Nominations open for Sigma Awards 2025

The award is also here to empower, elevate and enlighten the global community of data journalists.

Prize Information

• The jury members will decide on the best work overall and come to a consensus on how to divide the US$5,000 cash prize.

Eligibility Criteria

• Entries must be for work published in calendar year 2024 (between 1 January 2024 and 31 December 2024).
• Entries have to be submitted via their online form.
• Entries have to be received by the given deadline to qualify.
• Applicants can enter as many projects as they want.
• Entries have to specify if they qualify as a large or a small newsroom or as an individual, where applicable. Small newsrooms are defined as those with 35 or fewer journalists (including regular freelancers/contractors), or equivalent (eg, two half-time freelancers count as one person.)
• Organizations that do not qualify under this definition but who believe they belong in the small newsroom category may petition for an exception by sending a letter from the editor-in-chief explaining his or her rationale.
• Collaborative work has to be entered as a large newsroom.
• The judges appreciate short, concise, and well-curated entries that pare the work to its essentials.
• Entering organizations grant The Sigma Awards the right to use their material in their entry, including the organization’s name and logo, on The Sigma Awards and GIJN’s websites and other marketing material around the awards.
• They expect to receive a large number of entries tackling the ongoing conflicts in Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, and other parts of the world. However, they’d like to specify that all data journalism projects, regardless of their topics, can be entered into the competition.

Selection Criteria

• What they’d like to see:
  • Great data collection and analysis in the service of journalism, ideally shining a light on facts and issues of public interest that would otherwise not be known;
  • Great storytelling and engagement with strong visual and interactive elements of (ideally) that kind of reporting;
  • Great public service, either in reporting/analysis of key issues or in terms of empowering communities to discover important information for themselves;
  • Great innovative ideas that will likely move the field forward.

For more information, visit Sigma Awards.