The federal government is providing four billion euros from the „Infrastructure and Climate Neutrality“ special fund for investments in childcare and university and science infrastructure with retroactive effect from 1 January 2026. It is up to the federal states to decide how best to utilise the funds. They also define their own funding guidelines and organise the application and approval procedures. The focus is primarily on construction, renovation and equipment measures in daycare centres, whereby financially weak municipalities and facilities with „special support needs“ are to be helped in particular. The federal states have different priorities when it comes to the distribution of funding. Most of the federal states provide for roughly half of the funds to be distributed. North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate want to invest exclusively in the area of child daycare. According to Federal Education Minister Karin Prien, the federal states also have the option of using additional funds from their share of the special fund for child daycare.