DARPA DICE PROGRAMME TRACKER // Q3 2026
DARPA’s DICE programme, milestone by milestone.
DICE (Decentralized Artificial Intelligence through Controlled Emergence) is a DARPA Information Innovation Office programme, run by programme manager Susmit Jha, seeking the theory and algorithms for decentralised coordination and local inference control: a scalable, adaptive, resilient collective of heterogeneous AI agents able to execute sustained long-time-horizon missions in contested environments while remaining under human control. Announced through special notices in April 2026 and formalised in Broad Agency Announcement HR001126S0010 on 10 June 2026, DICE is a 36-month, three-phase, simulation-only programme. Full proposals are due 25 August 2026, and no awards have been announced.
The BAA splits the work across three technical areas: decentralised coordination and consensus (TA1), local inference control to keep agents role-coherent and mission-aligned (TA2), and testing and evaluation in simulation (TA3). Proposers must address TA1 and TA2 together, or TA3 alone, and TA3 selectees are excluded from the first two. DARPA states explicitly that DICE will not develop or deploy autonomous systems in the real world; architectures are demonstrated in simulation against benign failures and adversarial attacks.
Solicitation
BAA HR001126S0010, released 10 June 2026
Proposals due
25 August 2026, 2:00pm ET
Structure
36 months, three phases, three technical areas
Office
DARPA Information Innovation Office (I2O)
Programme manager
Susmit Jha
Awards
None announced as of 23 July 2026
SECTION 01, CURRENT STATUS
Where the programme stands, 23 July 2026.
The DICE Broad Agency Announcement (HR001126S0010) is open. The abstract window closed on 30 June 2026, questions on the solicitation are accepted until 18 August 2026, and full proposals are due 25 August 2026 at 2:00pm ET. The Grants.gov listing was updated to a second version on 14 July 2026; the public record does not describe what the revision changed.
No awards or selections have been announced. As of 23 July 2026 we can find no DICE award on DARPA channels or federal contracting databases, and the solicitation does not commit to a selection date. On the agency’s usual cadence, awards would follow evaluation of the 25 August submissions, but DARPA has published no timetable and this tracker does not infer one.
The companion Materials for Physical Compute RFI (DARPA-SN-26-76) closed on 27 May 2026. DARPA said responses would be used to select an invite-only Arlington workshop, tentatively scheduled for June or July 2026, that would inform a potential follow-on solicitation. We can find no public confirmation that the workshop has taken place, and no materials BAA has been published.
SECTION 02, PROGRAMME TIMELINE
Every dated event in the public record.
9 completed milestones and 2 published deadlines, each traced to an official notice or named coverage. Where a source gives only a month, the row says only the month.
| Date | Event | Source |
|---|---|---|
April 2026 Completed | Pre-solicitation notice: Future Program DICE (DARPA-SN-26-65) DARPA’s Information Innovation Office issued Special Notice DARPA-SN-26-65, a pre-solicitation announcement issued for information and programme-planning purposes only, naming Susmit Jha as programme manager and directing proposers to monitor SAM.gov for the formal solicitation to follow. | EverGlade, 27 April 2026 |
April 2026 Completed | Companion RFI published: Materials for Physical Compute in Untethered Robotics (DARPA-SN-26-76) DARPA’s Microsystems Technology Office asked industry for materials that embed sensing, actuation, and inference directly into robotic structures rather than routing them through centralised processors. Responses were to be used to select participants for an invite-only workshop in Arlington, Virginia, tentatively scheduled for June or July 2026 and expected to inform a follow-on BAA. | DARPA, RFI DARPA-SN-26-76 |
28 April 2026 Completed | Proposers Day special notice posted (DARPA-SN-26-72) Posted to SAM.gov at 3:57pm EDT, announcing a DICE Proposers Day at the Executive Conference Center, 4075 Wilson Blvd, Arlington, Virginia, with a registration and response deadline of 19 May 2026 at 5:00pm EDT. | HigherGov, DARPA-SN-26-72 listing |
19 May 2026 Completed | Proposers Day registration closed Registration and responses to Special Notice DARPA-SN-26-72 closed at 5:00pm EDT ahead of the 29 May event. | SamSearch, 2026 |
27 May 2026 Completed | Companion RFI responses due (DARPA-SN-26-76) The submission window for the Materials for Physical Compute in Untethered Robotics RFI closed. DARPA stated that responses would inform selection for the invite-only workshop and, in turn, a potential formal solicitation. | Tech Times, 19 May 2026 |
29 May 2026 Completed | DICE Proposers Day held, Arlington, Virginia DARPA’s Information Innovation Office hosted the hybrid Proposers Day at the Executive Conference Center. DARPA subsequently published the Proposers Day presentation and a programme Q&A document. | OrangeSlices AI, 2026 |
10 June 2026 Completed | BAA released: HR001126S0010 The full DICE solicitation posted to SAM.gov and Grants.gov with a close date of 25 August 2026. Funding instruments are procurement contracts and cooperative agreements, with no cost sharing required and eligibility open to all responsible sources. Programme contact is DICE@darpa.mil. | Grants.gov, HR001126S0010 |
30 June 2026 Completed | Abstract deadline Abstracts, strongly encouraged but not mandatory under the BAA, were due at 2:00pm ET. | EverGlade, June 2026 |
14 July 2026 Completed | Solicitation listing updated to version 2 The Grants.gov listing for HR001126S0010 shows a last-updated date of 14 July 2026 and a version number of 2. The public listing does not describe what changed. | Grants.gov, HR001126S0010 |
18 August 2026 Upcoming | Question submission deadline Final date for submitting questions on the solicitation, at 2:00pm ET. | EverGlade, June 2026 |
25 August 2026 Upcoming | Full proposals due Full proposals close at 2:00pm ET. The Grants.gov listing archives on 24 September 2026. DARPA has not published a selection or award date. | Grants.gov, HR001126S0010 |
SECTION 03, WHY IT MATTERS
The architecture is moving faster than the doctrine.
DICE is the most explicit public statement to date of how the Pentagon intends to dissolve the operator bottleneck that has constrained American drone warfare since the Predator era. The institutional response is lagging the technical procurement: according to a commentary in The Hill by retired Gen. David Petraeus and Isaac Flanagan, less than 2 per cent of the Pentagon’s $54 billion FY27 autonomous warfare request is allocated to the doctrine, training, and force design that would convert the technology into capability.
The companion Materials for Physical Compute RFI (DARPA-SN-26-76) completes the technical envelope: where DICE addresses how a collective coordinates, the materials RFI addresses how each individual agent thinks. Vendors who win at the DICE stage will shape the requirements language for the production contracts that follow. The doctrine to govern what they build is the part of the stack nobody has been funded to write.
Our full analysis of the programme and the institutional gap around it: The Doctrine Gap: DARPA’s DICE Programme and the $54 Billion Question.
RELATED COVERAGE
The Doctrine Gap: DARPA’s DICE Programme and the $54 Billion Question
SIGNAL DOSSIERPersistent Force: DARPA’s Containerised Swarm Programme
SIGNAL DOSSIERThe $54.6 Billion Signal: the Pentagon’s Autonomous Warfare Budget
SIGNAL DOSSIERThe $994 Million Map: Where the Army’s FY27 Counter-UAS Budget Actually Lands
PROCUREMENT TRACKERDefence Procurement Tracker: allied autonomous-systems programmes
METHODOLOGYHow we source, verify, and label every claim in the tracker
SOURCES
- DARPA, DICE programme page (Decentralized Artificial Intelligence through Controlled Emergence)
- DARPA, Future Program: DICE, Special Notice DARPA-SN-26-65
- DARPA, DICE Proposers Day, Special Notice DARPA-SN-26-72
- DARPA, DICE Proposers Day presentation (PDF, June 2026)
- DARPA, DICE programme Q&A (PDF, June 2026)
- Grants.gov, opportunity listing HR001126S0010
- HigherGov, DARPA-SN-26-72 contract opportunity listing
- Granted AI, DICE opportunity listing (technical area pairing rules)
- Defence Science Institute, DICE HR001126S0010 funding opportunity
- EverGlade, DARPA’s DICE Program (27 April 2026)
- EverGlade, DARPA Officially Releases DICE BAA (June 2026)
- SamSearch, DARPA’s Proposers Day for DICE Program Set for May 29 in Arlington
- OrangeSlices AI, DARPA Hosts DICE Proposers Day to Advance Decentralized AI for Contested Environments
- DARPA, RFI: Materials for Physical Compute in Untethered Robotics, DARPA-SN-26-76
- Tech Times, DARPA Wants Robots That Sense and React Through Their Materials, Not Processors (19 May 2026)
- The Hill, David Petraeus and Isaac Flanagan, The Pentagon could be about to make a $55 billion mistake
Timeline entries are sourced from DARPA special notices, SAM.gov and Grants.gov listings, and named trade coverage. The tracker is updated on each material programme event: solicitation amendments, deadline changes, and any award announcements. For bespoke briefings on the DARPA autonomy portfolio, contact the advisory team.
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