The U.S. Department of Transportation on December 15 announced that applications for the final $1.5 billion in multimodal BUILD grant funding for surface transportation projects provided by the 2021 IIJA infrastructure law will be due by February 24, 2026.

The $1.5 billion for FY 2026  is the advance appropriation provided by Division J of the IIJA, which became available for obligation on October 1, 2026. Congress is in the process of debating whether or not to add an additional amount of up to $250 million to the program as part of the FY 2026 DOT Appropriations Act, and if they do so quickly, this NOFO could be amended to include that funding as well.

But a February 26 deadline ensures that DOT will have plenty of time to process applications and meet the statutory deadline for grant announcements of June 28, 2026 (270 days after October 1, 2025). Which also means that the Administration will get announcements out while they can still do some good in the 2026 midterm Congressional elections.

In the absence of a regular appropriations bill for the year, only the statutory criteria and conditions on the program in 49 U.S.C. §6702 apply.

The full Notice of Funding Opportunity document makes the following changes to last year’s rules:

• This year, there will be only one round of funding awards. (FY 2025 was in two rounds.)
• Applications from last year that were designated as “projects of merit” will not automatically be resubmitted and requalified: all of last year’s applicants who did not receive grants will have to reapply.
• However, “FY 2026 BUILD applications advanced by the Senior Review Team to the Highly Rated List, but that are not awarded, are automatically designated as ‘Projects of Merit.’ Projects with this designation will be carried over into FY 2027 BUILD, subject to authorization and appropriations, and considered by the SRT for advancement to the Highly Rated List, along with other FY 2027 applications eligible for advancement to the Highly Rated List.”
• Here’s a big one: “Changes priority merit criteria to: safety, quality of life, mobility and community
  connectivity, and economic competitiveness.” Those are four of the six merit criteria that the underlying statute requires DOT to use in §6702(d)(2). However, the Administration is still evaluating all projects on all six statutory criteria – they just seem to be devaluing two of them as non-priority.
• This one seems to make sense: “Conforms to the Department’s Benefit-Cost Analysis ratings of “High,” “Medium-High,” “Medium,” “Medium-Low,” and “Low” instead of “Positive” and “Negative.”

The application process will work like this:

Applications are due by 5:00 p.m. Eastern time on February 24, 2026. All application materials may be found on grants.gov and the BUILD website.