The FAA is spreading its terminal money wide this year. The agency released a list of $970 million in fiscal 2026 Airport Terminal Program grants, funding 133 projects at 129 airports, a portfolio built more around midsize upgrades than a few giant terminals.
The grants flow from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which set aside a multi-year pot specifically for terminals. This tranche targets reconstruction of aging concourses, energy-efficiency work, and in a number of cases the airport-owned air traffic control towers that smaller fields maintain themselves.
Breadth over blockbusters
Spreading roughly a billion dollars across 129 airports means most awards land in the single-digit or low-tens of millions. That’s deliberate. Large hubs have other funding routes and private capital; the terminal program is where a regional airport with a 1970s concourse and no jet bridges finally gets its rebuild. For contractors, it’s a steady stream of midsize terminal jobs rather than a handful of marquee awards.
What it means for the build market
Terminal work is its own discipline: phased construction around live operations, security-side logistics, and tight coordination with airlines and the TSA. A wave of 133 funded projects seeds a pipeline of exactly that work over the next few years, much of it in secondary markets that don’t usually make national headlines. It’s the domestic counterpart to the aviation buildout underway abroad, from Gulf megahubs to expansion programs Exchange has tracked across large public infrastructure awards.
The full grant list is published by AAAE.