The search for the Winners of The Earthshot Prize 2026 has begun and Innovate UK is proud to be an Official Nominator. Launched in 2020, The Earthshot Prize is an ambitious global prize and platform for impact, designed to discover, celebrate and scale the best solutions to help repair our planet.
Each year, five winners (one for each Earthshot) receive £1 million each to develop and scale their solutions.
In addition, all 15 finalists enter The Earthshot Fellowship programme, which provides a year of support to accelerate their ideas and unlock financial, networking and partnership opportunities.
Earthshot is looking for individuals, communities, businesses and organisations who offer innovative and impactful solutions to the world’s greatest environmental challenges, focusing on five key areas: Protecting and Restoring Nature, Cleaning Our Air, Reviving Our Oceans, Building a Waste-Free World, and Fixing Our Climate. The prize aims to find and support projects that can be scaled up to make a significant positive impact by 2030.
This year Innovate UK is accepting expressions of interest from individuals, communities, businesses and organisations that believe they meet the Earthshot criteria. Our panel of industry experts will evaluate each entry, and the most promising solutions will then be nominated by Innovate UK for the Earthshot prize.
Guidance
Based on previous applications, the Earthshot prize favours organisations that have many of the following characteristics:
- provide detailed information for a thorough assessment
- are beyond the concept stage with demonstrated environmental impact to date
- have potential for large-scale or global positive environmental and/or social impact against at least one of the Earthshots
- have potential for rapid scaling or replication, and have a team or organisation that is ready to scale and replicate the solution
- have solutions which are technologically feasible
- are disruptive in their sector and offer transformative change
- play a unique role in their sector
- have gained traction through funding and partnerships
- are led and/or informed by indigenous and local communities
- have solutions that promote shared economic opportunity
- have solutions which enable policy change
We will be accepting expressions of interest until 16th October 2025, so we will not be considering applications after this date.
To express your interest in being nominated, please fill in the form at the link below.