Grant Available 2026 Climate Smart Communities Initiative, The Climate Smart Communities Initiative (CSCI) is excited to open applications for the 2026 CSCI grant program, supporting climate resilience efforts across the United States.
These grants offer both funding and technical support to help advance community-led climate resilience in U.S. regions that face significant vulnerability to climate change impacts. The total funding pool is $1.5–$2 million, with individual awards typically ranging from $75,000 to $115,000, depending on the proposed project scope. For the 2026 cycle, CSCI expects to provide 16–20 grants.
The initiative places a strong emphasis on supporting communities that include historically underserved or disinvested populations that face heightened climate risks. Eligible applicants must be U.S.-based teams made up of a climate adaptation practitioner, representatives from a local or regional government body, and a community-based organization.
Grant Available 2026 Climate Smart Communities Initiative, Applicants are encouraged to carefully review the full details and submit their applications before the specified deadline to seize this grant opportunity.
Last Date of Submission: 17th February 2026
Benefits: for Grant Available 2026 Climate Smart Communities Initiative
CSCI grants are designed to be flexible to meet the unique needs of each community. Grant funds can be used to support new climate resilience efforts or build on previous work as well as fund a range of activities.
In addition to funding, awarded project teams have access to CSCI’s comprehensive cohort support program, which is designed to provide capacity building support, including training and peer-to-peer learning opportunities from CSCI’s growing network of funded partners.
CSCI also offers technical assistance on an as-needed basis. Supplemental funding may be available to grantees to support access to topical experts and technical resources throughout the grant period.
Finally, award recipients are automatically included in CSCI’s learning and evaluation program, which aspires to refine our collective understanding of best adaptation practices, identify replicable resilience strategies, and establish common metrics of success to accelerate climate resilience efforts across the country.
Funding Priorities: for Grant Available 2026 Climate Smart Communities Initiative
Climate Change Vulnerability: CSCI funds projects designed to help communities that are vulnerable to climate change-related hazards to build their capacity to plan for climate impacts and to increase their resilience to those hazards.
Equity: CSCI prioritizes projects that center equity in climate resilience planning and implementation. Equity is a core value of the program and an important component in any effort aimed at increasing the effectiveness and sustainability of a climate resilience plan or project.
Nature: CSCI also prioritizes the consideration of climate impacts on nature and nature-based solutions (NbS) in climate resilience plans and projects. NbS are often more adaptive and cost-effective alternatives to standard gray infrastructure-based solutions and provide many co-benefits to people and to nature. While consideration of nature and NbS are required, their inclusion is not as they may not be the best fit or in scope for every project.
Readiness to increase climate resilience: CSCI requires applicants to demonstrate that the work they propose is aligned with the needs of, and conditions present in, the community or region in question. Unless the project team is in the earliest phase of their planning process, the proposed activities must be informed by or build on prior work that broadly aligns with the sequence of the Steps to Resilience (StR) Framework (see graphic). See definitions of each StR phase in the glossary of terms to learn more. The goal of the proposed work must be clearly linked to the cited climate change-related hazards and the proposed activities must aspire to enable the community to increase its resilience to those hazards.
Capacity building: CSCI awards are limited to 12-month grant periods, but climate change impacts will remain an ongoing challenge in all communities. To help extend the impact of the technical and financial support provided, the initiative will prioritize investment opportunities that explicitly address or indirectly increase capacity of the applicant community to pursue their climate resilience goals beyond the grant period.
Eligibility for Grant Available 2026 Climate Smart Communities Initiative
Location: Projects and project partners must be based in the United States, inclusive of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa,, as well as the Tribal nations that share these geographies.
Climate impacts: Applicant communities must be facing significant impacts from climate change-related hazards based on environmental as well as socioeconomic considerations.
Climate resilience: Activities and work proposed must be strictly focussed on climate adaptation and resilience. Applications with a primary focus on, climate mitigation actions, emissions reduction, carbon sequestration, or energy efficiency will not be considered.
Community size: The population of the community (number of people within the geographic area that is the focus of the proposed climate resilience project) should be less than 300,000 residents. However, applicants representing geographies with populations up to 500,000 residents will be considered for projects that are regional in scope.
Partners: CSCI grants support climate resilience-building efforts that include three types of partners: 1) Adaptation practitioner, 2) Community-based organization, 3) U.S. local or regional government.
All applications must include at least one partner of each type.
Partnerships can be new or a previous or ongoing collaboration.
If you are in need of one of these partners, learn more about How to Apply and how the Registry of Adaptation Practitioners can help you connect with other interested applicant partners.
How to apply?
<<<Register Here>>>
Note: For more comprehensive details click the link below
Get full access to the grant information, visit the Official Website Link
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