European Prize for Women Innovators 2026 — winners, technologies and policy implications

Brussels, June 4th 2026

Summary

›The European Commission announced the winners of the 12th European Prize for Women Innovators at the EIC Summit in Brussels on 4 June 2026.
›Prizes were awarded across three categories: Women Innovators, Rising Innovators, and EIT Women Leadership, with cash awards ranging from €20 000 to €100 000.
›Winners include technologies spanning AI-assisted neurovascular planning, digital therapeutics, ecofriendly photo-adaptive UV molecules, reusable re-entry capsules, urine-based cancer screening, ROA molecular analysis, blockchain product passports, plant-derived nanovesicles and graphene biosensors.
›The prize is jointly managed by the European Innovation Council, EISMEA and the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, and aims to boost visibility of women founders in the EU innovation ecosystem.
›While the awards highlight promising deep tech and health innovations, winners still face standard scaling and regulatory hurdles that cash prizes alone do not resolve.

European Prize for Women Innovators 2026: winners, technologies and what comes next

On 4 June 2026 the European Commission announced the winners of the 12th European Prize for Women Innovators at the European Innovation Council Summit in Brussels. The prize is jointly managed by the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency, the European Innovation Council and the European Institute of Innovation and Technology. The award recognises women founders and leaders whose innovations are intended to strengthen Europe’s competitiveness and contribute to sustainable economic growth. The announcement highlighted nine prize winners and runners-up across three categories and reiterated the prize’s stated goal of encouraging more women and girls to pursue careers in innovation and entrepreneurship.

How the prize is structured and who runs it

The European Prize for Women Innovators has three categories: Women Innovators, for women founders and co-founders across EU Member States and countries associated to Horizon Europe the Rising Innovators, for outstanding women innovators under 35 and the EIT Women Leadership award for exceptional women leaders from the EIT Community. The contest is managed by the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency and the European Institute of Innovation and Technology. Winners are chosen by an independent expert jury drawn from industry, academia and policy networks.

Category	Prizes (winner and two runners-up)
Women Innovators	Winner: €100 000; Runners-up: €70 000 and €50 000
Rising Innovators (under 35)	Winner: €50 000; Runners-up: €30 000 and €20 000
EIT Women Leadership	Winner: €50 000; Runners-up: €30 000 and €20 000

Winners and runners-up: technologies, claims and immediate takeaways

Women Innovators category

Winner and runners-up in this category represent health, digital therapeutics and cosmetic ingredient innovations with environmental claims.

Winner — Katerina Spranger, Oxford Heartbeat:Katerina Spranger, (Ukraine/UK) founder and CEO of Oxford Heartbeat, won the Women Innovators prize for a platform that applies artificial intelligence to support treatment planning for brain aneurysms. The company promotes software as a medical device that aims to make surgical decisions safer and more precise. The technology has clinical trial work underway and the company highlights NHS trust collaborations and a first-of-its-kind clinical trial collecting evidence for the software.

Runner-up — Elena Heber, HelloBetter:Elena Heber from Germany is co-founder and managing director of HelloBetter, a company delivering clinically validated digital therapies for mental health. HelloBetter positions itself as a leader in digital therapeutics and uses AI-supported solutions to expand access to evidence-based psychological treatments.

Runner-up — Judit Camargo Sanromà, Roka Furadada:Judit Camargo Sanromà of Spain leads Roka Furadada, a company developing photo-adaptive, biobased cosmetic ingredients aimed at effective UV protection while reducing harm to marine ecosystems. The company claims a portfolio of patent families and commercial adoption by major cosmetic brands. The technology is framed as photo-adaptive because molecules change absorption profile under sunlight to extend protection without photodegradation.

Rising Innovators category

This category recognises promising founders under 35. Winners in 2026 span space logistics, non-invasive diagnostics and deep-tech molecular analysis.

Winner — Marta Oliveira, ATMOS Space Cargo:Marta Oliveira, co-founder and COO of ATMOS Space Cargo in Belgium, won for work on reusable re-entry capsules that return materials from orbit. ATMOS aims to provide operational return services for research and commercial payloads and has already launched Phoenix 1 in 2025. The company is pursuing regulatory approvals such as re-entry licensing in the Azores to enable European commercial return operations.

Runner-up — Judit Giró Benet, The Blue Box:Judit Giró Benet from Spain founded The Blue Box which is developing a urine-based electronic nose test to improve early detection of breast cancer. The startup is pursuing clinical validation and CE marking with a planned commercial launch timeline around 2027 according to its public statements.

Runner-up — Carin Lightner, Enantios:Carin Lightner of Switzerland is CEO and co-founder of Enantios. The company commercialises Raman optical activity measurement instruments to characterise chiral molecules and biologics. Enantios says its instruments remove needs for chiral HPLC and crystallisation steps and can speed molecular characterisation important to drug discovery and manufacturing.

EIT Women Leadership category

This award recognises exceptional leaders within the EIT community working on supply chain traceability, plant-derived bioactives and rapid diagnostics.

Winner — Ella Frances Cullen, Minespider:Ella Frances Cullen from Portugal is co-founder and CMO of Minespider whose platform uses blockchain and AI to create Digital Product Passports and Digital Battery Passports. The company focuses on traceability for batteries and critical materials to support reuse, recycling and regulatory compliance such as the EU Battery Regulation.

Runner-up — Stefania Raimondo, Navhetec:Stefania Raimondo of Italy co-founded Navhetec, an academic spin-off developing methods to extract plant-derived nanovesicles intended as functional ingredients for nutrition and biomedical applications. Navhetec highlights patented extraction methods and claims on stability and bioavailability of concentrated plant nanostructures.

Runner-up — Neide Vieira, IPLEXMED:Neide Vieira from Portugal is co-founder and COO of IPLEXMED. The company developed NexaGuard, a portable diagnostic platform based on graphene biosensors that aims to deliver lab-grade multiplex pathogen detection and antimicrobial resistance profiling within 20 minutes for point-of-care and at-home use.

Explaining the key technical terms

Raman optical activity (ROA):ROA is a spectroscopy technique sensitive to molecular chirality. It measures differences in Raman scattering for left and right circularly polarised light and can provide information about 3D molecular structure. It is promising for characterising chiral molecules and biologics but the technique is specialized, requires careful interpretation and historically has been confined to advanced research labs.

Graphene-based biosensors:Graphene sensors exploit the material’s exceptional electronic and surface properties to detect biomolecular interactions with high sensitivity. In practice building robust and reproducible graphene biosensors that perform reliably in real clinical samples and in diverse environments remains a technical and manufacturing challenge.

Digital Product Passports and Digital Battery Passports:Digital product passports are secure digital records carrying lifecycle information about a product, its materials and provenance. They are central to EU regulatory efforts such as the Battery Regulation and the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation. Implementing them at scale requires data integration across complex supply chains, standardisation and verification mechanisms.

Photo-adaptive UV molecules:Photo-adaptive molecules claim to change structure under sunlight to broaden or extend UV absorption and avoid degradation. These chemistries can offer long-lasting protection but must pass rigorous safety, environmental and regulatory testing before inclusion in consumer sunscreens, especially with marine ecotoxicology concerns.

Selection, governance and procedural details

The 2026 call was launched on 17 June 2025 with a deadline of 25 September 2025 for submissions. The evaluation and selection process ran from September 2025 to March 2026. Eligible applicants had to be women founders or co-founders legally established in an EU Member State or a country associated to Horizon Europe and companies had to be incorporated at least two years before the call. Rising Innovators applicants had to be under 35. Applications were assessed against three award criteria: breakthrough innovation impact and inspiration as a role model. The contest is administered under EIC work programme rules and managed operationally by EISMEA and the EIT. Contact for the prize is EISMEA-WIP@ec.europa.eu.

The jury was made up of experts from innovation, investment and policy networks. The published list includes programme managers entrepreneurs and innovation ecosystem leaders such as Josine Bakkes Kave Bulambo Marija Butkovic Lourenço Jardim Alex Kirsch and others. The EIC uses independent expert juries and Horizon Europe expert databases for evaluators coaches and jury members.

Implications for the EU innovation ecosystem and critical caveats

Prizes of this kind raise visibility for women founders and provide useful non-dilutive cash. They also signal political support for gender diversity in entrepreneurship. However a cash prize alone does not address the structural barriers that slow scaling. Startups in regulated sectors such as medtech cosmetics diagnostics and space face long validation timelines certification costs and complex market entry processes. Investors and procurement channels remain decisive for scale. In addition the path from lab to manufacturing or from prototype to clinical adoption requires sustained follow-through beyond a single award.

Winners here cover a wide technical spectrum including deep tech and health innovations that could contribute to European strategic priorities such as resilient supply chains green chemistry and advanced manufacturing. The EIC and EIT connection helps winners tap wider support networks such as the EIC Accelerator coaching and the EIC Fund investments but beneficiaries must still meet the usual due diligence and regulatory checks to translate awards into market impact.

What to watch next

Follow-up indicators to monitor include whether awardees secure regulatory clearances CE or other marks clinical evidence necessary for clinical adoption scale-up manufacturing partnerships and downstream investment rounds. For the prize to move beyond publicity it should be accompanied by transparent reporting on winners’ progress and measurable outcomes such as jobs created revenues raised and regulatory approvals obtained in subsequent years. Policymakers and programme managers should track such metrics to assess whether prizes improve commercialisation outcomes for women-led deep tech ventures.

Background and contact

The European Prize for Women Innovators awards women founders from across the EU and Horizon Europe associated countries and aims to highlight disruptive innovations that drive positive change. The competition is part of the EIC Work Programme and managed by EISMEA and EIT. Further details and previous winners are published on the EIC and EIT websites. For enquiries about the prize contact EISMEA-WIP@ec.europa.eu.