The Texas incentive got real: what SB 22 actually pays in 2026.

Texas rewrote its film incentive in 2025, and the rewrite is not cosmetic: Senate Bill 22 deposits $300 million per biennium into the Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Fund every two years through 2035 — roughly $1.5 billion over the decade.

The structure, precisely, for film and TV projects beginning after September 1, 2025:

• 5% base grant on eligible Texas spend from $250,000 to under $1 million

• 10% from $1 million to under $1.5 million

• 25% at $1.5 million and above

  
  

On top of the base grant, the state publishes uplifts of 1% to 2.5% — rural filming, veteran hiring, heritage and historic-site designations, workforce development, and Texas post-production — with a practical ceiling of 31%. How uplifts combine is settled at application, not by adding every line item to the base rate — confirm the uplift math with the Texas Film Commission at (512) 463-9200 before you budget a single point of it. Commercials and reality top out at 10%; games share the film ladder with a $100,000 floor.

The thresholds still gate everything: 60% of the production completed in Texas, 35% of paid crew and 35% of paid cast Texas residents, $250,000 minimum spend for film and TV. And the residency bar is a staircase, not a line — it rises to 40% on September 1, 2027, then 45% in 2029 and 50% in 2031, with a waiver mechanism if the commission certifies the crew base can't support it. Build your Texas hiring plan for the year you'll actually shoot. One more number that quietly changes the math: only the first $1 million of each Texas resident's wages counts as qualified labor — model above-the-line salaries accordingly.

Grant, not credit — still

What didn't change: TMIIIP is a cash grant paid after wrap and audit, not a transferable tax credit. You can't sell it to a bank at a discount the way producers monetize Georgia's 20% credit. What Texas offers instead is a bigger number for productions that can carry the wait.

The early returns

By April, KUT reported roughly one hundred applications since the new fund opened, and the highest-profile win to date is a Tulsa King spinoff relocating production from New Orleans to Fort Worth — the exact behavior the fund was designed to buy. Advocacy group Media for Texas told Axios the studio calls started immediately: “Universal, Warner Brothers, Paramount, as well as a stream of different independent productions.” The state's own math says every incentive dollar returns about $4.69 in economic activity.

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(images courtesy of https://gov.texas.gov/film/page/impact)

The rulemaking is still settling — proposed implementing rules ran in the February Texas Register — so verify the current text with the Texas Film Commission before you model a budget on it; the commission is the only official source on this program. Or bring us the budget — this program is the first thing we check a Texas budget against. For more information: https://gov.texas.gov/film/page/impact