Today, the Goldman Environmental Foundation announced six recipients of the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize, the world’s foremost award for grassroots environmental activists: Iroro Tanshi, Borim Kim, Sarah Finch, Theonila Roka Matbob, Alannah Acaq Hurley, and Yuvelis Morales Blanco.
Awarded annually to environmental heroes from each of the world’s six primary regions, the Goldman Environmental Prize honors the achievements and leadership of grassroots environmental activists from around the world, inspiring all of us to take action to protect our planet.
The Prize was founded in 1989 in San Francisco by philanthropists and civic leaders Rhoda and Richard Goldman. In 37 years, the Prize has had an immeasurable impact on the planet. To date, the Prize has honored 239 winners—including 112 women—from 98 nations. Many have gone on to positions as government officials, heads of state, NGO leaders, and Nobel Prize laureates.
This is the first year during which all six Prize winners are women, a testament to the critical role of women in the environmental movement. Additionally, women and girls face disproportionately harsh impacts from environmental crises and climate change, often assuming the roles of caretakers and problem-solvers in the wake of disasters.
“While we continue to fight uphill to protect the environment and implement lifesaving climate policies—in the US and globally—it is clear that true leaders can be found all around us,” said John Goldman, vice president of the Goldman Environmental Foundation. “The 2026 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.”
Prize winners will be celebrated at an in-person ceremony in San Francisco on April 20. The ceremony will be hosted by Telemundo anchor Vanessa Hauc, with musical guest Caminos Flamencos, and will be livestreamed on the Goldman Prize’s YouTube channel at 5:30 pm PDT / 8:30 pm EDT.
This year’s winners are:
AFRICA
After rediscovering the endangered short-tailed roundleaf bat in Nigeria, Iroro Tanshi identified human-induced wildfires as the main threat to the species and launched a successful, community-led campaign to protect its refuge, the Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary. Between early 2022 and May 2025, she and her community fire brigades prevented any serious wildfires from occurring in and around the sanctuary by patrolling thousands of farms and effectively responding to more than 70 fire outbreaks, safeguarding communities, forests, and the bat’s fragile habitat.
ASIA
Activist Borim Kim and her organization, Youth 4 Climate Action, won the first successful youth-led climate litigation in Asia. In August 2024, the South Korean Constitutional Court found the government’s climate policy to be in violation of the constitutional rights of future generations, mandating the creation of legally binding emissions reduction targets from 2031-2049 to meet the country’s pledge to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. The historic decision is a watershed moment for the climate change movement in Asia. If implemented, it has the potential to avoid more than 1,500 million tons of carbon emissions—equivalent to the annual emissions of approximately 500 coal-fired power plants—over the next 25 years.
EUROPE
Sarah Finch—the United Kingdom
Sarah Finch and the Weald Action Group led a tireless campaign against oil drilling in southeastern England for over a decade, persevering through five years of escalating court battles against one oil development in Surrey until the coalition secured a Supreme Court ruling, in June 2024, that finally forced its shutdown. The resulting “Finch ruling” states that authorities must consider the downstream impacts that fossil fuels will have on the global climate before granting permission to extract them. This legal precedent has already stopped subsequent fossil fuel extraction projects and other industrial development across the UK and could inform EU policy going forward.
ISLANDS & ISLAND NATIONS
Theonila Roka Matbob—Papua New Guinea
Theonila Roka Matbob led a successful campaign that compelled Rio Tinto, the world’s second-largest mining company, to sign a landmark memorandum of understanding in November 2024 to address environmental and social devastation caused by its long-dormant Panguna mine. Despite having abandoned the site 35 years earlier after a social uprising against the mine, the company formally acknowledged the wide range of harms the mine has caused and has begun a collaborative remediation process that aims to address urgent risks and establish a long-term remedy mechanism.
NORTH AMERICA
Alannah Acaq Hurley—the United States
Acting on behalf of 15 tribal nations, Yup’ik leader Alannah Acaq Hurley led a campaign that stopped the proposed Pebble Mine megaproject in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region. As the executive director for the United Tribes of Bristol Bay, Alannah and a broad-based coalition yielded a historic EPA veto of the copper and gold mining project in January 2023. The victory safeguards Bristol Bay and its greater watershed—encompassing 25 million acres of wilderness, rivers, and wetlands and home to the largest wild salmon runs in the world—from the construction of what would have been North America’s largest open-pit mine.
SOUTH & CENTRAL AMERICA
Yuvelis Morales Blanco—Colombia
As a young adult, Yuvelis Morales Blanco helped mobilize her community in Puerto Wilches against two key drilling projects, successfully preventing the introduction of commercial fracking into Colombia. In 2022, with fracking raised as a national issue, the country’s largest petroleum company, Ecopetrol, suspended its contracts for the pilot fracking projects. In August 2024—with the projects still suspended—the Colombian Constitutional Court, in response to a lawsuit by a local organization, confirmed that the projects had violated the right of the Afro-Colombian community of Puerto Wilches to free, prior, and informed consent.
ATTENTION EDITORS: Detailed biographical information, photographs, b-roll, and video of all the winners are available by request or online at goldmanprize.org/media-room/.
About the Goldman Environmental Prize
The Goldman Environmental Prize was established in 1989 by late San Francisco civic leaders and philanthropists Richard and Rhoda Goldman. Prize winners are selected by an international jury from confidential nominations submitted by a worldwide network of environmental organizations and individuals.
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