Official title: BJA FY 2026 DNA Capacity Enhancement for Backlog Reduction (CEBR)—Formula Grants Program
Every applicant needs an active registration before submitting. The notice asks you to start by September 21, 2026 and no later than September 30, 2026. That date has passed, so if the registration is missing or lapsed, start today.
Step 1, the , is due October 29, 2026, 11:59 PM ET. It tells BJA an application is coming, and without it the next step is locked.
Step 2 is due November 5, 2026, 8:59 PM ET. This is the narrative, budget and attachments the notice lists.
This is a : the amount is already set, so review confirms the application rather than ranking it. Funded projects get 24 months to spend the money (the ), starting January 1, 2027.
Your lab can get federal funding to process more DNA samples and reduce your backlog by entering samples into CODIS, the national DNA database system. You apply directly to the federal government on grants.gov, with no state agency required.
This is a notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) for the BJA FY 2026 DNA Capacity Enhancement for Backlog Reduction (CEBR)—Formula Grants Program. This opportunity will support states and units of local government with existing crime laboratories that conduct DNA analysis to process, and/or to increase the capacity to process, more DNA samples for entry into the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), thereby helping to reduce the number of forensic DNA and DNA database samples awaiting analysis and/or to prevent a backlog of forensic and database DNA samples.
Other Units of Local Government: For the purposes of this NOFO, “other units of local government” include towns, boroughs, parishes, villages, or other general purpose political subdivisions of a state.
For a forensic agency, this means
State and local governments that own, control, or operate a crime laboratory are eligible to apply to process DNA samples for the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) or increase lab capacity to do so. No cost sharing is required. Multiple labs within a state must coordinate to ensure total funding requests do not exceed the state's allocated amount.
Median of 130 past formula awards under this program, from USAspending.gov: $561K. Most recipients land well under any published ceiling.
CEBR Formula doesn’t go through a state agency. Every state or local government that runs an eligible public DNA lab applies to BJA itself, and all of a state’s labs share one estimated pool. BJA requires the labs to coordinate before applying so their combined requests stay within it.
Only a government that owns and operates its own DNA lab can apply, and BJA defines a lab as having at least two full-time qualified DNA analysts. Source: BJA, Chart 1: Estimated Aggregate Formula Amounts Available for Each State, FY 2026 (PDF) ↗
