NSF has replaced twelve of its core disciplinary solicitations with twelve new Notices of Funding Opportunity (NOFOs) carrying more than $1.5 billion, announced 17 August 2026. The headline mechanical change is not the dollar figure — it is that these NOFOs are, in NSF’s own phrase, “Proposals Accepted Anytime.” For a set of programs that has run on fixed annual or semi-annual deadlines for decades, that is a real change to how a lab plans its year.
The twelve NOFOs span nearly every NSF science directorate:
- BIO — Biological Sciences Core Research (BIO Core)
- CISE — Expeditions in Computing
- ENG — Electrical, Communications and Computing Systems (ECCS); Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI); Chemical, Bioengineering, Energy and Transport Systems (CBET); EFRI Wave-Based Computing
- GEO — Geosciences Core Research (GEO Core), merging what were separate Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences, Earth Sciences, and Ocean Sciences competitions
- MPS — five separate NOFOs covering Mathematical Sciences, Materials, Physics, Chemistry, and Astronomical Sciences
Some of the consolidation is substantial rather than cosmetic. NSF 26-523 (MPS Physics) folds twelve previously separate core physics programs into one NOFO. NSF 26-516 (GEO Core) merges three geosciences divisions’ competitions into one.
What “accepted anytime” actually means
NSF is not eliminating structure, it is decoupling submission from eligibility. Under the prior model, missing a fixed deadline meant waiting months for the next cycle. Under the new NOFOs, a proposal can go in on any date — but each program keeps posted target dates, and NSF explicitly encourages submitting ahead of one so the proposal lands in that panel’s review cycle rather than the next. A late submission is not rejected; it simply rolls into a later panel. The deadline is gone; the review-cycle logic that deadlines used to enforce is not.
NSF frames this as a shift from mechanism-first to portfolio-first grantmaking: rather than routing every idea through one fixed-cadence solicitation, program officers can weigh a broader mix of ambitious, long-horizon awards alongside rapid, short-term grants meant to test an idea quickly. Brian Stone, performing the duties of NSF Director, said the investment “will enable researchers to accelerate fundamental research, giving rise to the transformational breakthroughs that will power our future.” White House OSTP Director Michael Kratsios tied the announcement to the administration’s “Ushering in a New Golden Age of American Innovation” FY2028 R&D budget priorities memo, framing foundational research funding as a competitiveness question.
What changes for a research office
Three practical consequences follow directly from the deadline change:
- Internal deadline tracking gets harder, not easier. A hard NSF deadline was, paradoxically, a scheduling convenience — it gave a proposal development office one date to build a submission calendar around. “Anytime” submission removes that anchor. Offices that route NSF proposals through an internal pre-award review queue will need to set their own internal target dates ahead of NSF’s posted ones, or risk PIs submitting whenever they personally feel ready rather than when it is administratively efficient to route JIT, budget, and compliance review.
- Panel timing is now a program-officer conversation, not a calendar lookup. Because submitting after a target date doesn’t get a proposal rejected, only deferred to a later panel, a PI who wants to hit a specific review cycle (for career-stage reasons, or to align with a training grant renewal) now needs to confirm timing with the cognizant program officer rather than simply reading a solicitation’s deadline field.
- The 12-solicitation consolidation changes where a proposal belongs. A PI whose prior submissions went to one of the twelve now-superseded solicitations, particularly in physics or geosciences where multiple programs merged into one NOFO, needs to re-confirm which of the twelve new NOFOs is the right home before assuming the old solicitation number still routes correctly in Research.gov.
This lands alongside NSF’s broader push to rewrite its Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide as the Guidance on Financial Assistance, and its separate Notice 149 research security certification requirements that already apply to every NSF proposal regardless of which NOFO it targets. None of the NOFO changes touch NSF’s Common Forms requirements for biosketch and current-and-pending support — those still apply exactly as before.
Frequently asked questions
Does this apply to all NSF programs?
No. It applies specifically to the twelve NOFOs announced 17 August 2026 across BIO, CISE, ENG, GEO, and MPS foundational research programs. Directorate programs outside this list, and NSF’s other standing solicitations (including EDU and TIP-managed competitions, and the separate Regional Innovation Engines program), are unaffected and keep their existing deadline structures unless NSF says otherwise.
If there’s no deadline, is there still a limit on when I can submit?
Proposals are accepted continuously. The only practical limit is which review panel a given submission lands in — submit after a posted target date and the proposal is reviewed in the next cycle rather than being rejected.
Do I still need to worry about target dates?
Yes, if timing matters to you. Target dates are no longer hard cutoffs, but they are still the practical marker for which panel cycle a proposal is reviewed in, so an office that wants predictable turnaround should keep treating them as internal deadlines.
What happened to the twelve solicitations these NOFOs replace?
They are superseded. NSF has confirmed at least two direct consolidations — NSF 26-523 (MPS Physics) replacing twelve prior core physics solicitations, and NSF 26-516 (GEO Core) merging the former Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences, Earth Sciences, and Ocean Sciences competitions — with the remaining NOFOs mapped less explicitly in NSF’s public materials. Confirm current-cycle routing with the cognizant program officer before assuming an old solicitation number still applies.
Primary sources: National Science Foundation, “NSF announces $1.5B for foundational research to drive scientific breakthroughs for American technological leadership” (17 August 2026, nsf.gov); NSF, “August 2026 Notices of Funding Opportunity for Foundational Research” (nsf.gov/news/foundational-research-nofos), listing all twelve NOFOs by directorate.
