UNESCO ICT in Education Prize: Call for nominations open to projects supporting learners to expand creativity, imagination and critical thinking skills with AI

Under the theme "Reimagining creativity and critical thinking with artificial intelligence", the Prize aims to recognize projects demonstrating how teachers and learners in diverse contexts are engaging with artificial intelligence (AI) systems in ways that encourage critical thinking, imagination and creativity and challenge the flattening effects of AI on human capacities.

Education plays a pivotal role in redefining what it means to know, think critically and imagine differently in the age of AI. However, as AI systems grow more capable of composing, calculating and producing knowledge, the risk that learners increasingly offload their thinking to these systems remains a critical concern. To address this challenge, educators must cultivate learners who develop their abilities to think critically, create boundlessly and imagine expansively. In doing so, education can ensure that AI is used as a tool for expanding human agency, rather than as a substitute for human thought.

Within this context, the 2026 UNESCO ICT in Education Prize seeks to surface and showcase promising practices that demonstrate how teachers and learners engage with AI systems in ways that preserve their capacity for reasoning, discernment and imagination across all education levels, in formal, non-formal and informal learning environments. The Prize aims to recognize projects that illustrate innovative teaching strategies cultivating critical thinking and creativity with AI and that exemplify students' use of AI in ways which complements, rather than undermines, their ability to explore, interrogate, problem-solve and create.

Two winners will be selected by the Director-General of UNESCO based on the recommendations of an international Jury. Each winner will receive a reward of US$ 25,000, a diploma and international recognition during an award ceremony to be held in September 2026.