Funding pressures are persisting and extending into future funding cycles, but exposure differs across financing models.
Funding quality is as consequential as funding volume: losses of core resources affect a wider range of organisational capabilities.
Temporary buffers have softened some near-term reductions without resolving underlying problems of predictability and flexibility.
For most donor-dependent organisations, the current funding pressure is no longer treated as a short-term shock. The exceptionally sharp contraction recorded in 2025 is not expected to continue at the same scale (OECD, 2026[3]). This nevertheless represents continued contraction from an already lower base rather than a return to previous funding levels. Lower resource assumptions are consequently extending into future budget and replenishment cycles, but the form and operational significance of the pressure depend on how each organisation is financed.
Around 80% of organisations responding to the 2026 MOPAN survey reported a confirmed reduction in funding in 2025. Eight placed the reduction at between 1% and 10%, five at 11–20%, four at 21–30%, and two at 31–40%. Six reported no reduction.
UNAIDS, UNHCR, WHO, WFP and OHCHR experienced substantial reductions in resources available for their core or operational work. UNAIDS reported that core funding had fallen by more than half since 2024 and reduced the capacity of its Secretariat and Cosponsors by more than 50% (UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board, 2026[16]); UNHCR reported that in 2025 only 37% of the $10.604 billion operational budget was funded, resulting in a global funding shortfall of $6.7 billion – the biggest in UNHCR’s recent history (UNHCR, 2026[17]) and WHO faced unpaid assessed contributions, terminated voluntary agreements and continuing earmarking constraints, leaving a significant salary and programme gap despite apparently high aggregate financing when projected resources were included (WHO, 2025[18]).
WFP’s confirmed contributions fell by 33%, from US$9.8 billion in 2024 to US$6.5 billion in 2025, covering only 41% of operational requirements. Its 2026 provisional implementation plan represents 59% of requirements and is designed to assist 94 million people, compared with approximately 110 million under full funding (WFP, 2025[19]) (WFP, 2026[20]) while OHCHR received US$191.5 million of its US$246 million approved regular-budget resources in 2025 and US$257.8 million against an extra-budgetary requirement of US$500 million (OHCHR, 2026[21])
FAO also broadens the picture. Voluntary contributions fell by 8% in 2025, while traditional-donor funding was reported to be around 15% below 2024; increased reliance on vertical funds partly offset the volume decline but reduced flexibility (FAO, 2026[22]). Regarding some of the organisations with normative mandates, UNESCO faced a USD 75.4 million non-payment of its 2025 assessed contribution and limited implementation of its USD 685.4 million regular budget to approximately USD 610 million, about 11% below the approved level ( (UNESCO, 2026[23]), while for UNEP’s case, the Environment Fund income was USD 84.9 million against a USD 100 million budget in 2025, while UN Regular Budget income was USD 20.7 million against USD 24.5 million (UNEP, 2026[24]) (UNEP, 2026[25]).
Some of the initial estimates were more pessimistic than the reductions subsequently reported. In response to the 2025 MOPAN survey, 12 of the 14 organisations able to provide a forward estimate expected a reduction, and seven expected it to be at least 21%. Among 12 organisations for which the expected 2025 band and the subsequently reported realised band are broadly comparable, eight reported a lower realised reduction than they had anticipated, two (2) a higher reduction and two (2) approximately the same. The comparison is indicative only because the questions, samples, baselines and funding bands are not fully identical. It may nevertheless suggest that some organisations mitigated or deferred part of the anticipated near-term loss.
“While income decline was originally not as steep as projected and UNICEF has shown resilience, this largely reflects timing effects and one-off factors rather than a substantive improvement in the funding environment.” (MOPAN survey, 2026 – UNICEF)
This distinction is important. Smaller-than-expected reductions do not necessarily indicate that the funding environment improved. Several organisations responding to the survey attributed apparent resilience to one-off receipts, use of reserves, successful mobilisation of non-core resources, support from programme countries, new donors, co-financing or replacement of flexible resources with more restricted contributions (Multilateral Performance Network (MOPAN), 2026[15]).
UNOPS provides a different example of resilience. In the 2025 survey, it anticipated a 1–10% reduction in parts of its portfolio, while expecting this to be fully offset by increased demand for other services. This expectation was borne out in 2025. In its 2026 survey response, UNOPS reported USD 2.7 billion in project implementation for 2025, broadly unchanged from 2024, while new agreements signed with partners exceeded USD 3 billion, above previous years. Unlike most organisations covered by the survey, UNOPS does not receive assessed or voluntary contributions (2026, MOPAN Survey – UNOPS). As a demand-driven, fee-for-service organisation, UNOPS was able in 2025 to offset lower demand in some parts of its portfolio with growth elsewhere.
More importantly for the forward outlook, 20 respondents had received at least one formal notice of a reduction, contribution withdrawal, lower pledge or reduced replenishment expectation (either for 2026, 2027 or beyond). Including informal indications, 23 of 25 respondents reported some expectation of further pressure.
Six organisations were unable to estimate the scale of the reduction in their next budget or replenishment cycle, and one considered the question not applicable. Among the remaining 18 respondents, 16 expected a reduction. The most common estimate was between 11% and 20% (8 respondents). This provides stronger evidence than was available in 2025 that the contraction is becoming structural: the majority of responding organisations are incorporating lower resource assumptions into future plans rather than treating the reductions as a one-year liquidity problem.
The contraction is also spreading to funds and partnerships. The 2026 survey provides greater visibility over funds and partnerships than the previous exercise. Four out of 6 multi-stakeholder partnerships or trust funds assessed the future outlook for total pledges and funding predictability as negative to some degree (moderately negative or severally negative).
Gavi reported a remaining USD 2 billion shortfall against its Gavi 6.0 ambition in January 2026 and recalibrated its programme envelope and strategy (Gavi, 2026[26]). As of 24 September 2026, GEF-9 was endorsed at USD 4.3 billion, around 19% below the USD 5.33 billion pledged for GEF-8 (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, 2026[27]) (GEF, 2026[28]). Announced pledges for the Global Fund’s eighth replenishment were 14% below the seventh replenishment, although early conversion of pledges into cash was ahead of the equivalent stage in earlier cycles (MOPAN survey, 2026 – The Global Fund).
These examples indicate that funding pressure extends beyond UN entities dependent on annual voluntary contributions. They also show that effects on funds may emerge through smaller future programme envelopes, stricter allocation choices or slower expansion rather than immediate cuts to an administrative structure.
This financing-model distinction is even more important for multilateral development banks (MDBs). None of the eight MDB/IFIs invited to participate in the 2026 MOPAN survey submitted a response. The survey included dedicated questions for IFIs to reflect their different financial models, but some institutions explained to MOPAN that they had not experienced funding reductions and therefore many of these adaptation measures were not relevant to them. The World Bank explained that it was unable to respond given the nature of the questions, particularly those concerning a changing financing environment and its responses to it. ADB was more explicit, stating that it had not experienced funding reductions in recent years and had therefore not needed to take measures in response, leading it to consider the survey not applicable.
Moreover, funding from bilateral donors does not affect MDBs in the same way as grant- and contribution-funded organisations. EBRD, for example, finances its administrative budget largely from profits and margins generated through financial operations with clients rather than from annual donor contributions Donor fiscal pressure may still affect MDBs through concessional windows, grants, trust funds and special facilities, but it does not necessarily translate into lower ordinary-capital lending, smaller administrative budget or the types of organisational retrenchment observed among donor-dependent organisations.
Recent replenishments appear to indicate that MDBs might have been somewhat protected from funding cuts. For instance, ADF-17 mobilised a record USD 11 billion for 2026-28, 23% more than the previous replenishment, while moving towards greater balance-sheet leverage, market borrowing and hybrid capital (African Development Fund, 2026[29]). IDA21, agreed in December 2024, likewise secured a record USD 100 billion financing package for FY2025–28, supported by USD 23.7 billion in donor pledges and increased leverage (IDA, 2026[30]).
Changes in funding quality are a distinct source of financial pressure, alongside funding volume. Seventeen respondents ranked voluntary earmarked or non-core contributions among their three most affected funding sources. Eleven (11) ranked voluntary core or regular resources, seven (7) assessed contributions and five (5) replenishment resources. These responses capture different problems: while reductions in any funding stream lower overall resources, shifts away from flexible or assessed resources can have distinct impacts on organisational capacity.
Earmarked contributions were therefore the most widely affected stream. However, the source-to-impact matrix (see figure 5) suggests that loss of core and assessed funding affects a wider set of organisational areas. Of the ten cases involving voluntary core or regular resources, ten linked the reduction to staffing, ten to programme delivery, eight to corporate functions, seven to technical assistance and seven to data or evidence. Earmarked-resource reductions were most often linked to programme delivery and technical assistance. Assessed-contribution reductions were particularly associated with staffing and normative functions (MOPAN survey, 2026).
UNDP is a clear example. Total voluntary contributions increased by 4% in 2025, to approximately USD 4.9 billion, while core contributions fell from USD 581 million to USD 442 million (UNDP, 2026[31]). The organisation sustained aggregate delivery, but warned that continued core erosion would reduce its ability to act early, maintain programme quality and accountability, and support underfunded settings (UNDP, 2026[32]).
Similarly, UNHCR reported that the share of unearmarked funding pledged for 2026 had fallen to 17%, nearly half its 2023 level, reducing its capacity to allocate funding where needs were greatest (UNHCR, 2025[33]) and WHO reported that continued reliance on earmarked voluntary contributions posed challenges for aligning financing with programme priorities and maintaining flexibility, while flexible funds were used to reallocate resources strategically to areas where additional funding was not expected (WHO, 2026[34]).
In sum, despite some organisational resilience, the contraction can now be described more confidently as persistent among multilateral organisations. Funding pressure is becoming structural for many donor-dependent organisations, and the type of shock follows the type of funding. Reductions in flexible core or assessed resources, replenishment gaps, pledge-conversion delays and lower fee-generating demand affect organisational capacity and delivery through different channels, determining which functions contract and which organisations remain buffered.