Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation: Prize for Humanity
Overview
The 2024 Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity was awarded to three sustainable agriculture pioneers, celebrating people and organisations who are making a substantial contribution to global food security, climate resilience and ecosystem protection: Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming (India), Professor Rattan Lal (USA/India) and SEKEM (Egypt).
The 2025 edition of the Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity is now open for nominations. Any individual, organisation and/or group of people and organisations is eligible.
The Prize Jury, chaired by Angela Merkel, seeks to identify and celebrate innovative efforts from a diverse range of sectors and regions. All nominations must come from a third party.
Calls for Nominations
The Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity jury and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation seek nominations that demonstrate:
- Evidence of transformative solutions and the potential for long-term change.
- Clear, scalable solutions with real impact and proven environmental and social benefits.
- Work that inspires and demonstrates active leadership.
- Ideas that meet today’s needs and anticipate tomorrow’s challenges.
Prize Funding
The Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity, granted yearly, is worth 1 million euros. In the event of more than one laureate being distinguished, the award will be equally divided.
The Prize should be used in a way that maximises the impact of the recipient’s work. It is not intended as a ‘lifetime achievement’ award, nor is it intended to be seed funding. The Prize recognises work that has the capability to scale and to benefit communities at both the local and global levels.
By accepting the Prize, the winner will sign a protocol with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation confirming the acceptance of the prize and agreeing on the allocation of funds, communication and activities related to the Prize.
Selection Criteria
The Jury is responsible for selecting the nominations according to the following criteria:
- Innovation: demonstrate innovative solutions and/or potential for long term transformational change.
- Impact: demonstrate widespread benefits for global environment and society and/or be scalable with potential for long-term impact.
- Inspiration: ability to serve as a model, show active leadership, or inspire others.
- Relevance of the nomination: timely, that is, taking into consideration the contribution it will make to address critical issues and challenges ahead
Candidate Eligibility
The Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity is open to nominations of any individuals, organisations, or groups of people and organisations from around the world. They must be making a significant contribution to the development of solutions to tackle climate change. Nominations must demonstrate the reach or potential reach of outstanding results and provide highly relevant evidence of future impact.
Nominations must come from a third party; self-nominations are not permitted.
The prize cannot be granted posthumously or to an organisation after ceasing its activity, nor to former members of the Jury of the Prize.
An organisation may nominate a candidate from within its own networks if it is not a member of the board of trustees or decision-making bodies.