50 Global  Competitions, Awards and Fellowships Currently Open – September 2, 2025. 

Looking to take your impact global? Whether you’re a changemaker, entrepreneur, writer, student, or creative professional, the world is full of opportunities waiting to be seized. From prestigious fellowships to competitive awards and life-changing competitions, we’ve curated a list of 50 Global Competitions, Awards, and Fellowships currently open as of September 2, 2025. Dive in and find the opportunity that aligns with your passion and purpose.

1. Commonwealth Professional Fellowships 2025/2026  

The Commonwealth Professional Fellowships are for mid-career professionals from low-and middle-income countries to spend a period of time at a UK host organisation working in their sector for a programme of professional development.
Click here to apply | Deadline: August 22

2. BRAC Young Professionals Programme 2025. 

BRAC’s YoungProfessionals Programme is designed to nurture the next generation of  thoughtful, purpose-driven leaders in international development. This immersive journey offers young talent the opportunity to engage directly with complex social challenges and learning by doing in communities, alongside people.
Click here to apply | Deadline: August 17

3. IAEA Infographic Design Contest 2025. 

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) invites early career professionals, interested in emergency preparedness and response topics, to submit an entry that demonstrates their understanding and creative interpretation of key ideas, concepts, tools, techniques, strategies, frameworks, or takeaways from the following list IAEA EPR publications.
Click here to apply | Deadline : Deadline: August 17

4. Africa Earth Observation (AEO) Challenge 2025. 

The Africa Earth Observation (AEO) Challenge is an annual open innovation challenge aimed at sourcing novel space technologies since 2016. This challenge seeks to drive entrepreneurial activity in the African space industry and promote awareness of the value of earth observation data across the continent and in multiple sectors such as water and food security, mining, logistics, insurance, and many more.
Click here to apply | Deadline: August 29

5. FONTAGRO LATAM Impact Agrobioentrepreneurship Contest 2025. 

FONTAGRO, together with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (ICA) and partners of the Latin American Bioeconomy Network, announce the “LATAM Impact Agrobioentrepreneurship 2025” contest.
Click here to apply | Deadline : Deadline: August 30

6. Africa Earth Observation (AEO) Challenge 2025. 

The Africa Earth Observation (AEO) Challenge is an annual open innovation challenge aimed at sourcing novel space technologies since 2016. This challenge seeks to drive entrepreneurial activity in the African space industry and promote awareness of the value of earth observation data across the continent and in multiple sectors such as water and food security, mining, logistics, insurance, and many more.
Click here to apply | Deadline August 29

7. British Academy Talent Development Awards 2025-2026. 

The aim of the scheme is to enable researchers to build their skills and capacities in core areas to develop their current and future research. This includes core areas like quantitative skills, data science, digital humanities and languages. This scheme promotes the acquisition and advancement of skills in relevant areas, supporting innovative research methods, be that through skills development, collaboration or dissemination.
Click here to apply | Deadline: October 8

8.  Kluz Prize for PeaceTech 2025. 

The Kluz Prize for PeaceTech is an initiative to celebrate, distinguish, and promote the responsible use of new technologies in fostering peace, reducing conflict, and protecting human dignity and universal human rights across the globe.
Click here to apply | Deadline: July 20

9. GEMS Education Global Teacher Prize 2026.

The $1 million prize has been recognising exceptional teachers for a decade and is once again looking for visionary educators who are reinventing learning, tackling local challenges, and changing lives far beyond the classroom.
Click here to apply | Deadline: September 30

10. FONTAGRO LATAM Impact Agrobioentrepreneurship Contest 2025. 

FONTAGRO, together with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (ICA) and partners of the Latin American Bioeconomy Network, announce the “LATAM Impact Agrobioentrepreneurship 2025” contest.
Click here to apply | Deadline: August 30

11. UN FAO World Food Day Poster Contest 2025. 

Join the World Food Day Poster Contest and show your creativity! Use your skills to show how better foods create a better future – and how together we can build a peaceful, sustainable, prosperous, and food-secure world where everyone has access to a healthy diet. Let your poster inspire action for the future we can build hand in hand with people, communities, and nature.
Click here to apply | Deadline: November 7

12. CCAC Food & Nutrition Challenge 2025. 

In a change from past ССАС calls for proposals targeting action in sectors, this year the CCAC is seeking to fund innovative, cross-sector projects that respond to a specific “challenge” – especially those that unite the super pollutant community around a common goal.
Click here to apply | Deadline: August 6

13. IFAD Somalia. Women’s Market Access Innovation Challenge 2025. 

The Open Innovation Challenge is a pivotal initiative designed to enhance agricultural innovation and empower entrepreneurs in Somalia to bring ideas to solve the challenges Somali women farmers face in accessing markets.
Click here to apply | Deadline: August 31

14. GCA My Adaptation Solution Video Competition 2025.

This competition spotlights solutions that break the heat cycle, safeguard water resources, and buffer communities against both drought and deluge. Your idea could reshape how we live, farm, and build in an increasingly hot world.
Click here to apply | Deadline: August 9

15. Finance & Accounting Technology Expo (FATE) Pitch Stage Competition 2025. FATE Pitch 

Stage is the place for finance and accounting startups to network and make deals. FATE Pitch Stage Finalists will have the opportunity to pitch their product or service to an audience of venture capitalists, angel investors, entrepreneurs and potential customers such as CFOs, VPs of finance, and other finance professionals.
Click here to apply | Deadline : Deadline: August 15, 2025

16. LATAM-based startup founders and startups with at least one LATAM-based co-founder! 

The CodeLaunch LATAM 2025 competition is your incredible opportunity to win a professional software developer hackathon team and thousands of dollars in valuable services to help scale your startup. Mark your calendars-this dynamic event takes place on October 8, 2025 in Guadalajara, MX.
Click here to apply | Deadline: August 17

17. ZuluLand Innovators Hackathon 2025. 

The Moses Kotane Research Institute (MKRI), through its Commercialising Innovation and Research (CIR) Programme, in partnership with local municipalities, invites youth, SMMEs, cooperatives, schools, and informal traders from the Zululand District to participate in the upcoming Grassroots Hackathon. This dynamic grassroots innovation challenge offers a platform for community-led problem solving and idea development, focusing on practical, affordable, and locally driven solutions.
Click here to apply | Deadline : Deadline: August 8

18. GHHIN/EJN Extreme Heat Photo Contest 2025.

 The Global Heat Health Information Network (GHHIN), in partnership with Internews’ Earth Journalism Network (EJN), is launching a global photography competition to showcase the real impacts of extreme heat, and the ways communities around the world are responding to it.
Click here to apply | Deadline: August 29

19. Al4D Innovation Scaling Challenge 2025. 

The Lab for Ethics, Policy and Scaling of Al (LEPSAl), of the African Center for Technology Studies (ACTS) invites eligible Al innovators to express their interest in participating in the Al4D Innovation scaling challenge.
Click here to apply | Deadline: September 4

20. Alibaba CoCreate Pitch Competition 2025.

 CoCreate Pitch is the world’s leading product-driven startup competition – where bold entrepreneurs pitch their vision, connect with top global manufacturers and investors, and compete for a share of $1 million in prizes. With star mentors, massive exposure, and the full power of Alibaba.com’s sourcing ecosystem, this is more than a pitch – it’s your launchpad to global success.
Click here to apply | Deadline: August 15 (US) / Oct 15 (Europe)

21. Yale Drama Series International Playwriting Competition 2026.

The Yale Drama Series is an annual, international competition for emerging playwrights, funded by generous support from the David Charles Horn Foundation. The winning play will be selected by the series’ current judge, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.
Click here to apply | Deadline: August 15

22. Amelia Earhart Fellowship 2026. 

The Fellowship is awarded annually to up to 30 women pursuing Ph.D./doctoral degrees in aerospace-applied sciences or aerospace-applied engineering. It may be used at any university or college offering accredited post-graduate courses and degrees in these fields.
Click here to apply | Deadline: November 15

23. AERC-World Bank Visiting Scholars Program 2026. 

AERC invites its network researchers and faculty to submit an expression of interest to participate in the AERC-World Bank visiting scholars program.The fellowship programme will enable participants to spend time at the World Bank, work on their own research relevant to economic development in Africa, and to work with the World Bank’s researchers to develop, especially those in the Africa Region.
Click here to apply | Deadline: Sept. 1

24. ELISA Business Scholars Program 2025. 

The 3-day business experience brings together a cohort of high potential entrepreneurs or founders of startups with bold business ideas for various industry sectors across Africa.

Click here to apply | Deadline: August 31

25. South Park Commons Founder Fellowship 2025.

 The Founder Fellowship helps entrepreneurs start a high growth, venture-backable startup with targeted support in the -1 to 0 idea phase.
Click here to apply | Deadline: August 3

26. King’s College London Research Associate Programme 2025.

They are inviting Research Associates to work on a new study funded by the Wellcome Trust. The aim of this project is to advance understanding of the lived experiences and support needs of minoritised ethnic people with multiple long-term conditions, and transform how healthcare providers, communities and policymakers construct, respond to, and support them in local and national contexts.
Click here to apply | Deadline: August 18

27. UN OHCHR Indigenous Fellowship Program 2026.

 The Indigenous Fellowship Programme was launched in 1997 by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in the context of the first International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People. The aim of the programme is to give indigenous persons the opportunity to gain knowledge about the UN system and mechanisms dealing with human rights issues in general and indigenous issues in particular.
Click here to apply | Deadline: Sept 15

28. L’Oréal Groupe Sustainable Innovation Accelerator Programme 2025.

 L’Oréal Groupe, the world’s leading beauty company, paves the way for a more sustainable future in seeking, advancing and scaling pioneering solutions through a Sustainable Innovation Accelerator programme.
Click here to apply | Deadline: Sept 30

29. AMWAJ Fellowship Programme for Journalists 2025.

The AMWAJ Fellowship Programme for Journalists will give young professional journalists a boost in their early careers. They champion stories about sustainability and its derivative sub-themes of circular economy, ecosystem restoration, energy transition, sustainable mobility and water resources are what define our world today.
Click here to apply | Deadline: August 31

30. Algorithmic Accountability Reporting Fellowship 2025.

For a fifth time, Algorithm Watch is looking for new Algorithmic Accountability Reporting fellows. Apply now if you have research ideas concerning the relation between Artificial Intelligence and power and its consequences.
Click here to apply | Deadline: Sept 20

31. Girls Who Invest Summer Intensive Program 2026. 

Building on the foundations set in the GWI Intensive Program’s unified curriculum, their Summer Intensive Program (SIP) combines academic instruction with real-world experience. It is intensive, immersive, and an incredible opportunity to explore a career in finance and investment as part of a supportive community of peers, lecturers, industry experts, Alumni, and GWI staff.
Click here to apply | Deadline: October 1

32. Resilience Fellowship 2025-2026. 

The Resilience Fellowship is back for its 4th instalment, this time, exclusively in East Africa, starting with Kenya! They are offering 14 spots for pairs of East African changemakers (ages 18-26) to join a powerful 9-month journey of growth, healing, leadership, and resilience. They invite you to the human-centered fellowship, a space to deepen your activism, connect with like-minded peers, and co-lead real change in your community.

Click here to apply | Deadline: August 5

33. Canada-Asia Young Professionals Fellowship Program 2025.

This nine-month, non-resident program is for up to 20 current graduate students and young professionals aged 22-to-30 with prior knowledge of contemporary Asia and an interest in understanding and advancing Canada’s relationship with the countries and people of that region.
Click here to apply | Deadline: August 10

34. Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ) Waging Justice for Women Fellowship 2026.

Are you an early-career woman lawyer from Sub-Saharan Africa? Join a powerful network of changemakers advancing justice,accountability, and equality for women and girls.
Click here to apply | Deadline: August 4

35. The Queen Elizabeth II Commonwealth Trust (QECT)

Are you passionate about making a difference in your community? Are you between 18-35 years old and from Canada, Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands, or the Caribbean? The Queen Elizabeth II Commonwealth Trust (QECT) is searching for YOU!
Click here to apply | Deadline: August 10

36. The QUBIC Labs Accelerator Cohort 2

Are you ready to join a thriving startup ecosystem and gain exclusive access to top-tier mentors? The QUBIC Labs Accelerator Cohort 2 is now accepting applications! This acclaimed 12-week hybrid accelerator is designed expressly for ambitious founders ready to skyrocket their ventures.
Click here to apply | Deadline: August 15

37. Marcellus Policy Fellowship Fall 2025. 

The John Quincy Adams Society has developed the Marcellus Policy Fellowship to help the next generation of U.S. foreign policy leaders follow in young JA’s footsteps. By combining knowledge of foreign policy, the craft of effective policy writing, and the ability to publicize his ideas, Adams launched a career shaping U.S. statecraft. The Marcellus Policy Fellowship does the same, helping their fellows develop the ideas and skills necessary to guide American foreign policy in the twenty-first century.
Click here to apply | Deadline: August 21

38. V20 Climate Prosperity Fellowship Program 2025-2026. 

The Climate Prosperity Fellowship Programme was launched by the V20 Finance Ministers on 13 October 2023, at the sidelines of the 2023 Annual Meetings of the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund in Marrakech, Morocco. The Fellowship Programme is in partnership with Boston University Global Development Policy Center and the Centre for Sustainable Finance at SOAS University of London.
Click here to apply | Deadline: August 15

39. TWAS-SISSA-Lincei Research Cooperation Visits Programme 2025-2026 

UNESCO-TWAS, in collaboration with the Lincei Academy and the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA), offers young scientists from Least Developed Countries the opportunity to visit research laboratories at Centres of Excellence in Trieste, Italy.
Click here to apply | Deadline: October 15

40. FRIAS Sustainable Governance Senior Fellowship Programme for Researchers 2026/2027. 

The Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS) invites researchers based in an African country with a completed doctoral degree and a minimum of eight years of post-doctoral experience to apply for the FRIAS Sustainable Governance Senior Fellowship Programme 2026/2027.
Click here to apply | Deadline: Sept. 12

41. KAUST Global Postdoctoral Fellowship 2025.

The KAUSTGlobal Fellowship Program aims to attract and support outstanding emerging  research leaders and scientists from around the world to build their path towards a fully independent career. The program inspires the young generation of scientists and engineers to address global challenges and explore opportunities that benefit humanity.
Click here to apply | Deadline: January 15

42. Foodpreneur Lab Step Up, Scale Up Program 2025. 

This 16-week opportunity is designed to move you forward with a first-of-its-kind, scale-focused approach, where you identify what’s been holding your business back and they build you a customized roadmap to help you overcome it.
Click here to apply | Deadline: August 15

43. UNESCO-Hamdan Prize for Teacher Development 2025-2026.

The UNESCO-Hamdan Prize for Teacher Development was created in 2008 to support the improvement of teaching and learning quality toward achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4 on education, one of UNESCO’s priorities. Awarded every two years, the Prize is generously supported by the Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation for Medical and Educational Sciences (Hamdan Foundation).
Click here to apply | Deadline: October 31

44. 8th BRICS Young Innovator Prize 2025. 

The 8th BRICS Young Innovator Prize will be a part of the 10th BRICS Young Scientist Forum that will take place on September 15th – 17th, 2025 in Brasilia, Brazil, under the Brazilian presidency in the BRICS group.

Click here to apply | Deadline: August 7

45. Kokuyo Design Award 2026. 

The Kokuyo Design Award is an international competition for product design that aims to co-create with talented designers and support their activities.

Click here to apply | Deadline: October 8

46. iF Social Impact Prize 2025.

 The iF Social Impact Prize supports projects that contribute to improving the society. If you work towards achieving one or more of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, your project is eligible.
Click here to apply | Deadline: Sept. 1

47. BlackNorth Initiative Lifetime Achievement Award 2025. 

The purpose of the Lifetime Achievement Award is to honour and celebrate the winner’s accomplishments in championing the rights and freedoms of Black Canadians or who has significantly impacted many individuals and organizations.
Click here to apply | Deadline: August 15

48. European Heritage Awards/Europa Nostra Awards 2026.

The European Heritage Awards / Europa Nostra Awards aim to identify, recognise and champion best practices in the protection and conservation of cultural heritage as well as innovative developments and knowledge in the care and promotion of tangible, intangible and digital cultural heritage.

Click here to apply | Deadline: Sept. 9

49.  European Prize for Women Innovators 2026. 

The European Prize for Women Innovators celebrates the women entrepreneurs behind Europe’s most game-changing innovations. The prize awards women from across the EU and countries associated to Horizon Europe, whose disruptive innovations are driving positive change for people and planet.
Click here to apply | Deadline: Sept.  25

50. European Commission Access City Award 2026. 

Since 2010, the European Commission organizes the Access City Award, in collaboration with the European Disability Forum, to reward EU cities that are prioritizing accessibility for persons with disabilities.
Click here to apply |  Sept. 9

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