2025 – Utøya
The 2025 Olof Palme Prize is awarded to Utøya for its courageous work for democracy and against extremism. After the terror attack in 2011, the youth movement of the Norwegian Worker’s Party (AUF) decided to take back its island. As a result of their persistent work effort, Utøya is currently the most important classroom for […]Read more >
2024 – Bellingcat
The 2024 Olof Palme Prize goes to the independent investigative journalism group Bellingcat. In an era when the transmission of news and facts threatens to be eroded by an ever-increasing flood of disinformation from various malign actors, including nation states, Bellingcat provides a necessary and welcome scrutiny of these misinformation flows based on what is […]Read more >
2023 – Marta Chumalo, Eren Keskin and Narges Mohammade
The Olof Palme Prize 2023 is awarded to Marta Chumalo, Ukraine, Eren Keskin, Türkiye and Narges Mohammadi, Iran. For their efforts in the fight to secure women's freedom, in an age when human rights are threatened by war, violence and oppression. Throughout their lives and through their actions, these three women, along with many of their sisters in struggle, have inspired others and paved the way for courageous young women and men to continue fighting for the fundamental human rights of all people.Read more >
2022 – Patricia Gualinga
The Olof Palme Prize 2022 is awarded to Patricia Gualinga, a leader of the Kichwa People of Sarayaku in the Ecuadorian Amazon. She is recognised for her courageous leadership in campaigning for the rights of indigenous people and of nature, as well as her struggle to ensure the survival of the Amazon, the world's largest rainforest. In an age when biodiversity is threatened and climate change is demanding huge transformations, indigenous people are particularly vulnerable. Through her relationship with the land and the natural world, Patricia Gualinga shows us a path to sustainable societies, and shows us that we must all learn to live with nature, not in competition with it. Indigenous peoples' struggle for survival is, therefore, the struggle for the survival of humankind. As the world faces ecological catastrophe it is vital that the voices of Patricia Gualingas and her fellow activists are heard.Read more >
2021
The Olof Palme Memorial Fund has decided to alter the naming of the year for the Olof Palme prize so that the year corresponds to the year in which the prize is awarded. As a result this years winner - who under the previous arrangements would have been the Palme Prize winner 2021 - instead becomes the 2022 recipient. There is no gap in the series of winners, the prize is awarded every year.Read more >
2020 – Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation
The 2020 Olof Palme Prize is awarded to the international civil rights movement Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, with roots in the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement founded by Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi in 2013. Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation is working for peaceful civil disobedience against police brutality and racial violence all over the world. The BLM movement at large has in a unique way exposed the hardship, pain, and wrath of the African-American minority at not being valued equal to people of a different color.Read more >
2019 – David Cornwell / John le Carré
The 2019 Olof Palme Prize goes to David John Moore Cornwell, also known by the pen name John le Carré, for his engaging and humanistic opinion making in literary form regarding the freedom of the individual and the fundamental issues of mankind. Attracting world-wide attention, he is constantly urging us to discuss the cynical power games […]Read more >
2018 – Daniel Ellsberg
When Daniel Ellsberg, a former military analyst and the world’s most important whistleblower, exposed the U.S. Government’s secret war plans for Vietnam in 1971, he was well aware of risking a long time in prison and a spoiled career. Regardless of such consequences, his decision led to the removal of a mendacious government, a shortening […]Read more >
2017 – Hédi Fried and Emerich Roth
The 2017 Olof Palme Prize is awarded to Hédi Fried and Emerich Roth for their indefatigable contributions as defenders of the equal value of every human being, and for their life-long and exceptional educational work against Nazism, racism, violence and prejudice. Marked by their heinous experiences of the Holocaust, they - like many Jews and other survivors of the Nazi death camps - lived a life of tension between their devastating trauma and their strong will to live on and tell the world of their experiences, in order to spare new generations from the collapse of humanity and democracy.Read more >
2016 – Spyridon Galinos and Giusi Nicolini
The 2016 Olof Palme Prize is awarded to the two mayors Spyridon Galinos , Lesbos, and Giusi Nicolini, Lampedusa and Linosa, for their inspiring leadership in one of the most difficult periods of our time, thereby having saved thousands of lives and given hope and belief in the future. Together with their citizens Spyridon Galinos and Giusi Nicolini opened their minds and societies for fellow human beings fleeing from war, terror, and misery. In an increasingly dangerous and cruel world they have stressed the humanistic imperative that it is more important to protect people than borders.Read more >