SBIR & STTR Grants Open Now — 2026

All 46 SBIR/STTR programs, with today’s window

Every SBIR/STTR-linked program in our catalog, sorted open-first. The Window column is the honest one: an agency solicitation that is between rounds is labelled that way rather than dressed up as available, and the three Phase II tracks that never open to the public are labelled as invitation-only. Program names link to the full record.

How much SBIR and STTR pay: the SBA ceiling and each agency's own cap

Since October 16, 2026, an agency can issue an SBIR or STTR Phase I award of up to $335,937, and a Phase II award of up to $2,239,578, without asking SBA for a waiver. That is SBA's ceiling, not the typical award. Most agencies publish a lower cap of their own, and the gap between two agencies is often bigger than any state match on this page.

The NIH row shows SBA's ceiling; an award above it needs an SBA waiver. Every other cap is the one the agency publishes on its own SBIR page or in its solicitation. DARPA and the Missile Defense Agency set amounts topic by topic in the Defense BAA, so check the topic. "No" in the last column means the agency is not on SBA's list of agencies using the majority venture-capital authority.

Three rules follow from the table.

• Budget to the agency's cap, not SBA's ceiling. Even inside the Defense Department the spread is wide: a Navy Phase I is $140,000 plus a $100,000 option, while the Air Force goes up to $323,000. The same project needs a tighter scope for one branch than the other.
• NSF's figures are its own. NSF pays up to $305,000 for Phase I and up to $1,250,000 over 24 months for Phase II, both below the SBA ceiling.
• Venture ownership closes NSF, not every door. Federal law (15 U.S.C. 638(dd)) lets an SBIR agency spend part of its SBIR funds on companies majority-owned by multiple venture capital operating companies, hedge funds or private equity firms. SBA lists NIH, CDC, ARPA-E, DARPA, the Army, Navy, Air Force and the Department of Education as using it, and an agency that uses it says so in its solicitation. NSF says a company majority owned by those investors is not eligible. Since the authority covers SBIR funds, a majority VC-owned company should not assume STTR is open to it at the same agency.

See which grants you qualify for, with the SBIR agencies that fit your technology and your state's match.

The state matching layer: which state you are in decides what a Phase I is worth

Half of what people call “the SBIR landscape” is federal. The other half is a state layer that almost nobody assembles in one place: 16 programs across 15 states that pay you a second time for the same federal award. They do not replace the federal money and they are not a second competition for it — they sit on top of it.

Concretely, using published ceilings: an NSF SBIR Phase I is $305,000 wherever your company sits. Move the same company, with the same proposal, and the total non-dilutive cash changes:

At NIH’s higher Phase I ceiling of $335,937 the Wyoming or Alabama stack reaches $435,937. That is a 30% uplift on an identical federal award, produced entirely by where the company is headquartered. It is the single largest lever on this page, and no federal solicitation mentions it.

For a cleantech company, DOE SBIR is one step in a longer path; see a worked cleantech funding stack.

Three rules govern nearly all of them. You must already hold the federal award — Utah is the deliberate exception, paying $3,000–$5,000 before you apply, and only to first-time applicants. You must be genuinely based in the state: Wyoming wants half your employees there and a three-year commitment, Alabama and Vermont want you to stay for the life of the project, Kentucky will accept a company willing to relocate. And most carry a lifetime cap — Indiana stops at $150,000, Vermont at five grants, Wyoming at four.

Eligibility mechanics: what “founded in 2024” actually runs into

The most common thing people ask us about SBIR is some version of can a company incorporated last year apply. The answer has two halves, and the second one is the half that costs people a cycle.

There is no company-age rule. Anywhere.

We read the published eligibility rules on all 46 programs in this set. Not one imposes a minimum or maximum company age — no “two years of trading”, no “must predate the solicitation”, nothing. A company incorporated last month can win an NSF Phase I. Age is simply not a criterion in the SBIR or STTR statutes, and no agency in this set adds one.

What actually stops a young company is registration state, not age

Every federal window here requires the same registration stack, and the stack — not the company’s birthday — is what has a lead time measured in weeks:

• An active SAM.gov registration with a Unique Entity Identifier (UEI). Required by NIH, NSF, DoD, DOE and the Air Force alike. This is the item that most often runs past a deadline, because it is a government identity check rather than a form.
• Registration in the SBA SBIR Company Registry at sbir.gov, required before you submit to any participating agency.
• For NIH, an eRA Commons account for the organization and for every project director / principal investigator and signing official.
• For DoD, a DSIP account at dodsbirsttr.mil — and note that AFWERX Open Topics are submitted through a separate portal, not DSIP.

A company founded in 2024 that started these registrations in 2024 is in a completely ordinary position. A company founded in 2024 that starts them the week a solicitation closes is not going to make that solicitation, and its age has nothing to do with why.

Ownership: the rule that actually disqualifies funded startups

Every window in this set requires a for-profit US small business with 500 or fewer employees including all affiliates, and more than 50% ownership and control by US citizens or permanent residents. Two refinements matter if you have raised money:

• NSF is stricter than everyone else. NSF requires at least 51% of company equity to be held by US citizens or permanent residents at the individual ownership level, not just at the entity level, and disqualifies a company majority-owned by a venture capital operating company, hedge fund, or private equity firm. A 2024-vintage deep-tech startup with a majority-VC cap table can be ineligible at NSF while remaining eligible at agencies using the SBIR VC authority (MDA excluded) on the same technology.
• DoD wants you incorporated. DoD’s rules exclude sole proprietors outright and flag pass-through-only LLC structures as a problem depending on which component you are applying to.

The principal investigator rule is a hiring constraint wearing a form field

SBIR requires the principal investigator to be primarily employed — more than 50% of working time — by the applicant company at the time of award and throughout the project. NSF quantifies it: at least 20 hours a week, with a minimum of one month (173 hours) of effort per six months of project duration. A founder who still holds a full university appointment or a day job cannot be the PI on an SBIR. STTR is the deliberate escape hatch — DOE’s STTR rules explicitly allow the PI to sit at the small business or at the research institution.

STTR adds a partner, and takes a statutory cut

Where SBIR is you alone, STTR requires a formal written agreement with a US research institution — an accredited university, a national lab, an FFRDC, or a US-chartered nonprofit research organization — that must perform at least 30% of the work by dollar value. That is a statutory floor, not a guideline, and the small business must perform at least 40%. On NIH’s Phase I, that puts roughly $70,000–$90,000 of a typical award in the partner’s hands; on a DOE STTR Phase I, roughly $52,500–$67,500. Budget for it before you decide STTR is the easier door.

For health and medical technology, the choice of agency changes the numbers; see NSF and NIH SBIR awards for health technology.

One thing that changed in 2026

Following the April 13, 2026 reauthorization, agencies in this set apply a mandatory foreign-national and foreign-ownership screening (FOCI disclosure) to applicants. Our records show DARPA and AFWERX applying it most rigorously, given the sensitivity of their topic areas.

Opens later, or never: the 28 programs you cannot apply to today

Federal SBIR solicitations open and close on agency calendars, not continuously. 23 of these are real, funded, active programs that are simply not accepting proposals today; 3 more never open to the public at all, and 2 are not applications in the first place. Grouped below by when the next window is expected, using each agency’s own published pattern. One caveat we will not paper over: for several of them the expected date we hold has already elapsed without a replacement being published — we show the date we have rather than inventing a newer one.

The DoD BAA cycles — two tracks open now, four between releases

DoD SBIR Phase I, DoD STTR Phase I, Army, Navy / ONR, DARPA and Missile Defense Agency all publish topics inside the same three-cycles-a-year Defense BAA schedule. As of October 1, 2026 our catalog records the fall release of DoD SBIR Phase I as closed on September 23, with the winter cycle typically opening November–December 2026 and topics due January–March 2027. Two tracks are live right now and are counted as open above, not here: DARPA SBIR Phase I and DoD STTR Phase I topics under the DoW 2026 BAA opened September 23; most closed October 21, 2026, one DARPA topic runs to November 25, and the next DoD release opens October 28. Army, Navy and MDA topics follow the same cycles; DoD publishes the exact per-topic open and close dates on dodsbirsttr.mil, and topic-level dates are the ones that bind. The Air Force is the exception that keeps a door open all year through AFWERX Open Topics.

Annual agency solicitations expected in the next few months

DOE SBIR Phase I Release 1 for FY2026 is expected October–November 2026, and DOE’s FY26 STTR Phase I release has closed, with a broader Phase I opportunity expected later this fall and no date published yet; USDA NIFA runs one annual solicitation typically released October–November with proposals due January–February; Department of Education (IES) releases in late summer or fall with an October–December due date. NASA SBIR Phase I has run on a Broad Agency Announcement since 2026, with subtopics released in appendices through the year; the 2026 Appendix A and Appendix B solicitations closed May 21, 2026 — watch the NASA SBIR/STTR BAA hub for the next appendix. DHS typically releases March–April and closes May–June; EPA runs one to two solicitations a year with no fixed month. The SBA Growth Accelerator Fund Competition opens Stage One in Q1 — and is worth flagging as a program for accelerators and incubators, not for the startups they support.

Unlike most federal grants, SBIR and STTR awards usually carry no cost share; see how federal cost-share rules work.

Three tracks that never open at all

DOE SBIR Phase II, DOE STTR Phase II and NASA SBIR Phase II have no public competition. The funding opportunity is published, but only invited Phase I awardees can respond. If you are searching for a “DOE Phase II deadline”, there isn’t one to find; the date that matters is when your Phase I ends.

Two things that are not windows at all

SBIR/STTR Technical and Business Assistance (TABA) is an add-on you request inside your own proposal or as a later supplement — up to about $6,500 on a Phase I and up to $50,000 on a Phase II, to hire outside commercialization help. It has no standalone deadline and cannot be applied for on its own. I-Corps at NIH is an eight-week commercialization course worth up to $55,000 to existing NIH, CDC, FDA or ACL Phase I awardees, run in cohorts with dates tied to the relevant notice. Both are real money. Neither is a grant you can go and win.

Every program on this page has a reopen-watch box on its own record page: if a solicitation you need is between rounds, ask us to email you when it comes back rather than checking a federal site every couple of weeks.

How SBIR calendars differ: fixed dates, topic releases, pitches and letters of intent

An agency's calendar decides your first move more than its award size does. NIH works to fixed receipt dates three times a year. NSF starts with a short Project Pitch and invites only good fits to write a full proposal. Defense components publish topics in releases and let you talk to a topic author only in the first few weeks. DOE runs releases in which a letter of intent comes due weeks before the full application. Which windows are open on a given day is in the table at the top of this page; this section is about how each one works.

Read the SBIR guide for startups for choosing an agency and the Phase I to Phase III path.

A 90-day plan for a first SBIR or STTR proposal

Ninety days is enough for a first Phase I if every registration starts in week one and the agency is chosen by its calendar. A common way to miss is not the science but the calendar: a SAM.gov record still pending in the final week, or a Defense topic author nobody called while that was still allowed.

State guides cover what sits beside a federal award where you are based: Indiana pairs SBIR with its FAST match, and the New York and Florida guides set SBIR next to the state R&D credits and programs a young research company can use.

Compare SBIR and STTR side by side if the research-partner rule could change which program you write for.

The numbers behind “open now” for SBIR

SBIR is the largest coherent cluster in our US catalog: 46 linked records, 28 federal and 18 state, out of 736 US funding programs. Here is how they actually break down as of October 1, 2026.

Two numbers are worth sitting with. First, 8 of the 16 open windows are closed to you unless you already hold a federal SBIR or STTR award — the SBIR “market” that a first-time founder can actually enter today is 8 doors wide, not 16 — and three of those eight carry an asterisk: Utah’s is open only to Utah companies, and DARPA’s and DoD STTR’s September topics closed October 21, 2026. Second, 23 programs are between rounds: half of everything in this set. A page that lists all 46 as available is not being generous, it is being wrong.

On program type: all 16 open windows are non-dilutive — no equity, no repayment. They are not all “grants” in the legal sense, and the distinction changes your paperwork. DoD and Air Force SBIR awards are FAR contracts. NSF issues a cooperative agreement. NIH issues assistance awards. Utah’s program pairs a $5,000 grant with a separate $50,000–$60,000 nonrecourse loan for Phase II applicants — the only repayable money anywhere in this set, and we exclude it from every total here.

Every row above also carries a Win Layer

Knowing a solicitation is open is the easy half; knowing how it is judged is the half that decides the outcome. Every program in this table carries our analysis of who actually wins it and why applications fail. Of the 46 records here, 41 carry at least five of the seven fields and 21 carry all seven.

• Approval odds
• What winners look like
• How it is judged
• Rejection traps
• Required documents
• When cash actually lands
• Clawback risk

A single program’s brief is $9. Pro unlocks all seven fields across all 665 programs plus deadline alerts — $49/mo or $249/yr. See what Pro unlocks →

Work the whole database, not one page

This page is one slice, frozen on October 1, 2026. The database holds all 736 US programs with what is true about each — type, level, status, deadline, and who it is genuinely for. Filter to your state and technology, star the SBIR agencies that fit, and we watch the reopen dates for you. Free.

Key takeaways

• 16 windows are open, but only 8 are open to you if you have never held a federal SBIR award. DARPA SBIR Phase I and DoD STTR Phase I (September topics closed October 21, 2026; next DoD release October 28 to November 25), NSF Phase I and STTR (November 4, Project Pitch first), NIH Phase I and STTR (next standard receipt date January 5, 2027, now that the September 2026 cycle has passed), AFWERX Open Topics (continuous), and Utah’s $5,000 proposal-prep microgrant. That is the real first-timer menu.
• Your state can be worth more than your agency choice. 16 state programs across 15 states stack on top of a federal award; the same NSF Phase I is worth $305,000 in most of the country and up to $405,000 in Wyoming or Alabama. Check your state before you optimize your proposal.
• Company age is not an eligibility criterion — registration lead time is. SAM.gov with a UEI, the SBA SBIR Company Registry, and (for NIH) eRA Commons take weeks. Start them the day you decide to apply, not the week the solicitation closes.
• 23 of the 46 programs are between rounds, and 3 never open publicly. More than half of what gets published as an “SBIR grant list” is not applicable today. Dates, not names, are what make a list useful.
• NSF’s VC-ownership rule is the trap for funded startups. Majority ownership by a VC operating company, hedge fund or private equity firm disqualifies you at NSF while leaving you eligible at agencies using the SBIR VC authority (MDA excluded). If you raised a priced round, check the cap table before you write the Project Pitch.

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