NIH Challenges and Prize Competitions (open-innovation portal)

National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

The single NIH page where every Institute's prize competition posts. Awards pay for results rather than proposals, so there is no grant application, no indirect-cost negotiation, and no NIH funding history required.

Indicative award

Amount not published (varies by call)Purses differ per competition; the page lists individual totals ranging from a few hundred thousand dollars to several million. No single figure applies to the portal.

Timing

Rolling / openNo specific published date recorded. This funder publishes a cycle rather than a date, and this database does not invent one.New competitions post continuously and each carries its own open/close dates. The page was last reviewed 2026-08-07 and separates Open Challenges from Closed Challenges.

Who can apply

Doctoral candidate, Postdoctoral, Early-career faculty, Mid-career & senior, Any faculty rank, Practitioner, Community organisation, Master's / undergraduate

Eligibility

Each competition sets its own rules, but the standard America COMPETES pattern applies: individuals must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents, entities must be incorporated with a primary U.S. place of business, federal employees and HHS staff are excluded, and registration plus a SAM.gov Unique Entity ID is needed to be paid.

SSWR clusters

Topics

open innovation · prize competitions · crowdsourcing · health research

Apply at

https://www.nih.gov/challenges

This entry

Curated by the working group. Written 2026-08-07. The funder link has not yet been machine-checked.

Amounts and dates on this page are indicative and are maintained by people rather than scraped. Funders change ceilings, windows and eligibility without notice; confirm all details at the source above before applying.

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NIH Challenges and Prize Competitions (open-innovation portal)

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