IJ4EU Impact Award 2026

Nominations are open for the 2026 edition of the IJ4EU Impact Award, an annual prize recognising outstanding cross-border investigative journalism in Europe. The European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) manages the Award on behalf of the IJ4EU fund. Every year, the Award honours investigative teams whose reporting has demonstrated significant impact, journalistic rigour and effective transnational collaboration.

An independent jury will select three equal winners, each receiving a €5,000 prize. The winners will be announced in September 2026 at the IJ4EU UNCOVERED Conference, a flagship gathering of Europe’s investigative journalism community.

Eligibility

The award is open to cross-border investigations first published between January 1 and December 31, 2025. The works can be in any credible medium, including print, broadcast television or radio, online outlets, documentary film, multimedia formats and podcasts.

To qualify, investigations should:

• Involve journalists based in at least two European countries. These should be countries participating in the full cross-sectoral strand of the European Union’s Creative Europe Programme.
• Address issues of common interest across European countries and contribute to strengthening European media.
• Be published in any language. Entries not published in English must include an English translation of the core investigation or a summary.
• Disclose any significant challenges to the honesty, accuracy or fairness of the work.

How to nominate 

Nominations must be submitted in English via IJ4EU’s secure, free-to-use online submission system. The platform is ISO/IEC 27001-certified and GDPR-compliant, with multi-factor authentication and encrypted data storage.

Each nominator must create a personal user account. Applications can be saved and edited until final submission.

Information required nomination includes:

• Contact details of the nominator and the lead nominee
• Title of the project in English and date of first publication
• Publication type and link to the work
• Summaries of the investigation’s findings, methodology and cross-border dimension
• Details of obstacles encountered during reporting
• Names, countries and contact details of all team members
• Outlets of first publication and subsequent republication
• Evidence and description of impact, including political, institutional or structural outcomes, reactions, awards and recognition
• A statement explaining why the investigation merits the award
• Any critical responses following publication
• Supporting documentation must include evidence of impact, links or PDFs of published material, and copies of significant criticism that led to corrections or responses.

The last date to submit nominations is 23:59 CEST on April 23, 2026.

For more information, please visit this page.