The Earthshot Prize has announced today that its first-ever awards ceremony is to take place on Sunday 17 October at the iconic Alexandra Palace in London, with other famous landmarks across the UK’s capital city also part of the historic event.
Broadcast to a global audience, the inaugural awards ceremony will celebrate the incredible global Finalists before awarding the first five winners of The Earthshot Prize. These winning solutions will have the greatest impact on the biggest environmental challenges facing our planet and each awardee will receive £1 million to scale their solutions.
The London ceremony will be accompanied by show-stopping performances as well as never-before-seen musical collaborations. It will be broadcast in the UK on BBC One as well as globally with a major broadcast partner. As part of this worldwide TV event, viewers will have the chance to meet the individuals and teams whose solutions have the power to help repair the planet and improve life for people everywhere.
Founded by Prince William in 2020 and inspired by President Kennedy’s ‘Moonshot’, The Earthshot Prize is an ambitious global environmental prize which aims to discover and scale the best solutions to help repair our planet over the next 10 years. Every year from 2021 until 2030, The Earthshot Prize will find and reward inclusive solutions to five ‘Earthshot’ goals – Protect and restore nature; Clean our air; Revive our oceans; Build a waste-free world; and Fix our climate.
Over the past six months, The Earthshot Prize, in collaboration with its Global Alliance network of over 200 Nominators, has been searching the world – from businesses to governments, grassroots initiatives and more – for solutions to these challenges and identifying a final set of astounding innovations from every corner of the globe. The finalists will be announced in July and the official Prize winners will be selected by The Earthshot Prize Council, an international team of influential individuals with a variety of backgrounds, including Prince William, Sir David Attenborough, Dr.Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Shakira, Luisa Neubauer and Cate Blanchett. Prize winners will each receive a £1 million prize fund and tailored support to scale their solutions and realise an even greater impact of their ground-breaking work.
This announcement comes just ahead of London Climate Action Week, taking place between the 26th June – 4th July, where London will host the largest independent climate festival in Europe, bringing together world-leading climate thinkers, professionals and communities to harness the power of London for global climate action.
Prince William announced the inaugural Prize event in a new short filmed captured by a drone camera in front of the famous Alexandra Palace Rose Window and across the London skyline was screened on Landsec’s Piccadilly Lights screen at 8am on Friday, June 25th.
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Across the decade-long lifespan of The Earthshot Prize, nine more international cities will be transformed into Earthshot venues, showcasing the worldwide impact of the Prize and profiling the incredible people working to repair our planet. By the end of the decade, ten global ceremonies will award fifty incredible winners with The Earthshot Prize.
Tune in to the inaugural Earthshot Prize Ceremony in London on Sunday 17 October and follow Earthshot Prize channels on Twitter and Instagram for exclusive sneak previews of #EarthshotLondon2021, including the unveiling of our incredible finalists next month.
Head to The Earthshot Prize to find out more“By hosting the COP26 conference in Glasgow just weeks after our inaugural awards, the UK is helping lead the world in tackling climate change. London is a fantastic location to showcase this leadership, spotlight the finalists and award our very first Earthshot Prize winners. The awards ceremony will be a truly global event, connecting people from all over the world to celebrate these inspiring leaders and their innovations to solve the world’s greatest environmental challenges.”
– Prince William
“Hosting the very first Earthshot Prize ceremony is a momentous occasion for London. As will be showcased throughout London Climate Action Week, we have been determined to lead the world in this area – with an ambitious target for net zero city by 2030 and delivering solutions like the world’s first Ultra Low Emission Zone to make our city cleaner, greener and healthier for all. The Earthshot Prize: London 2021 is an unprecedented opportunity to inspire all Londoners and people around the world to be part of this global effort to repair our planet. I am thrilled that our city will be the inaugural host to award the first Earthshot Prizes for these ground-breaking solutions that can help improve all of our lives.”
– The Lord Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan
