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Japan's FY2026 national budget (Cabinet-approved 26 December 2025, taking effect with the fiscal year on 1 April 2026) allocates continuing METI funding for hydrogen-society technology development, logged by Global Trade Alert as one of 23 METI programmes under the FY2026 budget supporting the "green transformation of the industrial sector."
NEDO -- the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology's energy R&D arm and METI's implementing agency for hydrogen programmes -- runs the money through competitive solicitations rather than direct disbursement. The FY2026 tranche of this budget line is visible in NEDO's own call for proposals for the "Advanced Technology Development and Demonstration Project for Hydrogen Society Model Construction" (project code P26004), open 19 March - 22 April 2026, targeting companies, universities, and local governments developing commercially-viable regional hydrogen-supply-chain business models (survey phase up to 2 years, technology development/demonstration phase up to 3-5 years).
This sits alongside -- but is administratively distinct from -- Japan's statutory 15-year price-gap CfD hydrogen subsidy under the Hydrogen Society Promotion Act (2024-05-17-japan-hydrogen-society-promotion-act, funded via GX Transition Bonds and JOGMEC). This action is the smaller, NEDO-administered R&D/demonstration grant channel, not the CfD offtake subsidy.
JOGMEC/GX-bond CfD under the Hydrogen Society Promotion Act), each funding a different stage of the supply chain (R&D/demonstration vs. commercial offtake).
-- relevant to Japanese gas utilities, trading houses, and local governments building out sub-national hydrogen infrastructure ahead of the larger CfD-backed hub projects.
roughly JPY 8.1bn/year by its final year, suggesting the FY2026 successor grant is a similarly modest, non-headline R&D appropriation rather than a new large-scale subsidy commitment.
disclosed in the sources reviewed -- GTA's intervention page requires a paid account login for the full budget breakdown. Revisit if a METI budget-outline PDF becomes accessible again (meti.go.jp returned HTTP 403 to automated fetches from this environment as of 2026-07-05; the two neighbouring FY2026 METI actions filed the same day cite that same PDF as their primary source, so this may be a transient WAF block rather than a permanent access change).
Act CfD-designated hub projects or fund genuinely separate regional pilots.