NIH F31 Fellowship Recipients and Award History

This guide is for: PhD students planning an F31, their sponsors, and graduate program staff who want to see how many NIH predoctoral fellowships are actually funded, what they pay, and which schools and institutes they come from.

Last updated: October 12, 2026

Full answer: NIH funded 923 new F31 predoctoral fellowships in FY2026, according to a Grantsights pull of NIH RePORTER on October 12, 2026, up 10% from 842 in FY2025. The median first-year award was $46,320, which covers the $29,364 stipend plus tuition, fees and an institutional allowance. NIAID funded 241 of them. Recipients came from 165 institutions in 46 states. RePORTER counts funded fellowships, not applications, so it isn't a success rate.

NIH F31 Fellowship Recipients and Award History: FY2019 to FY2026

Data note: Grantsights pulled NIH RePORTER project search API records for activity code F31, fiscal years 2019 through 2026, on October 12, 2026. A "new award" is a record with a project number beginning with "1" (first submissions and A1 resubmissions), deduplicated by application ID. Dollar figures are RePORTER's award_amount, the total obligated for that fiscal year. Fellowships carry no separate indirect costs, so this is stipend plus tuition and fees plus institutional allowance. Medians drop one FY2025 record under $1,000. FY2026 ended September 30, 2026, and RePORTER had added F31 records through October 10, 2026.

According to NIH, the parent F31 notice (PA-25-422) supports PhD and equivalent research-degree students in biomedical, behavioral or clinical sciences under a named sponsor. It reissued PA-23-272 in June 2025 and expires May 8, 2028. Students can receive up to 5 years of aggregate predoctoral NRSA support, or 6 in dual-degree programs such as MD/PhD.

Grantsights analysis of 16,782 F31 RePORTER records across eight fiscal years shows a program that's larger and more spread out than the K-series awards. F31s reach far more institutions and states than any postdoc or faculty career award, and the top three states hold under a third of new awards. Where a student trains still matters, but the F31 is one of the few NIH awards where mid-sized research universities show up in volume.

How Many F31s NIH Funds Each Year

According to NIH RePORTER, new F31 awards rose every year from FY2019 to FY2024, dropped sharply in FY2025, and partly recovered in FY2026.

The FY2025 drop of 211 awards (20%) is the biggest move in the window. Part of it traces to the end of the F31 diversity route, covered below. The A1 share falling to 29% in FY2026 is also worth noting: more FY2026 recipients won on a first submission than in any earlier year shown. RePORTER can't say why. One plausible reading is that FY2025 resubmissions were delayed and some first submissions moved up, but treat that as a hypothesis.

Timing is lumpy too. 262 of the 923 FY2026 new awards (28%) carried notice dates in August or September.

F31 Award Amounts and the FY2026 Stipend

The FY2026 predoctoral stipend is $29,364 a year, set by NOT-OD-26-044, which applies to NRSA awards made on or after October 1, 2025. The RePORTER award amount is higher because it also carries the tuition-and-fees allowance and the institutional allowance.

Specifically, the gap between the $29,364 stipend and the $46,320 median is about $17,000, and almost all of it is tuition and allowance. The range is narrow because NRSA budgets are formula-driven. A student can't negotiate a bigger F31; the variable piece is tuition, which differs by school. The stipend is the same for everyone at a given level.

Which Schools and States F31 Recipients Come From

According to NIH RePORTER, the FY2026 leaders were the University of Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania, each with 34 new F31s.

California, Massachusetts and New York held 27% of new FY2026 F31s, compared with about half of new K99s in the same year. Notice who isn't at the top: Stanford (8 new F31s) and UCSF (15) lead the K99 tables but sit outside the FY2026 F31 top ten. Programs at Michigan, Penn, Vanderbilt, Emory and UNC have built a steady F31 pipeline, and that's an institutional habit worth asking about when choosing a lab.

Schools of medicine held 529 of the 923 FY2026 new awards (57%). Schools of arts and sciences held 130, and schools of public health 48.

Which Institutes Fund F31s

Twenty-one institutes and centers made new F31 awards in FY2026, and the top spot has changed hands.

NIAID more than doubled, from 116 new F31s in FY2025 to 241 in FY2026. NINDS fell from 143 to 66. An infectious-disease student and a neuroscience student would read those two years very differently. The safer move is to check your target institute's F31 policy page and its three-year RePORTER count, not the all-NIH total.

NIGMS is the other moving piece. NIGMS stopped taking F31 diversity applications in April 2024 (NOT-GM-24-013) and didn't join the parent F31 until March 19, 2026 (NOT-GM-26-002). RePORTER shows NIGMS with 48 new F31s in FY2024, 18 in FY2025, and none in FY2026. Students whose science fits only NIGMS should expect the first parent-F31 NIGMS awards to come from the 2026 review cycles, so FY2027 data will be the first real read.

The End of the F31 Diversity Route in RePORTER

Diversity F31 records came through PA-21-052 and then PA-23-271. Together those notices produced 322 new F31 awards in FY2024. That fell to 71 in FY2025 and 30 in FY2026, and the PA-23-271 page now returns a not-found error on the NIH Guide. The diversity notices alone lost 251 awards between FY2024 and FY2025, more than the 211-award drop in the F31 total, so parent F31 volume actually rose that year.

Anyone advising students shouldn't point them to a diversity-specific F31. The parent F31 is the route.

F31 Rules and Due Dates

The NIH standard due dates for individual fellowships are April 8, August 8 and December 8 for both new and resubmitted applications. A date on a weekend or federal holiday moves to the next business day.

Because fellowship applications can't be submitted late, a missing reference letter or sponsor document on the due date pushes the student out four months. Build in at least a week of slack.

What NIH RePORTER Doesn't Tell You About F31 Recipients

RePORTER shows who was funded. It won't show who applied, so the 923 figure isn't a success rate. For institute-level F31 success rates, see the F31 success rate by institute analysis.

The year-in-program gap matters most. Review panels weigh how much training time the F31 actually buys. An application from a student with 18 months left reads very differently from one with four years left, and RePORTER's project start and end dates are only a rough proxy.

A common mistake is reading the institution table as a ranking of where to apply. It's partly a ranking of which graduate programs push students to submit F31s and give them writing support. Ask any program you're considering how many of its students submit and how many are funded.

How to Use F31 Winner Data

Grantsights compared the RePORTER counts with the institute participation in PA-25-422 and found that the biggest swings track institute policy changes, not field trends. Use that when you plan.

Is the F31 worth it? For an eligible student with three or more years of training left, yes. The money is modest, about $46,000 a year, but the application is the first full NIH proposal most students write, and the training plan, sponsor statement and research strategy carry straight into an F32 or K99 later. A funded F31 also frees a slot on the sponsor's grant or training grant. The weakest case is a student near defense who'd spend a semester writing for a year or less of support. Start here only if the math on remaining time works.

Search the NIH RePORTER project search with activity code F31, your target institute, and the last three fiscal years. Read the abstracts of awards in your area and note how the training plan is described. For the full application walk-through, read the NIH F31 and F32 fellowship guide. For the NSF counterpart, see the NSF GRFP award history. Students thinking past the PhD can compare the NIH K01 award history. To find other open NIH programs, use the free Grantsights NIH grant search.

Sources

• Parent F31 notice (PA-25-422) - grants.nih.gov
• FY2026 NRSA stipends (NOT-OD-26-044) - grants.nih.gov
• NIGMS ends F31 diversity participation (NOT-GM-24-013) - grants.nih.gov
• NIH standard due dates - grants.nih.gov
• NIH RePORTER project search - reporter.nih.gov
• NIH RePORTER API - api.reporter.nih.gov

Related Guides

• NIH F31 and F32 fellowship guide
• NIH F31 success rate by institute
• NSF GRFP winners and award history
• NIH K01 winners and award history
• NIH grants complete guide