History Made: For the First Time, All Goldman Prize Winners in 2026 Are Women
The 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize, often called the “Green Nobel”, awarded $200,000 each to 6 global winners. For the first time in its 37-year history since 1989, every single recipient is a woman — representing 6 different world regions.
Yuvelis Morales Blanco, just 24, grew up fishing along Colombia’s Magdalena River. After a massive 2018 oil spill killed thousands of animals and displaced dozens of families, she organised protests — successfully halting commercial fracking across the entire nation.
South Korea’s Borim Kim won the continent’s first-ever youth-led Constitutional Court climate ruling. Meanwhile, UK’s Sarah Finch fought oil drilling for over a decade, securing a landmark 2024 Supreme Court decision forcing authorities to assess fossil fuels’ global impact before approving extraction.
Papua New Guinea’s Theonila Roka Matbob led a campaign forcing Rio Tinto, the world’s 2nd-largest mining company, to finally address 35 years of environmental devastation caused by its Panguna copper mine — shut down after a violent community uprising.
Alannah Acaq Hurley, from Alaska’s Yup’ik nation, united with 15 tribal nations to successfully block a massive copper and gold mining project that threatened Bristol Bay’s ecosystems — home to the world’s largest wild salmon runs.
Nigeria’s Iroro Tanshi rediscovered the endangered short-tailed roundleaf bat and is now protecting its only refuge — the Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary — from devastating human-induced wildfires threatening this rare species’ survival on the African continent.
