On December 18, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14368, which supersedes the Executive Order of December 23, 2024, and increases the Executive Level II salary cap to $228,000, effective January 1, 2026. In anticipation of NIH's implementation of the 2026 Executive Level II salary cap, effective immediately, OSR may apply the 2026 salary cap to all New, Renewal, Revision, and Transfer-in application budgets (and their respective Resubmission application budgets), at the discretion of the Principal Investigator (PI) and Department Post Award.
As a general rule:
- If NIH implements the new cap, new award totals will not be adjusted to accommodate the new cap if it was not requested in the approved budget; however, NIH will allow institutions to rebudget.
- If NIH does not implement the new cap at award and the proposal budget included use of the new cap, NIH will adjust the budget to meet the current cap.
eProposal has been updated to include an option for the new $228,000 salary cap, so it may be applied to new, renewal, revision, transfer-in, and respective resubmission NIH application budgets.
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