Iran’s new budget increases funding for state media and ideological institutions as inflation deepens, highlighting a widening gap between official spending priorities and everyday livelihood needs.
The national budget bill for the upcoming year (approximately March 2026–March 2027) was submitted by the government to the Islamic Consultative Assembly on December 22, 2025. This proposal has once again drawn public attention to the composition and direction of government spending. In the bill, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), the state media corporation, remains the country’s most expensive cultural-propaganda institution, with a budget exceeding roughly $262 million, playing a central role in how this sector’s allocations are arranged.
The uneven distribution of national resources toward the state’s ideological apparatus—amid dazzling inflation and deepening poverty—once again shows how the Islamic Republic prioritizes its own reproduction over the reproduction of society and everyday prosperity.
The government speaks of transparency and fiscal discipline, but the new budget bill highlights a widening gap between official priorities and people’s everyday livelihood demands, through a notable increase in funding for state broadcasting and for propaganda and religious institutions.
More than a 20% increase for IRIB
According to the bill’s details, IRIB’s base budget for next year has been set at roughly $247 million. In addition, a separate line worth about $15 million—titled “support for producing cultural works and raising public awareness”—has been earmarked for the organization, bringing its total state allocations to more than roughly $262 million.
Compared with last year, this represents an increase of over 20 percent—an increase that the bill’s drafters say is intended to strengthen dramatic productions, series-making, and animation.
One of the most significant components of IRIB’s budget is the allocation of about $66 million for the “quantitative and qualitative development of produced programs.” This figure accounts for more than a quarter of the organization’s total budget and is described as the engine of a “content production drive.” The government hopes that with these resources, program quality will improve and IRIB will play a stronger role in a competitive media environment.
These budgetary shifts come as Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, emphasized “transparency, fiscal discipline, and realism in estimating revenues and expenditures” when presenting the bill.
Under the proposal, the government’s general resources are projected at roughly $3.84 billion, largely financed through revenues and the sale/transfer of assets. Including agencies’ earmarked revenues, public-budget resources rise to about $4.35 billion. Finally, the total national budget—once state-owned companies’ resources are included—reaches roughly $8.44 billion.
Large budgets for religious and propaganda institutions
IRIB is not the only institution absorbing a large share of the “cultural” budget. Nine major hawza (Shi’a seminary) institutions are set to receive around $229 million in the coming budget year—equivalent to roughly 0.5 percent of the total budget. Among these, the Services Center for Islamic Seminaries receives the largest allocation.
According to the figures cited in the reporting, the Seminary Services Center will receive about $121 million; the Supreme Council of Seminaries about $55 million; the Islamic Development Organization about $50 million; Al-Mustafa International University about $15.5 million; the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution about $9 million; and the Imam Khomeini Educational and Research Institute about $3.3 million.
This concentration of funds in specific institutions—alongside limited development spending and wage growth that fails to keep pace—has remained a recurring pattern in budgeting under successive Islamic Republic governments.
The Islamic Development Organization: gradual but meaningful growth
Within the new budget bill, the Islamic Development Organization—a state body tasked with religious-cultural “propagation” and ideological outreach—receives increased allocations.
Based on the figures provided, the budget for the organization and its subsidiaries rises from roughly $46 million to about $50 million—an increase of more than 8 percent. This growth comes even though the number of its subsidiary bodies has reportedly fallen; the budget not only did not decline, it increased by roughly $3.8 million.
More notable is the increase in the organization’s own budget excluding subsidiaries: from roughly $22 million to about $27 million—an increase of nearly 25 percent.
In addition, the organization benefits through indirect channels, including about $2.6 million in support under the heading “support for cultural and artistic institutions,” and about $0.9 million for programs described as social empowerment. Three affiliated institutions also receive another roughly $4.6 million in total; including these, the organization’s overall resources rise to about $58 million.
At a time when people face livelihood pressure, high inflation, and unfinished infrastructure projects, the steady rise in the budgets of state propaganda and cultural institutions raises serious questions about the real priorities of budgeting—questions whose answers, beyond numbers and tables, further erode public trust in the state.
