NIH Eliminated the Letter of Intent: What NOT-OD-26-019 Means for Your Application

What NOT-OD-26-019 Actually Does

NOT-OD-26-019, issued as part of NIH's Administrative Burden Reduction effort, eliminated the practice of requesting letters of intent within Section IV of Notices of Funding Opportunities (NOFOs). For most standard research grant applications — including the R-series, K-series, and fellowship mechanisms that make up the bulk of extramural submissions — you no longer need to submit an LOI before putting in a full application.

The scope is broad. Any NOFO that previously included an optional or encouraged LOI process is now covered by this policy. Letters of intent submitted to program offices after NOT-OD-26-019 will not be acknowledged or reviewed by the relevant Institute, Center, or Office. They will not be forwarded to the Center for Scientific Review. If you send one, it goes nowhere.

A few things worth being precise about: this change is not about peer review. Your application will still be assigned to a study section, scored by three reviewers, and discussed by the full panel exactly as before. The LOI never went through that process anyway. It went to the program office — which is exactly why NIH concluded it could be removed without affecting review quality.

Bottom line for most applicants

If you're submitting an R01, R21, K award, F award, or most other standard mechanisms to a parent announcement or to an FOA published after early 2026, you don't need to write or submit a letter of intent. The calendar date is gone. Read on for the exceptions that still apply.

Why Letters of Intent Existed in the First Place

Before peer review was centralized under the Center for Scientific Review, individual institutes managed more of their own scientific review operations. When a Request for Applications or a targeted program announcement went out, the ICO needed to know roughly how many applications to expect so they could recruit enough reviewers and structure a review meeting in time. The LOI served that specific operational purpose: it gave program officers a rough headcount six to eight weeks before the application deadline, letting them request additional reviewer capacity if the field turned out to be larger than expected.

That logic made sense when each institute coordinated its own external reviewer network. The program office could look at 40 incoming LOI summaries, notice that most were clustered in a particular disease area, and call in an extra specialist before the applications arrived. Not a perfect system, but a functional one given the decentralized structure at the time.

NIH was also clear that an LOI was never required, binding, or considered during peer review. You could submit an LOI and then not apply, and nothing formal happened. You could not submit an LOI and still apply to most announcements, with no penalty. The LOI was administrative scaffolding. It was never science.

Why NIH Removed Them Now

The broader context matters here. NOT-OD-26-019 is one piece of an ongoing administrative burden reduction push that has also touched biosketch requirements, other support reporting, forms updates under FORMS-I, and a range of smaller process changes. NIH has been explicit about the goal: reduce the non-scientific work that consumes researcher time without improving review quality or funding decisions.

The LOI fit squarely in that category. As CSR centralized more of the peer review infrastructure, the program office-level workload-estimation function of the LOI started doing less work for more administrative effort on both sides. The program office still had to read and triage a stack of one-page summaries. Applicants still had to draft something meaningful and track a separate calendar deadline. Neither side gained much from the exchange once CSR had its own mechanisms for projecting incoming application volume.

There's also a fairness angle that NIH hasn't stated explicitly but that practitioners have noted for years: the optional LOI created an uneven dynamic. Experienced applicants treated it as an early touchpoint with the program office and used it strategically. Newer applicants often didn't know it existed, or submitted a perfunctory one-liner that conveyed nothing. Removing the mechanism levels that field slightly, and moves the communication burden onto the direct outreach channels that were always more useful anyway.

What Still Requires a Pre-Submission Step

This is where you need to read the specific NOFO carefully. NOT-OD-26-019 applies to the standard LOI mechanism — the one-page informal document submitted to the ICO before the application deadline. It does not eliminate every pre-application requirement NIH uses.

Research Opportunity Announcements (ROAs)

Some offices (including certain DPCPSI programs) issue ROAs that operate under their own submission requirements, separate from the standard grants.gov application process. Read the specific ROA document, not the NIH-wide policy, for submission requirements.

NIH Common Fund Programs

Common Fund competitions — like the New Innovator Award (DP2) — occasionally have their own structured pre-application steps. These are defined in the Common Fund program page and the specific NOFO, not just grants.gov. Don't assume general policy applies.

FOAs Published Before NOT-OD-26-019

If you're applying to an older active FOA that still references a letter of intent in Section IV, check whether that FOA has been amended. If it hasn't been updated and the LOI requirement is still in the text, follow it — program offices can still request LOIs in individual announcements even under the general policy change.

The practical rule: search the full text of your target NOFO for "letter of intent" and read exactly what it says. If it's silent and was published after the policy change, you don't need one. If it specifies one, follow those instructions regardless of the general policy statement.

What to Do Instead: Program Officer Outreach That Actually Works

The practical question most applicants have after learning about this change: how do I signal to a program officer that my application is coming before it lands in their inbox?

The honest answer is that the LOI was never a particularly good way to do that. A one-page summary submitted to a shared program office email address was rarely the starting point for a useful conversation. Program officers remember phone calls and substantive emails; they mostly don't remember LOI summaries. If you want early contact, the better path has always been direct outreach — and that path is unchanged.

A Pre-Submission Outreach Pattern That Works

Read before you call. Look at the program officer's recent portfolio and any Inside Extramural article they've published. Show up to the conversation with a specific question about fit, not a general "does my project match your portfolio?"
Email before you call. A two-sentence email with your aims page and a specific question gives the program officer context before the conversation starts. Calls without any prior framing are harder for both sides.
Six to eight weeks out, minimum. Contact the program officer early enough that a study section concern can actually be addressed before the submission window opens. The week before the deadline is too late for most questions that matter.
One focused question per outreach. "Is my project better suited to the R21 or the R01 parent announcement given my preliminary data set?" is a question a program officer can answer usefully. "What do you think of my project?" is not.

One thing that doesn't change with this policy: if your target FOA is an RFA with set-aside funds and a fixed application window, early contact is even more important than usual, not less. RFAs often have more restrictive scope than standard parent announcements. Confirming fit before you spend three months writing is worth a 15-minute phone call.

Your New Pre-Submission Calendar

With the LOI removed, your pre-application calendar has one fewer date to track. That's genuinely useful. The old LOI deadline also served as an informal forcing function — it made applicants commit to a project direction early enough to catch major fit problems before submission. Without it, that discipline needs to be deliberate.

Suggested Timeline for an R01 Submission

10–12 weeks outIdentify your target NOFO and program officer. Read the FOA carefully for any pre-submission requirements. This is also when you should start your aims page.
6–8 weeks outContact the program officer with your aims page and a specific question about fit. This replaces the window the LOI used to occupy. Direct email with an attached aims page is more useful than any LOI ever was.
4–6 weeks outFinalize your specific aims page and circulate for non-specialist review. Start the Research Strategy with your aims stable in structure.
3–4 weeks outPrepare your cover letter if you want to request a specific study section. The cover letter is unchanged by NOT-OD-26-019 — it's still the right mechanism for study section assignment requests and conflict-of-interest notifications.
2–3 weeks outComplete ASSIST assembly and do your administrative check. Verify due dates, required attachments, and that all co-investigator biosketches are current.

The cover letter deserves a brief note here because it gets confused with the LOI surprisingly often. They were always different documents. The cover letter is submitted as part of the application package and goes to CSR alongside your science. The LOI went to the program office before the application deadline. Removing the LOI has no effect on what you can put in a cover letter or when to use one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does NOT-OD-26-019 apply to resubmissions and renewals, or only to new applications?

The policy covers all application types — new, resubmission, renewal, and revision. If your renewal is targeting a NOFO that previously encouraged an LOI, you don't need to submit one. The sole exception is a NOFO whose text specifically requires one, which can still happen in special competition structures even after the general policy change.

I submitted an LOI earlier this year. Does it still count for anything?

Probably not in any formal sense. NIH has stated that LOIs submitted after NOT-OD-26-019 will not be acknowledged or reviewed. If your LOI was submitted before the policy took effect and you received a confirmation from a program officer, that prior interaction still stands as a touchpoint — but it carries no formal standing in your current application cycle.

If there's no LOI deadline, how do I know when to reach out to the program officer?

Build it into your submission calendar explicitly: six to eight weeks before your target deadline. The LOI deadline used to serve as a natural anchor for this communication; now you own the timing. Earlier is generally better — most program officers are responsive to substantive fit questions well in advance of submission, and harder to reach in the final two weeks before a deadline.

Will individual institutes create their own informal LOI processes to replace the official one?

Possibly, for specific high-priority competitions. What they can't do is require a formal LOI submission as a condition of application. If a program officer asks for a brief summary during a consultation call, that's different from a required LOI. Follow the conversation where it leads. If you see language in a new NOFO that looks like a pre-submission requirement, read it carefully — those can still appear under different labels in targeted announcements.