NIH K99/R00 Winners and Award History 2026

This guide is for: Postdocs weighing a K99/R00 submission, their mentors, and research offices who want to know how many K99 awards NIH actually makes, how big they are, and where they land before committing a cycle to the application.

Last updated: October 12, 2026

Full answer: NIH made 494 new K99 awards in FY2026, the most in any year from FY2019 on and 55% more than the 318 made in FY2025, according to a Grantsights pull of NIH RePORTER records on October 12, 2026. The median first-year award was $126,735 in total cost. California, Massachusetts and New York held 51% of FY2026 new awards, and NCI, NIA and NIGMS funded the most. These are funded records, not success rates.

NIH K99/R00 Winners and Award History: FY2019 to FY2026 RePORTER Data

Data note: Grantsights queried the NIH RePORTER project search API (api.reporter.nih.gov/v2/projects/search) on October 12, 2026 for activity codes K99 and R00, fiscal years 2019 through 2026. New awards are records whose project number starts with "1", which covers first submissions and A1 resubmissions; duplicate application IDs were removed. Amounts are RePORTER's award_amount, the total cost (direct plus indirect) obligated for that fiscal year's budget period, not the five-year value. Medians exclude a handful of records under $1,000 that look like administrative adjustments. FY2026 closed September 30, 2026; RePORTER had added FY2026 records through October 3, 2026, so late additions could nudge counts up slightly.

According to NIH, as set out in the K99/R00 parent notice (PA-24-194), the Pathway to Independence Award pairs up to 2 years of mentored postdoctoral support (K99) with up to 3 years of independent support (R00) once the candidate takes a tenure-track or equivalent faculty job. The total project period can't exceed 5 years. The R00 phase is capped at $249,000 in total cost per year.

Grantsights analysis of 783 FY2026 K99 records and 920 R00 records found that the K99 isn't a rare award in raw volume. It's concentrated. Half of the 494 new FY2026 awards went to three states, and one university in California, Stanford, held 34 of them by itself. That concentration says more about where competitive postdocs train than about any state preference at NIH, but it does tell an applicant at a smaller institution what the comparison pool looks like.

How Many K99 Awards NIH Makes Each Year

According to NIH RePORTER records pulled October 12, new K99 awards climbed from 257 in FY2019 to 412 in FY2023, fell for two years, then jumped to 494 in FY2026.

The FY2025 dip lines up with the year NIH paused and delayed many awards, and the FY2026 jump is consistent with a backlog clearing, but RePORTER can't confirm the cause. What the timing data does show: 229 of the 494 FY2026 new awards (46%) carried notice dates in August or September 2026. An applicant reviewed in the spring may wait months for a decision even with a fundable score.

About one in three new awards each year is an A1 resubmission. In FY2025 the share was 40%. Treat a first-round miss as normal for this mechanism, not as a verdict.

K99 Award Amounts: What the First Year Actually Pays

Specifically, the FY2026 median new K99 record carried $126,735 in total cost and a median of $117,316 in direct cost. That's the first budget year only. K99 indirect costs are limited to 8% of modified total direct costs under the parent notice, which is why the direct and total figures sit so close together.

The spread comes from institute policy. Each institute sets its own salary and research-cost limits for the K99 phase. NCI's own notice, PAR-25-135, for example, pays up to $100,000 a year toward salary plus up to $30,000 in other program costs. A candidate budgeting against a different institute's table can end up well above or below the median, so check the institute's K99 salary cap before drafting the budget justification.

The R00 side is flatter. According to NIH RePORTER, the median first-year R00 record (type 4, meaning the K99 converted to the independent phase) was exactly $249,000 in both FY2025 and FY2026, which matches the cap. RePORTER shows 353 R00 activations in FY2025 and 271 in FY2026.

Where K99 Awards Go: States and Institutions

California, Massachusetts and New York held 51% of new FY2026 awards, 54% in FY2025 and 49% in FY2024, according to Grantsights analysis of the RePORTER pull.

Stanford has led every year in the pull window shown here, with 24 or more new K99s a year. Johns Hopkins shows how much a single institution can swing: 11 in FY2024, 4 in FY2025, 15 in FY2026.

New FY2026 awards reached 121 institutions in 35 states. Schools of medicine held 277 of them (56%), independent hospitals 46, and schools of arts and sciences 44. A basic-science postdoc in an arts-and-sciences department is in a smaller slice of the pool, which isn't a reason to skip, but it's a reason to make the mentoring environment easy for a medical-school-heavy panel to read.

Which NIH Institutes Fund K99 Awards

Twenty-one institutes and centers made new K99 awards in FY2026. The mix moves around more than most applicants expect.

NIA went from 14 new K99s in FY2025 to 60 in FY2026. NIGMS went from 23 to 54. Swings that large mean one year of institute data isn't a reliable guide to what an institute will fund next year. Look at three or more years, and talk to the program officer listed for your institute.

NCI is a special case. NCI stopped taking parent K99/R00 applications in January 2025 (NOT-CA-25-021) and now runs its own notice, PAR-25-135, with a 6-year postdoc limit instead of 4. In FY2026, 41 of NCI's 65 new K99s came through PAR-25-135, and none came through the parent notice. A cancer postdoc who applies to the parent notice is applying to the wrong door.

Current K99/R00 Rules That Shape the Winner Pool

The 4-year limit is where most K99 plans go wrong. The clock runs from the start of the first postdoc, and NIH counts the due date, not the award date. A postdoc in year 3 has, at most, three or four realistic submission dates left including a resubmission. Map the dates on a calendar before anything else.

K99/R00 Due Dates for the Next Two Cycles

NIH's standard due dates put K-series new applications on February 12, June 12 and October 12, and resubmissions on March 12, July 12 and November 12. When a date lands on a weekend or federal holiday, it moves to the next business day.

If you aren't already in final routing for the October 13 date, plan for February 12, 2027. Each cycle runs roughly 9 months from submission to the earliest start.

What NIH RePORTER Doesn't Tell You About K99 Winners

RePORTER lists funded projects. It doesn't list applications, so it can't give you a K99 success rate. NIH publishes K-series success rates separately, and the K-award success rates by institute page covers those. Reading 494 awards as "494 of some known number" is a common mistake.

It also won't show you:

The R00 record count is a useful sanity check, though. RePORTER showed 353 R00 activations in FY2025 against 412 new K99s two years earlier in FY2023. The years don't line up one-to-one, and the gap isn't a failure rate. Still, it's a reminder that the second phase depends on landing a qualifying job, and a K99 plan that ignores the job search underestimates the hardest part.

Grantsights checked the RePORTER counts against the notice structure: the R00 cap of $249,000 matches the median R00 record exactly, and NCI's move to PAR-25-135 shows up cleanly in the FY2026 notice mix. That agreement is a good sign the pull is complete.

How to Use K99 Winner Data Before You Apply

Search the RePORTER project search for K99 awards at your target institute in the last three fiscal years, then read the abstracts of awards closest to your field. You're looking for three things: the career-development gap the candidate named, the bridge from mentored work to an independent lab, and how specific the R00 aims were.

Skip the K99 if you're already in an independent position, or if your postdoc clock will run out before a resubmission. A strong fit is a postdoc with 1 to 3 years of experience, a mentor whose lab has placed K99 alumni, and a project that splits cleanly into a mentored half and an independent half. If the independent half is just "more of the same," reviewers will see it.

For the full program rules, start with the NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence guide. Cancer-focused postdocs should read the NCI K99 clinical-trial-not-allowed guide. For comparison with other career awards, see the NIH K01 award history and the NIH K23 award history. If you'd rather search other open NIH programs first, use the free Grantsights NIH grant search.

How This Compares With Other NIH Career Routes

A first- or second-year postdoc without a clear path to independence may be better off with an F32 now and a K99 later. The NIH R01, R21, R03 and K awards comparison lays out the mechanism differences.

Sources

• NIH K99/R00 parent notice, clinical trial not allowed (PA-24-194) - grants.nih.gov
• NIH K99/R00 parent notice, clinical trial required (PA-24-193) - grants.nih.gov
• NCI K99/R00 (PAR-25-135) - grants.nih.gov
• Temporary K99/R00 eligibility extension (NOT-OD-26-021) - grants.nih.gov
• NIH standard due dates - grants.nih.gov
• NIH RePORTER project search - reporter.nih.gov
• NIH RePORTER API documentation - api.reporter.nih.gov

Related Guides

• NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence guide
• NCI K99 clinical trial not allowed guide
• NIH K-award success rates by institute
• NIH K01 winners and award history
• NIH K23 winners and award history
• NIH grants complete guide