The first Simone Veil Prize, an EU-funded award, has named 25 finalists, five in each of its five categories. An international jury of independent experts announced them on 29 October.
The jury recognised the finalists as high-quality projects that engage with Jewish cultural heritage to promote dialogue and inclusion, and a deeper understanding of Europe’s shared history.
Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, announced at the Euro-Chanukah celebration in Brussels on 17 December 2025 that the first winner would be named in 2026. She said she had made a promise at an earlier ceremony to establish the prize.
They range from a children’s picture-book exhibition at the Bergen-Belsen Memorial in Germany to a Jewish Digital Library spanning Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia and North Macedonia. These are:
Shared histories: DrawnTogether (Germany); Le Vite (Italy); The Thinking Heart of the Barracks (Lithuania); The Fashion System (Poland); Where Silence Speaks (Slovakia).
Heritage for dialogue: Eden (Austria); Murals (France); The Transplants (France); A Public Service: Remembering to Forget (Romania); In the Footsteps of Hidden Children Memorial – 2025 edition (Slovakia).
Living heritage: Walls that Remember (Lithuania); Het Joods Manifest (Netherlands); From Silence to Living Heritage (Slovenia); Georg Riedel’s Yiddishland (Sweden); J-Art Without Borders (Ukraine).
Cross-border cooperation and shared narratives: Connecting Stories (Serbia/Germany); Deposits of Memory (Poland/Germany); Identity Laboratory (Poland/Slovakia); Jewish Digital Library (Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, North Macedonia); The Voice of the Silence (Poland).
Next generation, youth engagement and education: Bulgaria 2025 – Living Jewish Heritage in the Hands of the Next Generation (Austria); Nomadic school (France); Displaced at home (Germany); Visualising the past through graphic novels (RO-HO-VI-RE) (Romania); From Testimony to Creation (Slovakia).
The 2026 jury has 15 members with expertise in Jewish cultural heritage and research, civil society, education, public engagement, public policy and youth leadership. The jury will reveal one Grand Prix winner per category at a ceremony in Brussels on 2 December 2026 (Commission announcement). Each winner receives €10,000. All 25 finalists will join the prize’s Community of Practice to share knowledge and resources.
The prize is an annual award co-funded under the Creative Europe programme (2021–2027). It honours Simone Veil (1927–2017), a Holocaust survivor who in 1979 became the first president of the directly elected European Parliament. It is part of the EU’s policy framework against antisemitism, racism and all forms of hatred, and is tied to its strategy on combating antisemitism and fostering Jewish life (2021–2030). Eligible entries were local or cross-border projects completed between January 2023 and January 2026.
