The 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize winners made history as the first all-woman cohort in the award’s 37-year history, recognizing six grassroots environmental leaders.
The Goldman Environmental Foundation announced the winners on April 20 at a ceremony in San Francisco, California, celebrating activists from Nigeria, South Korea, England, Papua New Guinea, Alaska, and Colombia. Each recipient receives $200,000 in prize money for achievements demonstrating how ordinary people can create extraordinary environmental impact through courage, persistence, and strategic organizing.
“While we continue to fight uphill to protect the environment and implement lifesaving climate policies, it is clear that true leaders can be found all around us,” said John Goldman, vice president of the Goldman Environmental Foundation. “The 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize winners are proof positive that courage, hard work, and hope go a long way toward creating meaningful progress. I am especially thrilled to honor our first-ever cohort of six women, as this is a powerful reflection of the absolutely central role that women play in the environmental community globally.”
Sarah Finch from England won the Europe award after leading the Weald Action Group through five years of escalating court battles against oil drilling in southeastern England. The campaign secured a historic UK Supreme Court ruling in June 2024 requiring authorities to consider downstream climate impacts from burning extracted fossil fuels before granting extraction permits. The “Finch ruling” established that environmental assessments must account for Scope 3 emissions, which account for roughly 90% of oil and gas’s contribution to the climate crisis.
The ruling subsequently halted multiple fossil fuel projects, including oil developments in Biscathorpe, Lincolnshire, coal mines in Whitehaven, Cumbria, and North Sea oil fields Rosebank and Jackdaw.
Alannah Acaq Hurley from Alaska received the North America award for mobilizing 15 Indigenous tribal nations against the proposed Pebble Mine, which would have been North America’s largest open-pit mining operation. As executive director of United Tribes of Bristol Bay, the Yup’ik leader built a coalition uniting tribes, commercial fishermen, and environmental organizations to secure a historic EPA veto in January 2023 protecting 25 million acres of salmon-rich wilderness.
The EPA veto, only the 14th in agency history, safeguarded what supports the world’s largest sockeye salmon runs and the Indigenous communities, wildlife, and the $2.2 billion commercial fishing industry that depend on the ecosystem.
Borim Kim from South Korea won the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize for Asia for securing the continent’s first successful youth-led climate litigation. After founding Youth 4 Climate Action following a 2018 heat wave that killed 48 people in Seoul, Kim organized 19 youth plaintiffs to file a constitutional complaint against the government in March 2020, arguing that inadequate climate policy violated future generations’ constitutional rights.
In August 2024, South Korea’s Constitutional Court ruled the government’s climate targets unconstitutional and mandated legally binding emissions-reduction targets for 2031-2049 to meet the country’s net-zero pledge by 2050. The ruling inspired similar youth-led climate lawsuits in Japan and Taiwan, establishing precedent across Asia for climate action as a fundamental right.
Yup’ik leader Alannah Acaq Hurley united 15 Indigenous tribal nations, commercial fishermen, and environmental groups to secure a historic EPA veto in January 2023, protecting 25 million acres of Alaska’s Bristol Bay wilderness and the world’s largest sockeye salmon runs from North America’s proposed largest open-pit mine. Photo courtesy of the Goldman Environmental Prize.
Yuvelis Morales Blanco from Colombia received the Central and South America award for preventing commercial fracking from gaining a foothold in the country and defending the Magdalena River. Growing up in the Afro-Colombian fishing community of Puerto Wilches, Morales Blanco watched her father’s catch decline as oil spills from the state petroleum company, Ecopetrol, fouled the waters. She co-founded youth organization Aguawil to campaign against Ecopetrol’s proposed Kalé and Platero pilot fracking projects through door-to-door education and public testimony.
Armed men appeared at Morales Blanco’s home in early 2022, forcing her to seek asylum in France at age 20. Her high-profile exile elevated fracking as a major issue in Colombia’s 2022 presidential elections. President Gustavo Petro announced no fracking projects would proceed under his administration, and Ecopetrol suspended contracts in September 2022. In August 2024, Colombia’s Constitutional Court ruled the projects violated the Afro-Colombian community’s right to free, prior, and informed consent.
Theonila Roka Matbob from Papua New Guinea won the Islands and Island Nations award for compelling mining giant Rio Tinto to acknowledge responsibility for decades of environmental devastation from its abandoned Panguna copper mine on Bougainville Island. The mine operated from 1972 to 1989 before civil war forced closure, leaving toxic waste contaminating rivers and rendering farmland unusable for approximately 40,000 people in surrounding communities.
Roka Matbob mobilized affected communities through the Bougainville Alliance for Transparency, Accountability, and Reconciliation, documenting health impacts and environmental damage while demanding Rio Tinto accept responsibility. The sustained pressure led Rio Tinto to announce in November 2024 that it would fund environmental and social impact assessments and support remediation efforts, marking the first time the company acknowledged its ongoing obligations, despite having sold its stake decades earlier.
Iroro Tanshi from Nigeria received the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize for Africa for building a community-led wildfire prevention system that protects one of the country’s last remaining rainforests and the habitat of the endangered short-tailed roundleaf bat. After discovering the previously believed locally extinct bat species living in Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary in 2016, Tanshi witnessed a devastating wildfire two weeks later that affected half the park.
Tanshi developed an innovative approach to training local farmers in fire-prevention techniques and alternative land-management practices. By working with 15 communities surrounding the sanctuary, Tanshi established early warning systems, firebreaks, and sustainable farming alternatives that dramatically reduced wildfire incidence while protecting the rare bat population and biodiversity hotspot.
Nigerian conservationist Iroro Tanshi turned a devastating wildfire at Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary into a community-led prevention system, training farmers across 15 surrounding communities in fire management and sustainable land use to protect one of Nigeria’s last rainforests and the endangered short-tailed roundleaf bat. Photo by Etinosa Yvonne courtesy of the Goldman Environmental Prize.
The 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize winners exemplify the award’s theme “Change Starts Where You Stand,” demonstrating how local environmental defense creates global ripple effects. Each campaign began by protecting immediate communities or ecosystems but established precedents that influenced policy, corporate behavior, and legal frameworks far beyond the original contexts.
The Goldman Environmental Prize was founded in 1989 by philanthropists Rhoda and Richard Goldman. It has honored 239 recipients from 98 nations over 37 years. Many winners have advanced to government positions, NGO leadership, and international prominence, with some receiving Nobel Prizes. The award specifically recognizes grassroots activists rather than established organizations or officials, highlighting how citizen leadership drives environmental progress.
