Comcast RISE in 2026 — winding down
Comcast RISE is not accepting applications, and the evidence that it is being wound down is now in Comcast’s own infrastructure: comcastrise.com no longer serves a program site at all — it returns a permanent redirect to Comcast’s Project UP page. The most recent RISE announcement Comcast lists is dated April 10, 2025. Comcast has published no statement ending the program, so the honest classification is dormant and winding down rather than dead. This page records what RISE gave winners, what the redirect means for applicants, and what to apply to while it is not running.
Updated August 25, 2026 — the redirect, the Project UP figures and the date of the last RISE announcement were all checked directly against Comcast-owned URLs on August 25, 2026. Re-checked monthly; this page will be rewritten within the week if Comcast opens a new RISE window.
The status evidence, item by item
Comcast RISE has no open application window in August 2026 and no announced next cycle. Three independent checks point the same way: the program’s dedicated domain now issues a permanent redirect away from itself; Comcast’s Project UP page carries RISE only in the past tense, as part of a cumulative total; and Comcast’s press release feed contains no RISE item in 2026. Comcast has not said the program is over, which is why GrantCompass classifies it as winding down rather than ended — a distinction that matters if you were counting on a 2026 round.
comcastrise.com returns HTTP 301 — a permanent redirect — to corporate.comcast.com/company/impact/project-up. Checked August 25, 2026. A permanent redirect off a program’s own domain is the strongest infrastructure signal a company can send short of an announcement: it retires the destination, not just the page.Method. Each row above is a first-hand check of a Comcast-controlled URL performed on August 25, 2026, not a summary of press coverage. The redirect was read from the HTTP response, not inferred from a browser landing somewhere else. GrantCompass classifies a program as winding down when the operator has stopped running cycles and stopped maintaining the program’s own web presence, but has not published an ending — the state in which a program most often gets listed as “open” by aggregators for years.
What Comcast RISE actually gave a winner
Comcast RISE was never mainly a cash grant, and reading it as a $5,000 award badly understates what a selected business received.
Comcast RISE — the acronym stands for Representation, Investment, Strength and Empowerment — awarded a flat $5,000 in unrestricted cash to every recipient, with no tiered amounts. Around that cash sat two in-kind packages that carried most of the program’s value: a marketing package built on Comcast Advertising and Effectv, covering television and digital ad production and placement, and a technology package covering Comcast Business connectivity services plus consultation on setting them up. Both packages were tied to Comcast service delivery and could not be converted to cash or spent with another vendor.
- $5,000 cash Flat, unrestricted, identical for every recipient. Usable on working capital, payroll, inventory, equipment or professional services.
- Marketing package Advertising creative production plus TV and digital media placement through Comcast Advertising and Effectv. Non-transferable, delivered as services.
- Technology package Comcast Business internet, voice or TV service, with consultation and setup. Also delivered as services, not credit.
That structure explains both the program’s appeal and its ceiling. A local business that had never run television advertising got production and airtime it would not otherwise have bought; a business that already advertised heavily got much less incremental value. The full eligibility rules, application steps and package detail stay on the GrantCompass record at the Comcast RISE program page.
The cycle history: how Comcast RISE ran, and when it stopped
Comcast RISE ran as a rotating, market-by-market program rather than a single national window, which is why “is it open” never had one answer while it was live.
- November 2020 — launch. Comcast NBCUniversal launched Comcast RISE to help minority-owned and women-owned small businesses through the COVID-19 period, offering marketing and technology support in selected Comcast markets.
- 2021–2023 — expansion. Eligibility broadened beyond the original priority groups to small businesses generally within designated markets, and the $5,000 cash grant became a standard element alongside the in-kind packages.
- May 2024 — a cycle with dates. An application window ran May 1–31, 2024, with winners announced that August. This is the last window GrantCompass has dated application boundaries for.
- April 10, 2025 — the last announcement. Comcast announced RISE would provide comprehensive grant packages to 500 small businesses across five regions. No application window after this has been announced.
- By August 2026 — the domain goes. comcastrise.com stops serving a program site and permanently redirects to Project UP. Cumulative support is described on Comcast’s pages as 14,500 small business owners.
What is sourced where. The 2024 window dates and the launch framing come from the GrantCompass catalog record for Comcast RISE. The April 10, 2025 announcement, the 14,500 figure and the redirect were each verified against Comcast-owned URLs on August 25, 2026. Where a market list or a regional cycle is not named above, it is because Comcast published it per-market in regional releases that are no longer collected in one place.
If Comcast RISE was on your shortlist, the shortlist is the thing to fix. Answer a short eligibility check and see every US grant, credit and loan your business qualifies for, with the open windows ranked first — and star anything you want watched. Free, and we will never tell you to rush an application.
See your matches →The award math, and what it says about your chances if it returns
Comcast published recipient counts but never applicant counts, so the supply side of Comcast RISE is knowable and the odds side is not.
Here is the whole of what can be stated with a source. Every recipient received the same $5,000 cash award, so the cash outlay per cycle was 5,000 multiplied by the recipient count — for the 500-business announcement of April 2025, $2.5 million in cash plus the in-kind packages. Comcast describes cumulative support across the program as reaching 14,500 small business owners. What Comcast has not published, in any cycle, is how many businesses applied. That means no win rate for Comcast RISE has ever been calculable from public information, and GrantCompass does not publish one.
Two structural features did shape a given applicant’s realistic chances, and both are worth knowing if a future cycle opens. First, eligibility was geographic: your business address had to fall inside a Comcast-designated market for that specific cycle, and the markets rotated, so a national count of “eligible businesses” understates how concentrated each round was. Second, awards were flat, so unlike a tiered competition there was no upside to a stronger application beyond winning at all. The honest framing for a returning cycle: a short application, a fixed prize, an unknown field, and a hard geographic gate you should confirm before writing a word.
The fine print that mattered — and still would
The terms worth reading on Comcast RISE were never about the cash; they were about what the in-kind packages could and could not be turned into.
Three conditions carried real consequences for recipients. The marketing and technology packages were non-transferable and tied to Comcast and NBCUniversal service delivery: they could not be redeemed as a cash equivalent, and they could not be spent with a different agency, broadcaster or connectivity provider. Comcast published no list of ineligible expenses for the $5,000 cash itself, which is unusually permissive for a corporate grant. And eligibility ran through a market list that changed each cycle, announced alongside the cycle rather than maintained as a standing map — so an applicant could be eligible in one round and not the next without their business changing at all.
Nothing in that is unreasonable for a program funded by a service company; a media package is the thing Comcast can give at scale, and giving it as services rather than cash is the ordinary structure. It does mean the headline value of a RISE package and its cash-equivalent value to a specific business were different numbers, and the gap depended entirely on whether that business would have bought television advertising anyway. Any future cycle should be read the same way: value the package by what you would otherwise have paid for, not by the sticker.
Apply or skip: the verdict on Comcast RISE
There is nothing to apply to today, and nothing worth waiting for on a fixed schedule — but the program is worth one watch slot, not zero.
Comcast RISE earns a straightforward skip for now, because a program whose own domain has been retired and whose last announcement is sixteen months old is not a plan. The specific mistake to avoid is the one the search results encourage: setting a reminder for “RISE applications open in May” on the strength of the 2024 window. That window belonged to one cycle in one set of markets, and market lists rotated even when the program was healthy.
It is worth one watch slot rather than none, for two reasons. Comcast has never published an ending, and the program has restarted after quiet stretches before. And the package, if it returns, remains genuinely valuable to exactly one kind of business — a local, service-area company that has never run television or streaming advertising and would not otherwise buy production. If that is you, watching costs nothing; building a 2026 plan around it costs you the months you spend not applying elsewhere.
What replaces it is not one program but a habit: two or three recurring windows you can actually diarise. Three worth pairing are named below, drawn from the open programs the GrantCompass catalog computed as alternatives to Comcast RISE on August 25, 2026.
Where to go now — three programs accepting applications
None of these three includes a media package; they are chosen for cadence and accessibility, which is what a dormant program costs you.
- Antares REACH Grant Program & Boost Camp Up to $20,000, corporate-funded, recurring cohorts. Antares Capital runs REACH with Hello Alice and the Global Entrepreneurship Network on a rolling Boost Camp intake model, so the entry point comes around repeatedly rather than once a year. It is the closest structural match to what RISE was: a large company putting money and a support program behind small businesses nationally. Status and amount from the GrantCompass catalog, computed August 25, 2026.
- Founders First Capital Partners — Small Certified Supplier Innovative Finance Program $5,000, quarterly. The same flat award size RISE paid in cash, on a four-times-a-year rhythm, and one application keeps you eligible for later cycles rather than requiring a fresh entry each round. Aimed at certified small suppliers, which suits a business already selling into corporate or public procurement. Status and cadence from the GrantCompass catalog, computed August 25, 2026.
- Amber Grant for Women Three $10,000 grants monthly, plus year-end awards. Restricted to women-owned businesses, so it is not a universal substitute — but for an eligible owner it is the most frequent meaningful award in the catalog, with a rolling monthly deadline on the last day of each calendar month. Status and cadence from the GrantCompass catalog, computed August 25, 2026.
How these three were chosen. The candidate set was the eight open programs the GrantCompass catalog computed as alternatives to Comcast RISE on August 25, 2026. The AdIQ Cares Small Business Grant was dropped because its program page returned a 404 when checked on August 25, 2026 and the status could not be stood behind. The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation’s impact funding was dropped as a poor fit — it funds social-impact organisations at a scale unrelated to a local RISE applicant. The three kept differ deliberately in size, cadence and eligibility so that at least one applies to most readers; each links to its GrantCompass record, where the current deadline lives.
Sort the whole catalog by what it actually pays
Comcast RISE was one program out of 736 tracked in the GrantCompass catalog. Open the database filtered to programs accepting applications and ranked by award size, so the biggest live opportunities sit at the top instead of the loudest brand names. Star the ones you want followed and we watch their deadlines for you, free.
Questions people ask about Comcast RISE
Is Comcast RISE still accepting applications in 2026?
No. Comcast RISE has no open application window as of August 25, 2026, and Comcast has announced no cycle since April 10, 2025. The clearest signal is technical: comcastrise.com no longer hosts the program site and instead returns a permanent HTTP 301 redirect to Comcast’s Project UP page, checked on August 25, 2026. Comcast’s press feed carries no RISE item in 2026. Comcast has not published a statement closing the program, so GrantCompass classifies Comcast RISE as winding down rather than ended, and keeps the record public. If you find a page inviting you to apply to Comcast RISE today, check the date on it before you enter any business details — there is no live application to submit.
What did Comcast RISE give winners, and was it worth $5,000?
Every Comcast RISE recipient received the same $5,000 in unrestricted cash. The larger part of the award was in-kind: a marketing package of advertising production and TV and digital media placement through Comcast Advertising and Effectv, and a technology package of Comcast Business internet, voice or TV service with setup consultation. Both were delivered as services tied to Comcast, non-transferable, and not convertible to cash or spendable elsewhere. So the real value depended on the recipient. A local business that had never advertised on television received something it would not have bought; a business already spending on media received far less incremental benefit. Value a package like this by what you would otherwise have paid for, not by its stated retail figure.
How were Comcast RISE winners chosen, and what were the odds?
Comcast RISE ran as a market-by-market program: eligibility required a business address inside a Comcast-designated market for that specific cycle, and the market list rotated between rounds. Applicants generally needed at least one year of operation and to meet a small-business size standard; the program originally prioritised minority-owned and women-owned businesses affected by COVID-19 and later opened to qualifying small businesses in eligible markets. Awards were flat, so there was no larger prize to compete for. Comcast published recipient counts — 500 businesses across five regions in the April 2025 announcement, and 14,500 small business owners supported cumulatively — but never published applicant volume, so no win rate for the program can be honestly calculated and GrantCompass does not publish one.
Will Comcast RISE come back, and what should I do meanwhile?
Nobody outside Comcast can answer whether Comcast RISE returns, and any page that claims to know is guessing. What can be said: Comcast has not declared the program over, and it has resumed after gaps before, so a watch slot is reasonable and a plan is not. Meanwhile, replace it with recurring windows you can diarise — the Antares REACH Grant Program and Boost Camp for a comparable corporate-funded route, Founders First Capital Partners’ quarterly $5,000 supplier program for the same award size on a four-times-a-year rhythm, and, for women-owned businesses, the monthly Amber Grant for Women. The corporate grant tracker carries the wider set of brand-funded programs with their verified statuses.
An honest note about what we know on this one
Every program in the catalog carries a locked research layer — how hard the award really is to win, the profile that tends to win it, what gets applications discarded, the paperwork required, when money lands, and what happens if plans change. On Comcast RISE we hold only one of those seven fields, and we would rather say so than dress it up: we do not build deep intelligence on a program that is not running. On the programs that are running, the layer is full, and Pro opens it across all of them at $49/mo or $249/yr.