California’s newly signed 2026–27 state budget is being presented as a stabilization budget: balanced for the next two years, supported by reserves, and designed to delay some of the deepest cuts to health care and social services. After months of uncertainty, the final agreement protects many core state priorities and makes targeted investments in education, housing, health care, childcare, and public safety.
For the humanities, arts, and culture community, there are some important signals. The final budget includes new support for the California Arts Council and several investments in the cultural and creative sector. These investments matter. They show that lawmakers understand culture is part of California’s civic and economic life.
But for California Humanities and the broader public humanities field, the final budget leaves a serious gap.
This year, California Humanities and our supporters advocated for emergency state stabilization funding to help protect public humanities programs amid federal funding instability. That request was not included in the final budget. In other words, while California has made some meaningful cultural investments, the state has not yet established a direct funding partnership for the public humanities.
That should concern all of us.
The humanities are not a luxury. They are how communities preserve memory, tell their stories, understand one another, and make sense of this moment. Across California, humanities programs support documentary storytelling, local history, public conversations, cultural preservation, libraries, museums, tribal communities, rural communities, and organizations working at the intersection of story, place, and civic life.
When this infrastructure is left unsupported, the loss is not abstract. Communities lose access to the programs and stories that help Californians see themselves and one another more clearly.
The final budget is not the end of this conversation. It is a reminder that our field must continue making the case for direct state investment in the humanities. We encourage supporters to contact their state legislators, thank those who championed this effort, and urge them to prioritize California Humanities stabilization funding in the next budget cycle.
California’s stories deserve public investment. California’s communities deserve humanities programs that are stable, accessible, and statewide.
