Open Textbooks Pilot Program (84.116T) FY 2026

Open Textbooks Pilot Program (84.116T) FY 2026

Status of the FY 2026 opportunity

This page is a historical reference for the FY 2026 Open Textbooks Pilot Program competition. The U.S. Department of Education’s official program page lists the application status as Closed, and the FY 2026 application deadline was June 23, 2026. The official page does not announce a new application cycle, so there is no current deadline to substitute for the closed date. Do not treat this entry as an open funding opportunity or assume that late applications are accepted.

The program was administered through an interagency arrangement: the Employment and Training Administration at the U.S. Department of Labor solicited applications on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education and the Secretary of Education. The program office is associated with the Department of Education’s Office of Postsecondary Education, and the official materials identify Robin Dabney as the FY 2026 competition manager. This arrangement matters because the Department of Labor handled administration while the Department of Education remained the program and funding authority shown in the official notice.

Key facts from the official FY 2026 materials

The $7 million figure is an estimate, and the competition instructions state that the Department is not bound by the estimates in the notice. The same instructions give an estimated average award of $1,750,000 over four years and an estimated range of $1,500,000 to $2,000,000. The previous page description in this entry listed a $200,000 ceiling; that amount did not apply to the FY 2026 competition and has been removed.

What the program was designed to support

The Open Textbooks Pilot supported projects that create new openly licensed textbooks and expand the use of open textbooks or related course materials. The materials needed to serve courses that are part of a degree-granting program, with particular emphasis on high-enrollment courses and programs that prepare people for in-demand industry sectors or occupations. The purpose was not simply to digitize a proprietary book. A proposal needed to show how its materials would be usable at scale, lower student costs, and support instruction and student learning.

The FY 2026 instructions placed student savings at the center of the competition. A credible project would identify the courses and student populations affected, document the existing cost of commercial materials, explain what materials would be created or adapted, and show how the new materials would be adopted by instructors. The notice also expected applicants to explain how materials would remain useful beyond the initial grant period. A proposal that produced a resource but did not have a practical adoption, review, and maintenance plan would not address the program’s core purpose.

Eligibility

The FY 2026 competition was not a general-purpose grant for any private company, individual, school district, or student. The official instructions identified these applicant categories:

• Institutions of higher education as defined in section 101 of the Higher Education Act.
• Combinations of institutions of higher education.
• Other public institutions and agencies, including State Education Agencies and State higher education agencies.
• Private nonprofit institutions and agencies.

The applicant needed the authority and capacity to lead the proposed work. An eligible nonprofit had to provide acceptable evidence of nonprofit status, such as recognition under section 501(c)(3), a certification from a State taxing body or attorney general, qualifying incorporation documents, or documentation through an eligible parent organization. The instructions did not establish a cost-sharing or matching requirement for this program.

The program’s first absolute priority required a consortium structure. The application had to propose a project involving institutions, instructors, and subject-matter experts, including no fewer than three IHEs, together with relevant employers, workforce stakeholders, or trade and professional associations. This does not mean every eligible applicant had to be a single university acting alone. It means the project needed a collaboration model capable of creating and spreading materials across participating institutions and connecting the curriculum to student or workforce needs.

FY 2026 priorities and project design

The competition instructions described three absolute priorities. First, Improving Collaboration and Dissemination required a consortium that could create and implement materials, reduce costs for large numbers of students, and align instructional content and ancillary materials with learning objectives or industry expectations. Second, Addressing Gaps in the Open Textbook Marketplace and Bringing Solutions to Scale required applicants to identify a real gap, assess existing open educational resources before creating new ones, plan for use beyond the consortium, review content for accuracy and accessibility, disseminate results, and provide professional development for faculty and staff. Third, Promoting Student Success required projects to build on or create materials for high-enrollment courses or programs and to track adoption, student savings, learning outcomes, and the effect of open materials on educational costs.

The FY 2026 notice also included competitive preference priorities concerning artificial intelligence in education and returning education to the States. Applicants that addressed a preference priority had to identify it clearly in the abstract and project narrative. The notice described possible uses of AI in creating, adapting, customizing, improving, or making open textbooks more accessible, but an applicant still had to propose rigorous content review and a defensible instructional process. Mentioning a tool without explaining quality control, accessibility, human review, and the benefit to students would not by itself satisfy the program’s requirements.

Projects also had to take open licensing seriously. Digital assets created in whole or in part with grant funds had to be licensed for free, attributed public use and distribution under the applicable federal open-licensing rule. The instructions called for digital content that follows universal-design principles and complies with accessibility requirements, including the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504, and WCAG 2.1 Level AA. They also required applicants to identify open standards that would support interoperability, exchange, and reuse. These were substantive project requirements, not optional publishing preferences.

Application steps for the closed cycle

For the FY 2026 round, an applicant would have followed the Department of Education’s common grant instructions and the program-specific competition instructions. The process was:

1. Confirm that the lead organization and any consortium members fit the eligible applicant definitions. Establish the participating IHEs, subject-matter experts, employers, workforce partners, or professional associations needed for the project design.
2. Maintain active registrations in SAM.gov and Grants.gov. The organization needed a Unique Entity Identifier and an authorized organization representative. The instructions warned that SAM information could take time to become available in Grants.gov, so registration was a prerequisite rather than a last-minute filing step.
3. Read the complete funding opportunity announcement and its application checklist. The program-specific notice, the common Department of Education instructions, and the official Grants.gov application package controlled the submission requirements.
4. Build the project narrative around the applicable absolute priority or priorities. The proposal needed to identify the open-textbook gap, target degree-granting courses, materials to be developed or adapted, consortium responsibilities, faculty development, accessibility, licensing, dissemination, and maintenance after the project period.
5. Prepare the budget and supporting forms for a project of up to 48 months. The requested amount needed to fit the estimated $1.5 million to $2 million award range and explain personnel, content development, accessibility review, evaluation, adoption support, and dissemination costs.
6. Submit the complete proposal electronically in Grants.gov Workspace through the APPLY function by 11:59:59 p.m. Eastern Time on June 23, 2026. Applicants were responsible for checking the Grants.gov status after submission and confirming that the application was validated or had another accepted agency status. A submission that remained rejected or was received after the deadline was not a successful application.

Those steps describe the closed FY 2026 process for archival usefulness. They are not instructions that can reopen the competition. Anyone preparing a future proposal should first locate a newly announced official notice because a later cycle could change the amount, priorities, forms, eligibility details, or submission dates.

Measures and responsibilities after an award

The official instructions supplied ten program performance measures. They covered students enrolling in and completing courses that use grant-developed materials; failure or withdrawal rates compared with equivalent courses using commercial textbooks; average grades; the number of faculty and institutions adopting the materials; courses using open materials compared with courses continuing to use commercial textbooks; use of tools for revising and remixing open educational resources; average savings per student; and total student savings. A strong project plan would establish a baseline before adoption and explain how the institution or consortium would collect comparable data over time.

The measures show why the program was more demanding than a textbook-production grant. The project needed to connect content creation with faculty use, student participation, course outcomes, adoption outside the original group, and actual savings. A proposal could not credibly claim success solely because a book was uploaded. It needed a way to show where the materials were used, how many students benefited, whether instruction remained sound, and whether the resources could be maintained and reused.

Historical-reference guidance

This FY 2026 opportunity should remain available as an archive entry because its purpose, eligibility model, funding scale, and application requirements may help institutions plan for a future competition. It should not promise that another round will open, and it should not imply that the June deadline can be extended. The official program page currently identifies the FY 2026 competition as closed and does not provide a next-cycle announcement. The closed-cycle date therefore remains in the deadline field, while historicalReference = true signals that the page is an archive rather than an expired open listing.

Official sources

• U.S. Department of Education program page
• FY 2026 competition instructions
• Grants.gov opportunity record