “Black-owned business grants”

Of the 17 programs in this slice, 14 are grants or awards, 2 are loans and 1 is a free program — and the grant column, which is where the attention goes, is the column that is shut. The status distribution is the honest shape of this market on October 1, 2026.

• Zero of eleven. Not one grant written specifically for Black-owned businesses has an open application on October 1, 2026, and this is a cadence problem rather than a funding collapse: six of the eleven closed a 2026 cycle.
• $25,000 is the median ceiling across the 14 grant and award programs here, and it stays $25,000 whether Camelback is counted at the $25,000 our catalog held or the $50,000 its own page states.
• 7 of the 10 dated programs open in March, April or May. The scarcity is seasonal before it is structural, and a founder planning around spring will catch most of this market.
• Four of eleven are gone or silent. Two ended outright and two have run no cycle we can evidence since 2024 — a real contraction in the dedicated tier, concentrated in beauty-brand prizes.

Where a Black founder should start, by stage

Fit more than one row, or none? See which grants you qualify for: answer a few questions and the matcher sorts the whole catalog for your business.

The questions Black founders actually type