The 2026 Arctic Inspiration Prize featured no million-dollar winner, the first time in its history that no top prize has been given away.
The last time the annual northern prize fund didn’t select a single project to win $1 million was in 2016, before the current three-tiered prize system was established in 2017.
Prior to that, the top prize was split between multiple winners each year.
Tuesday’s ceremony in Whitehorse included prizes worth a total of just under $1.4 million, about half of which went to projects based in the NWT.
That overall figure is well down on 2025, when the Arctic Inspiration Prize gave out more than $3.7 million in one night, and appears to be the smallest sum issued by the prize since 2014, when NWT sexual health project Foxy was the sole winner.
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“There is no $1 Million winner this year,” Allison MacLachlan, a spokesperson for the Arctic Inspiration Prize, told Cabin Radio by email on Tuesday.
“The National Selection Committee, which includes representatives from the Regional Selection Committees, made the difficult decision not to award a $1M winner.”
In a second unusual step, the Arctic Inspiration Prize did not publish the nominees for this year’s three award tiers. MacLachlan confirmed only the winners would be announced, whereas previous years featured summaries of each nominee and project team information on the prize’s website.
That means it’s not clear who, if anyone, was shortlisted to receive $1 million but ultimately rejected.
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See who did win: Meet the 2026 NWT winners
Neither change was explained.
Meanwhile, at least one person was understood to have resigned from the Arctic Inspiration Prize board in the run-up to Tuesday’s ceremony.
On the night, there was only one brief mention during the ceremony of the million-dollar top prize’s absence.
As a finale, organizers replaced what would have been the $1-million announcement with a video celebrating the prize’s past impact, noting 84 projects have collectively received more than $30 million through the Arctic Inspiration Prize since 2012.
