Bloomberg Philanthropies today announced the 24 winners of its latest Mayors Challenge, a competition to spur local government innovation that improves lives in cities around the world. The sixth Challenge awards municipalities that have proposed and tested the best breakthrough ideas to bolster essential services at scale – including cooling homes, reducing waste, lowering utility costs, expanding transit, increasing jobs, and more. Winning municipalities will each receive $1 million as well as operational support and additional funding for dedicated staff to bring their ideas to life.
The 24 winners represent 20 countries and over 35 million residents. Selected from more than 630 applications, Bloomberg Philanthropies considered prototypes developed by 50 cities during the finalist phase, when each pressure-tested core hypotheses with residents. The 24 winning ideas were ultimately chosen for their novelty, potential impact, and strength of implementation plans.
“The most effective city halls are bold, creative, and proactive in solving problems and meeting residents’ needs – and we launched the Mayors Challenge to help more of them succeed. We look forward to supporting this year’s 24 winners as they bring their innovative projects to life – and to seeing their ideas spread to more cities around the world.”
– Mike Bloomberg
The 2025 – 2026 Mayors Challenge builds on more than 10 years of work led by Bloomberg Philanthropies to discover, nurture, and drive innovation in cities. The awards across five previous rounds of competition have provided 38 winning municipalities with funding and technical assistance to realize their ideas for addressing civic issues. By supporting the replication of the most successful winning ideas — from Providence Talks, an early literacy program that boosts childhood learning, to Visor Urbano, Guadalajara’s pioneering initiative to digitize permitting and reduce corruption — Bloomberg Philanthropies has expanded the impact of the Mayors Challenge to 337 cities globally, reaching over 100 million residents.