Winners of The Earthshot Prize 2025
- Editor OGN Daily
- Nov 10, 2025
- 3 min read
Launched in 2020 by Prince William, the award showcases solutions to environmental problems and helps their creators scale up by awarding them £1m each.
The latest winners were announced at a star-studded event in Rio de Janeiro, ahead of the COP30 climate conference. And the Colombian capital Bogota was crowned one of this year’s Earthshot Prize winners, following the city’s ambitious - and successful - efforts to cut air pollution. Bogota has laid the biggest cycle network in Latin America, deployed one of the world’s largest electric bus fleets, and greened swathes of the city. The city also reduced speed limits to 50kmh and put aside at least 20 percent of public and private parking for bikes. These efforts have reportedly, and remarkably, helped cut air pollution by a quarter since 2018. By 2030 the city will have halved its GHG emissions and be carbon neutral by 2050.
The other victors were:
re.green, a project that’s restoring Brazil’s Atlantic Forest - one of the richest and most important ecosystems on Earth. Its unique restoration approach combines AI, drones and satellite imagery with ecological and financial data to quickly identify land with the biggest potential for restoration;
The High Seas Treaty, a global agreement to protect international waters - it has been two decades in the making and will pave the way for international waters to be placed into marine protected areas;
Lagos Fashion Week, which is making sustainable clothing cool. Every designer wishing to show at Lagos Fashion Week must demonstrate their commitment to sustainable practice, from how materials are sourced and dyed, to how garments are produced and transported. By holding brands accountable to these standards during the most important week of the fashion year, they have shaped how brands behave year-round;
Friendship, an initiative to help vulnerable Bangladeshi communities prepare for natural disasters. Founded by Runa Khan in 2002, Friendship is dedicated to helping vulnerable communities across Bangladesh not only prepare for natural disasters, but also supporting their health, education, livelihoods and access to public services. Today it reaches more than 7.5 million people each year, provides over 8.3 million days of emergency food support, and gives more than 80,000 people access to safe drinking water in coastal areas. Winning The Earthshot Prize will help directly scale its work.
“Their work is the proof we need that progress is possible,” said Prince William. “Their stories are the inspiration that gives us courage. There’s a great deal we can learn from their determination, their vision for scale, and their unyielding belief that we can create a better world.”
Prince William, who is the president of the prize, told those gathered at the ceremony that he had founded the award with the aim of making "this the decade in which we transformed our world for the better". Adding: "We set out to tackle environmental issues head on and make real, lasting changes that would protect life on Earth."
The prize was inspired by former US President John F Kennedy's Moonshot project, which challenged scientists to get astronauts to the Moon and back safely.
The future king has committed himself to the prize for 10 years, with Rio marking a halfway point for the venture. This year, nearly 2,500 nominees were submitted from 72 countries. Of these, 15 finalists were selected, from which the five winners were chosen.
