2026 WLARA Grant Awards Announced

for immediate release

Late last week, the Department of War Education Activity (DOWEA) announced that it had awarded nine multi-year World Language Advancement and Readiness Grants (WLARA) for the FY2026 grant cycle. Totaling $15 million, these grants range between $500,000 and $2 million each, and go to support establishing or expanding programs in Spanish, French, Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), Japanese, Korean and German. According to DOWEA these grants were highly competitive this year as, for the first time in the program’s history, DOWEA was unable to award grants to all school districts that applied.

This year’s awards now bring the total amount of WLARA grants in the past six years to nearly $94 million. Since the program’s inception in 2021, 37 school districts spread across 19 states have been the recipients of 61 awards. The state leaders in grants received are Virginia with 9 awards and Texas with 7 awards.

The 2026 awardee contingent includes four school districts that have won WLARA grants previously and five first-time winners – Cumberland County Schools, Hoke County Schools, and Onslow County Schools, all in North Carolina; Madison County Schools in Alabama; and Stafford County Schools in Virginia. All awardees have different plans for their grants. Examples include:

• Madison County Schools in Alabama will use its $2 million grant to strengthen its course offerings in Spanish, French and German, including increasing its early language training from part-time to full-time and leveraging partnerships with the Air Force Base that it serves for internships and capstone projects.

• Cumberland County Schools in North Carolina will use its $2 million grant to broaden its Chinese and Spanish immersion pathways, expanding immersion programs to two elementary schools and providing job-embedded professional development to educators.

• Bedford Public Schools in Massachusetts will use its $500,000 grant (a follow on grant to its 2024 award) to increase the number of students achieving the State Seal of Biliteracy and extend the duration of world language enrollment for all students.

• Stafford County Schools in Virginia will use its $1.75 million grant for distance learning technologies to deliver French and German instruction to schools lacking on-site staff and to introduce Chinese and Arabic language courses based on military family requests.

“While we celebrate another milestone grant award announcement for the truly impactful WLARA program, we are mindful that the work to obtain funding for future grants continues,” stated JNCL-NCLIS Executive Director Amanada Seewald. She continued: “The House of Representatives demonstrated that it sees the value of language education generally and WLARA specifically when it approved a $5 million increase for the program in its version of the FY27 Department of Defense spending bill. We need the Senate to match or exceed the House’s $20 million appropriation when it takes up FY27 spending in the forthcoming lame duck session. In the meantime, JNCL-NCLIS will continue to press the case for greater investments in WLARA.”