2026 Daphne Caruana Galizia Journalism Prize: ten finalists selected

1. Lock-up migrants in a cage in Albania: Italy does it, the Netherlands wants to do it
   De Correspondent (Netherlands);
2. War Made Sustainable: how green investment funds bankroll the arms industry with EU backing . Coordinated by VoxEurop (France), with contributions from El País (Spain), IrpiMedia (Italy) and Mediapart (France);
3. Featured onthe investigace.cz podcast(Czech Republic);
4. Russian Secrets: How Putin Protects His Nuclear Weapons. Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR), Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) and Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) (Germany), in collaboration with Le Monde (France), L’Espresso (Italy), ICIJ (United States), Kyodo (Japan), NRK (Norway), Pointer (Netherlands), SVT (Sweden), The Times (United Kingdom) and The Washington Post (United States);
5. Groundbreaking analysis by indegazette.be: Zeebrugge remains the most important European port of arrival for Russian Arctic gasIndegazette.be (Belgium);
6. How Big Tech wrote secrecy into EU law to hide data centres’ environmental toll. Investigate Europe; published in collaboration with, amongst others: Altreconomia (Italy), Die Zeit (Germany), El País (Spain), EU Observer (Belgium), The Guardian (United Kingdom), The Journal (Ireland), Le Monde (France), Público (Portugal) and Tech Policy Press (United States);
7. Predators on TikTok 2: an all-you-can-eat buffet for over 1,300 paedophiles Maldita.es (Spain);
8. Fake news, real victims – Agencia EFE (Spain);
9. Paid hatred: Attacks on journalists were mostly sponsored by politicians in Slovakia and Hungary, whilstplatforms failed to intervene Jan Kuciak Research Centre (Slovakia), in collaboration with Frontstory.pl (Poland), Investigace.cz (Czech Republic) and VSquare.org (Poland);
10. ‘They protect the law whilst breaking it’: Inside Europol’s Shadow IT System Solomon (Greece), CORRECTIV (Germany) and Computer Weekly (United Kingdom).

Find out more about each finalist

Between 4 May and 31 July 2026, hundreds of journalists from the 27 EU countries submitted their entries for the award. Of the 344 entries, 10 made it through to the final round.

The winning entry will be announced at a ceremony taking place on the afternoon of 21 October 2026 at the European Parliament’s headquarters in Strasbourg (the Daphne Caruana Galizia press room). The finalists will attend the ceremony and the seminar on press freedom organised on the same day.

Journalists accredited to the EU will shortly receive an invitation to both events.

Press seminar prior to the ceremony

The seminar will examine the role of journalists in today’s world and the threats they face, with particular focus on the ongoing cases of Daphne Caruana Galizia and Jan Kuciak. Vera Politkovskaya, daughter of Anna Politkovskaya, will also attend the seminar.

To help us gauge how many journalists will be attending the seminar and to organise interviews with the speakers and finalists, please register for the event or request an interview by 15 October at 3.00 pm via this link.

About the award

The Daphne Caruana Galizia Journalism Prize, established in 2020, is open to professional journalists and teams of professional journalists of any nationality who submit in-depth reports published or broadcast by media organisations based in any of the 27 EU countries. An independent jury, comprising representatives from the press and civil society in the 27 countries, as well as members of leading European journalism associations, will select the winning entry. The prize and its €20,000 award demonstrate the European Parliament’s commitment to investigative journalism and the importance of press freedom. A record 344 entries were submitted this year.

Previous winning entries

• 2025: Investigation into the hidden financial networks enabling Russia to circumvent sanctions on its oil trade, coordinated by Follow the Money
• 2024: Investigation into missing unaccompanied migrant children (‘Lost in Europe’)
• 2023: Joint investigation into the sinking of a migrant boat near Pylos (Solomon, in collaboration with Forensis, StrgF/ARD and The Guardian)
• 2022: Documentary on Russian influence in the Central African Republic, by Clément Di Roma and Carol Valade (ARTE/France24/Le Monde)
• 2021: ‘The Pegasus Project’, coordinated by Forbidden Stories

Who was Daphne Caruana Galizia?

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese journalist, blogger and anti-corruption campaigner. She reported extensively on corruption, money laundering, organised crime, the sale of citizenship and the Maltese government’s links to the Panama Papers. After suffering harassment and threats, she was killed in a car bomb attack on 16 October 2017. Protests over the authorities’ handling of the investigation into her murder led to the resignation of the Prime Minister, Joseph Muscat. In December 2019, the European Parliament criticised the shortcomings of the investigation and called on the European Commission to take action. Since then, it has raised the issue on numerous occasions, notably through a resolution adopted in 2023 condemning the lack of progress made in bringing those responsible to justice. To date, five people have been jailed for carrying out the murder, but the mastermind has not yet been convicted.