Six women from six countries have been named recipients of the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize, the world's largest award for grassroots environmental activism. Often called the "Green Oscars," the prize honors ordinary people taking extraordinary actions to protect the planet — and this year's slate is one of the most consequential in the foundation's 37-year history.
The 2026 winners are Iroro Tanshi (Nigeria), Borim Kim (South Korea), Sarah Finch (United Kingdom), Theonila Roka Matbob (Papua New Guinea), Alannah Acaq Hurley (United States), and Yuvelis Morales Blanco (Colombia). Each receives a cash award and global recognition for victories that, in many cases, took years and rewrote what local communities can accomplish against deeply funded opponents.
In the United Kingdom, Sarah Finch became the unlikely face of British climate law after a David-versus-Goliath court case that ran for years. Her legal challenge to a Surrey oil project ended with a Supreme Court ruling that downstream emissions must be considered before fossil fuel projects are approved — a precedent that has since paused or canceled drilling proposals across Britain.
Colombia's Yuvelis Morales Blanco led a campaign that halted commercial fracking in her country, helping turn an experimental pilot project into a permanent moratorium. In Nigeria, Iroro Tanshi rediscovered the short-tailed roundleaf bat — a species feared extinct for two decades — and worked with local communities to protect the cave system the bats depend on.
South Korea's Borim Kim won Asia's first youth-led climate litigation case, forcing her government to strengthen its emissions targets. Theonila Roka Matbob, in Papua New Guinea, took a major mining company to task over decades of pollution from the Panguna mine on Bougainville and secured a binding human-rights review. Alannah Acaq Hurley, in southwest Alaska, helped halt the proposed Pebble Mine, which would have sat upstream of one of the world's most important salmon fisheries.
"While we continue to fight uphill to protect the environment … true leaders can be found all around us," said John Goldman, vice president of the Goldman Environmental Foundation. "These winners are proof positive that courage, hard work, and hope go a long way toward creating meaningful progress."
The award, founded in 1989 by Richard and Rhoda Goldman, has now distributed roughly $33 million across 239 honorees from 98 countries. More than 110 of the recipients have been women. Past winners include Wangari Maathai, Berta Cáceres, and a long list of activists who reshaped national environmental policy from the ground up.
This year's winners spent the week of April 20 in San Francisco for the prize ceremony, meeting with past laureates, funders, and student groups, and giving public talks about how communities can stand up to extractive industries without elite legal teams or major political backing. Their stories share a common thread: each began with a single person who refused to look away.
For the Goldman Foundation, that's the entire point. "Global movements begin in living rooms and on village paths," reads the foundation's 2026 message to readers. "These six women show that you don't have to cross oceans to find environmental leadership — you might find it next door."
