$5.1M in GO Virginia Funding Signals Coordinated Growth Across Hampton Roads

For years, the conversation around Hampton Roads has centered on what the region has—its ports, its defense presence, its proximity to federal investment, its technical workforce.

What’s changing now is how directly those assets align with where the global economy is heading—and how intentionally the region is moving to act on it.

On April 20, 2026, $5.1 million in GO Virginia Region 5 funding was awarded across five projects spanning defense, workforce, aviation, and industrial site development.

“Timing is everything,” said Nancy L. Grden, President and CEO of the Hampton Roads Executive Roundtable. “Global and national trends—reshoring, remilitarization, energy security—map directly to our region’s assets and opportunities, our comparative advantage. The GO VA funds can be invested in initiatives to advance our role ahead, and now.”

Those trends are showing up in where the funding is being deployed—and what it’s designed to unlock.

A $296,450 grant will support the Hampton Roads Playbook Sites Planning initiative, a regional effort to identify and prepare industrial sites aligned with high-growth sectors like defense, energy, aerospace, and logistics. A second investment of $746,494 advances the Hampton Roads Playbook Implementation: Defense project, focused on strengthening supply chains and connecting small and mid-sized businesses with major defense contractors.

Together, those efforts reflect a focus on making the region more competitive—not just by attracting companies, but by ensuring the infrastructure and ecosystems are in place to support them.

Talent remains a parallel priority.

A $200,000 grant will expand “Start in Hampton Roads,” a centralized digital platform designed to attract, connect, and retain workers across the region’s priority industries, including students and transitioning service members.

At the same time, two of the largest investments target emerging aviation and unmanned systems—areas where Hampton Roads is investing for growth.

The Hampton Roads Mobility Innovation Center received $3,061,400 to establish a state-of-the-art training and testing environment for advanced air mobility and unmanned systems technologies, including FAA-compliant operating environments. On the Eastern Shore, a $788,700 grant will support the expansion of unmanned aerial systems training at Eastern Shore Community College, building out credentialing programs and hands-on workforce development aligned with industry demand.

Individually, each project addresses a specific need. Together, they reflect a broader strategy taking shape across the region.

“The state’s innovative GO Virginia program allows regions to translate strategy into results—we identify key growth industries, initiatives for advancement, and opportunities for collaboration,” Grden said. “Here in Hampton Roads, we identified those growth industries—four part of the DEAL Regional Investment Playbook: Defense, Energy, Aerospace, and Logistics.”

The Hampton Roads Playbook serves as a shared framework for how the region grows, aligning public and private partners around those core industries and identifying where investment, infrastructure, and workforce efforts should be focused. It is less a static plan and more a working guide—used to coordinate how projects are prioritized and executed across jurisdictions.

Of the five recent grants, two support the broader Playbook, two align with aerospace and advanced aviation, and one focuses on talent attraction and retention.

That distribution isn’t accidental. It reflects how the Playbook is designed to work—linking industry, workforce, infrastructure, and sites so they move together, not separately. Instead of funding isolated efforts, the approach is to build across multiple layers at once, reinforcing the region’s core sectors while positioning them for where the market is going.

“These grants are all about innovation—leveraging our DEAL assets for the future and not business as usual or status quo,” Grden said.

What’s emerging is less about any single project and more about how those pieces connect.

Defense supply chains are being strengthened while workforce pipelines are expanded. Industrial sites are being identified and prepared while new technologies in aviation and unmanned systems are being tested and trained for locally. Talent attraction efforts are being built alongside the industries they’re meant to support.

It’s a layered approach—one that reflects not just where the region is today, but where it’s positioning itself to compete.

Hampton Roads has long had the assets. What’s becoming clearer is how those assets are being aligned, funded, and activated in response to the moment.