William announces Earthshot Prize 2025 winners in Rio

The Prince of Wales has revealed the five winners of this year's environmental Earthshot Prize, calling them an "inspiration that gives us courage".

Prince William said their work was "proof that progress is possible" during Wednesday evening's awards ceremony in Rio de Janeiro's Museum of Tomorrow.

Winners include a project for making South America's Atlantic Forest financially viable and a global ocean treaty initiative aimed at conserving marine life.

Brazilian football legend Cafu, Olympic gymnast Rebeca Andrade and former Formula 1 driver Sebastian Vettel were among the award presenters.

Performances from Kylie Minogue, Shawn Mendes and Brazilian queen of pop Anitta also got the jubilant mood swinging.

Earthshot Prize supports eco-friendly projects from around the world, and annually awards each of the five winners with a £1m grant to scale up their ideas aimed at repairing the world's climate.

Organisers of the initiative were inspired by former US President John F Kennedy's Moonshot project, which challenged scientists to get astronauts to the Moon and back safely.

Hosted by award-winning Brazilian broadcaster Luciano Huck, the awards ceremony was addressed by Prince William, the Earthshot Prize's president.

"When I founded the Earthshot Prize in 2020, we had a 10-year goal: to make this the decade in which we transformed our world for the better," he told attendees.

"We set out to tackle environmental issues head on and make real, lasting changes that would protect life on Earth."

There are five Earthshots or goals: Protect and Restore Nature; Clean Our Air; Revive Our Oceans; Build a Waste-free World; and Fix Our Climate.

The future king has committed himself to it for 10 years, with Rio marking a halfway point for the venture.

This year saw nearly 2,500 nominees submitted from 72 countries. Out of them, 15 finalists were selected, from which the five winners were chosen.

• Protect and Restore Nature: re.green, in Brazil, is making protecting one of the world's most important ecosystems, the Atlantic Forest, financially viable
• Clean Our Air: The city of Bogotá, has shown how public policy can bring lasting change, through means such as clean air zones and re-greening degraded areas in the Colombian capital
• Revive Our Oceans: The High Seas Treaty is a global ocean initiative that will set out clear measures to conserve marine life, among other things, and will go into effect from January 2026
• Build a Waste-Free World: Lagos Fashion Week, in Nigeria, is redefining the industry, with each designer wishing to showcase required to show their commitment to sustainable practice
• Fix Our Climate: Friendship is dedicated to helping vulnerable communities across Bangladesh for a multiude of things from access to public services, health, education and preparing for natural disasters

Referring to the winners as "innovators", Prince William called the Earthshot Prize a "mission driven by the kind of extraordinary optimism we have felt here tonight".

"There's a great deal we can learn from their determination, their vision for scale, and their unyielding belief that we can create a better world."

The chair of the board of trustees, Christiana Figueres, said they were building a "global legacy".

"These winners are proof that the spirit of collective action born here in Rio continues to grow stronger, more determined, and more urgent than ever.

"Their 2030 aims are deeply ambitious - but their impact to date, their plans in place and their tenacity fuels my optimism."

Earlier in the day, Prince William met the 15 finalists during a visit to the Christ the Redeemer statue, where he posed for a photograph on the same spot his late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, did 34 years ago.

But much of the prince's five-day visit to Brazil has been focused on climate and the environment.

On Tuesday, he criticised criminals for their involvment in the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest during a speech at the United for Wildlife conference.

He also travelled to the small island of Paqueta, where he met locals, learnt about mangrove conservation and planted tree saplings.

On Thursday, he will be travelling to Belem in the Amazon rainforest, where he is scheduled to give a speech at COP30, the UN's annual climate change meeting.