Expo 2025 organizers invites to showcase non-profit projects

Applications are now open for the Expo 2025 Osaka Kansai edition of the BIE-Cosmos Prize, open to citizen projects that respond to the Expo theme “Designing Future Society for Our Lives”.

The BIE-Cosmos Prize Expo 2025 Osaka Kansai promotes and rewards not-for-profit projects from individuals or groups exemplifying the Expo’s overall theme and working in fields relating to one or more of its sub-themes – Saving Lives, Empowering Lives and Connecting Lives.

Applications for eligible projects may be submitted by completing the application form, in English or in French, before 20 November 2024. Shortlisted candidates will present their work and achievements at Expo 2025 Osaka Kansai, and an international jury will then select the winning project, to be announced on BIE Day on 12 October 2025. A donation of 20 000 euros will be granted to the recipient of the BIE-Cosmos Prize.

The BIE-Cosmos Prize is a collaboration between the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) and the Expo ’90 Foundation of Japan, which commemorates Horticultural Expo 1990 Osaka and its value of “Harmonious Coexistence between Nature and Humankind”. The BIE-Cosmos Prize has been awarded at all World and Specialised Expos since 2008, with the aim of giving visibility and support to citizen projects that promote the theme of the Expo and the values of the Expo ’90 Foundation.

At World Expo 2020 Dubai, which was organised under the theme “Connecting Minds, Creating the Future”, the BIE-Cosmos Prize was awarded to the N/a’an ku sê Foundation for its Conservation Research Project – Rapid Response Unit. At Specialised Expo 2017 Astana, held under the theme Future Energy, the prize was awarded to the National University of Lesotho for its initiative to design and produce low-cost solar collectors.

World Expos, officially known as International Registered Exhibitions, are global gatherings of nations addressing universal challenges of our time. These unparalleled global events offer a journey inside a chosen theme through engaging and immersive activities. The most recent World Expo, which closed on 31 March 2022, took place in Dubai, UAE under the theme Connecting Minds, Creating the Future, and received more than 24 million visits. The next World Expo, Expo 2025 Osaka Kansai, will take place between 13 April and 13 October 2025.