This is your January 2026 newsletter from Grants.gov

Year in Review: A Roundup of Updates to Grants.gov in 2025

Last year was a transformative time for Grants.gov. The look and feel of the website was improved, and a streamlined search experience was introduced: Simpler.Grants.gov. Support was also added for email addresses with top-level domains (TLDs), in compliance with Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) standards.

In the first blog post for the new year, the Grants.gov team reflected on some of those essential updates. Read it here.

Grants.gov looks forward to sharing even more user-friendly updates in the months ahead and continuing to improve the overall experience of searching for, applying to, and learning more about federal funding opportunities in 2026.

Upcoming Maintenance:
February 21-23, 2026

There will be an outage on these dates: Saturday, February 21, 2026, at 12:01 AM ET through Monday, February 23, 2026, at 6:00 AM ET. That means grantors cannot post NOFOs and applicants cannot apply for them.

Grants.gov provides a schedule of anticipated maintenance outages. You can find future dates on the Grants.gov Calendar.

APPLICANTS

New “EICMM” Category Code

Grants.gov has added a new category, Energy Infrastructure and Critical Mineral and Materials (EICMM). Agencies can begin applying this category to EICMM-related funding opportunities, and applicants will be able to filter by the new category.

AGENCY SPOTLIGHT

Latest Funding Opportunities Posted by the U.S. Department of Energy

See recent grant announcements from the U.S. Department of Energy.

Simpler.Grants.gov

We are proud to share our work on Simpler.Grants.gov, the next generation of Grants.gov. With your help, we're setting a new standard for transparency and usability in government services. The new search aims to deliver closer matches to your keywords and filters, and also makes the results and opportunity listings easier to navigate and read.

To learn more, sign up for the Simpler.Grants.gov Newsletter, and help us decide which items we prioritize in the Simpler.Grants.gov roadmap by voting for the features you're most interested in seeing delivered.

Don't see a feature you want to vote for? Submit a feature request on our repo and we'll work with you to refine the proposal.

TIPS FROM OUR X FEED

"When using the Export Detailed Data feature, users can download a single file containing a large set of relevant data. This file contains a broad set of data related to the opportunities that match the user’s search criteria, including most of the information provided with the grantor’s synopsis or forecast."

Follow @grantsdotgov on X for more tips and insight into the federal grant application process.