BirdLife Partners win big at LIFE Awards 2026
Two BirdLife Europe Partners took home awards at this year's LIFE Awards ceremony! The awards, now in their 20th year, were presented against the backdrop of the programme's planned discontinuation under the next EU budget.
LIFE is the EU’s only dedicated funding instrument for nature, climate, and environment. Since 1992 it has co-financed over 6,400 projects. Even though it represents just 0.2% of the total EU budget, the results are very tangible. Projects awarded in 2022 and 2023 alone are expected to halt biodiversity loss across around 500,000 hectares. The awards exist to recognise what that funding actually produces on the ground. This year, two of the five winners came from the BirdLife flock.
Spain’s SEO/BirdLife took the most innovative and transformative initiative award for OlivaresVivos, a project that recovers biodiversity in olive groves while making it financially worthwhile for farmers. Working with partners, they developed a farming model which is scientifically endorsed and commercially certified, and that adds value to olive oils precisely because of how they’re produced. Biodiversity and profitability, not in spite of each other.
BirdLife Partner, the Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds (BSPB) won the Citizens’ Prize for Egyptian Vulture New LIFE, which successfully reversed the decline of the Egyptian Vulture population in the Balkans. The project tackled the two main killers: poisoning and power line electrocution. Across 22 partners in 14 countries spanning Europe, Asia, and Africa, it strengthened breeding sites and improved the species’ prospects well beyond European borders.
Award winners used the ceremony to make the case for LIFE’s continuation – and they’re not alone. The European Parliament’s Multiannual Financial Framework Interim Report explicitly calls for LIFE’s work on nature conservation, biodiversity restoration, and climate adaptation to continue. National governments are the remaining piece of the puzzle to make sure LIFE goes on.
The 2026 LIFE call for proposals is open until late September.
Calandra Lark (Melanocorypha calandra) by Yves Adams/Vilda
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