NIH F32 Fellowship Recipients and Award History

This guide is for: Postdocs deciding whether an F32 is worth the effort, their mentors, and postdoctoral affairs offices tracking how NIH's postdoc fellowship volume has changed and where the remaining awards go.

Last updated: October 12, 2026

Full answer: NIH made 212 new F32 postdoctoral fellowships in FY2026, according to a Grantsights pull of NIH RePORTER on October 12, 2026. That's the fewest in eight years and 58% below the 506 made in FY2020. The median first-year award was $76,780. NIGMS funded a quarter of them, and NCI funded none. RePORTER shows funded records only, so these figures aren't success rates.

NIH F32 Fellowship Recipients and Award History: FY2019 to FY2026

Data note: On October 12, 2026, Grantsights queried the NIH RePORTER project search API for activity code F32 in fiscal years 2019 through 2026. New awards are records with project numbers that begin with "1", which includes A1 resubmissions; duplicate application IDs were dropped. Amounts are RePORTER's award_amount, the total obligated for the fiscal year, which for a fellowship is stipend plus institutional allowance plus any tuition and fees. Medians leave out five records across the eight years that fall under $1,000. FY2026 closed September 30, 2026, and RePORTER's newest F32 records were added October 3, 2026.

According to NIH, the parent F32 notice (PA-25-423) supports postdoctoral researchers with a conferred doctorate who'll train under a sponsor. It reissued PA-23-262 in June 2025 and runs through May 8, 2028. Support is capped at 3 years of aggregate postdoctoral NRSA time, which includes any T32 appointment.

Grantsights analysis of 7,720 F32 RePORTER records across eight fiscal years shows one clear trend. The F32 is shrinking. FY2019 through FY2021 averaged about 500 new awards a year. FY2026 produced 212. The predoctoral F31 grew over the same stretch, so this isn't a fellowship-wide decline. It's a postdoc-fellowship decline.

How Many F32s NIH Funds Each Year

According to NIH RePORTER, new F32 counts held near 500 through FY2021, then stepped down.

Two things moved together. Award counts fell, and the median award rose by about $15,000 as NIH raised postdoctoral stipends. Higher stipends with flat or shrinking fellowship budgets mean fewer awards. RePORTER can't prove that's the whole explanation, but the pattern fits.

The FY2026 drop of 100 awards is the steepest one-year fall in the window. Part of it is NCI leaving the parent F32 (covered below). Only 49 of the 212 FY2026 new awards (23%) had August or September notice dates, so this doesn't look like a records lag.

F32 Award Amounts and FY2026 Stipends

Postdoctoral NRSA stipends for FY2026 range from $63,480 at zero years of experience to $77,076 at seven years or more, set by NOT-OD-26-044. The F32 adds a $12,400 institutional allowance. RePORTER totals combine both.

Specifically, the FY2026 median of $76,780 sits close to the entry stipend of $63,480 plus the $12,400 allowance, or $75,880. Most F32 recipients are early postdocs at the bottom of the stipend scale. The records near $100,000 most likely add tuition and fees for coursework or a degree program, or a senior-postdoc stipend; RePORTER doesn't break the total down.

That's an important budget point for mentors. An F32 replaces a postdoc's salary only up to the NRSA stipend. If the institution's postdoc salary floor is higher, the lab or department makes up the difference, and NRSA rules allow that supplementation from non-federal funds.

Where F32 Recipients Train

According to NIH RePORTER, Stanford led F32 counts in every year from FY2024 to FY2026.

With so few awards, single-institution counts are noisy. UCSF went from 13 to 7 and Penn from 11 to 5 in one year. California, Massachusetts and New York held 44% of FY2026 new F32s, up from 39% in FY2025, so concentration rose as the pool shrank.

Schools of medicine held 99 of the 212 FY2026 awards (47%), a smaller share than for the F31. Schools of arts and sciences held 45 and independent hospitals 25. That's a meaningful opening for postdocs in chemistry, biology and engineering departments who often assume the F32 is a medical-school award.

Which Institutes Still Fund F32s

Fifteen institutes made new F32 awards in FY2026, down from 20 in FY2024.

NHLBI fell from 47 new F32s to 15 in a single year. NICHD halved. NIGMS held steady and is now the largest F32 funder by a wide margin, which favors postdocs in cell biology, biochemistry, genetics and other basic fields that NIGMS covers.

NCI is the clearest institute-level change. RePORTER shows 48 new NCI F32s in FY2019, 24 in FY2025, and none in FY2026. The current parent notice, PA-25-423, doesn't list NCI among participating institutes. A cancer-biology postdoc who writes an F32 aimed at NCI is writing for an institute that no longer takes it.

How the F32 Decline Compares With Other NIH Training Awards

According to NIH RePORTER, the postdoc fellowship and the postdoc career award have moved in opposite directions. New F32 awards fell from 493 in FY2021 to 212 in FY2026. New K99 awards rose from 351 to 494 over the same five years. New F31 awards stayed between 842 and 1,053 a year.

The practical reading is that NIH money for postdocs hasn't vanished; more of it reaches postdocs through the K99 than through the F32. A K99 also pays more: the FY2026 median new K99 record was $126,735 in total cost against $76,780 for an F32. The K99 asks for more in return, including a credible plan to run an independent lab within about two years, and it caps postdoc experience at 4 years at most institutes.

F32 Rules and Due Dates

NIH's standard due dates put individual fellowships on April 8, August 8 and December 8. A weekend or federal holiday pushes the date to the next business day, and fellowship applications can't come in late.

The start dates are rough estimates based on NIH's usual review and council sequence, not promises. A postdoc who submits in December and needs a resubmission is looking at a year or more before money arrives, so don't start the clock late in the postdoc.

The 3-year support limit counts T32 time. A postdoc who spent two years on a T32 has one year of F32 eligibility left, which rarely justifies a full application. That's a common mistake: postdocs underestimate how much NRSA time a predoctoral or postdoctoral T32 appointment already used. Ask the training grant office for the exact months before drafting. The NIH F31 and F32 fellowship guide explains how the aggregate limit is counted, and the NIH grants complete guide covers how fellowships fit beside research grants.

What NIH RePORTER Doesn't Tell You About F32 Recipients

RePORTER is a list of funded fellowships. It doesn't show applications, so the 212 figure can't be turned into a success rate. NIH's institute-level success rates for fellowships are a separate data set.

The first gap is the one to watch, and it's a red flag to read the decline as proof that the odds collapsed. As F32 counts fall, some postdocs stop applying, which can keep success rates steadier than award counts suggest. Don't skip the F32 because of the trend line alone. Do check whether your target institute still participates and how many F32s it funded last year.

Grantsights checked the institute participation list in PA-25-423 against the FY2026 records: NCI is absent from the notice and from the awards, and NIGMS is present in both. The RePORTER pull and the notice agree.

Is the F32 Still Worth Applying For?

NIGMS, NIAID and NIMH together made 105 of the 212 new FY2026 F32 awards, about half. For a first- or second-year postdoc in a field one of those three covers, the F32 is still worth it. It's a full NIH application with a training plan, and writing it is good practice for a K99 a year or two later. It also makes the postdoc portable.

The mechanism comparison in the NIH F31 and F32 fellowship guide covers eligibility and writing in more depth. Postdocs closer to the job market should read the NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence guide next. For a sense of what the next career stage looks like in the data, see the NIH K01 award history and the NIH R21 award history. To browse other open NIH funding, use the free Grantsights NIH grant search.

Run your own check in the NIH RePORTER project search: set activity code F32, choose your target institute, and pull the last three fiscal years. If that institute funded fewer than five F32s last year, email the program officer before you write.

Sources

• Parent F32 notice (PA-25-423) - grants.nih.gov
• FY2026 NRSA stipends (NOT-OD-26-044) - 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 K99/R00 Pathway to Independence guide
• NIH K01 winners and award history
• NIH R21 winners and award history
• NIH grants complete guide