The Goldman Prize selects its first all-female roster of winners in its 37-year history
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
Six female environmental activists from across the globe were awarded the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize – known as the green Nobel Prize – in April, marking the first time in the award’s 37-year history that all regional winners were women.
The recipients — from South Korea, Colombia, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, the United Kingdom and the United States — were recognised for campaigns ranging from climate litigation and anti-fracking activism to Indigenous land protection and wildlife conservation.
Women, particularly at the grassroots level, are increasingly leading the world’s biggest environmental fights. From Indigenous villages in Alaska to climate courtrooms in Seoul, Korea the winners represented a style of activism defined not by celebrity or institutional power, but by persistence, local knowledge and community organising.
In South Korea, Borim Kim helped lead the first successful youth-led climate litigation case in Asia, persuading the Constitutional Court that the government’s climate policy violated the rights of future generations. The decision forced the country to establish legally binding emissions targets extending to 2049, a ruling activists across Asia immediately hailed as transformative.
In the English county of Surrey, Sarah Finch spent years fighting a proposed oil development in a legal battle that eventually reached Britain’s Supreme Court. The 2024 ruling that emerged from her case required authorities to consider the downstream emissions produced when fossil fuels are burned — a seemingly technical distinction that has since reverberated through environmental law and planning decisions across the United Kingdom.
Other winners confronted environmental destruction in places far removed from courtrooms. In Papua New Guinea, Theonila Roka Matbob pressured mining giant Rio Tinto into acknowledging decades of environmental and social devastation linked to the Panguna mine. In Nigeria, Iroro Tanshi organised community fire brigades to protect a fragile wildlife sanctuary and the endangered short-tailed roundleaf bat. In Colombia, Yuvelis Morales Blanco mobilised Afro-Colombian communities against fracking projects that many feared would permanently alter the Magdalena River region.
The awards highlighted the increasingly blurred lines between environmental activism and broader struggles over democracy, Indigenous rights and public health. Alannah Acaq Hurley, the American winner, worked with Indigenous nations and conservation groups to block what would have become North America’s largest open pit mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region. Her campaign ultimately contributed to a landmark Environmental Protection Agency veto protecting one of the world’s richest salmon ecosystems.
For the Goldman Environmental Foundation, the all-women cohort was historic but not accidental. Women and girls often bear disproportionate burdens from climate disasters while simultaneously serving as organisers and caretakers in affected communities, foundation leaders noted. Over nearly four decades, the prize has honoured 239 activists from 98 countries, though women have still represented fewer than half of the recipients.
“True leaders can be found all around us,” said John Goldman, the vice-president of the Goldman Environmental Foundation, hailing the winners. “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 honour 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,” he said.
Meet the 2026 winners here and watch short videos of each winner and their extraordinary contributions below.
2026 Goldman Environmental Prize Winners
Alannah Acaq Hurley - United States
Yuvelis Morales Blanco - Colombia
Iroro Tanshi - Nigeria
Theonila Roka Matbob - Papua New Guinea
Sarah Finch - United Kingdom
Borim Kim - South Korea
