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Dubai Foresight Awards

Celebrating Impact. Advancing the Future.

Meet the 2025 Finalists

The Dubai Foresight Awards received hundreds of submissions from 50 countries, demonstrating the global reach and importance of futures and foresight thinking. These finalists represent the most innovative and impactful projects that are shaping our collective future. Winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on November 18, 2025.

Foresight for People

For those turning vision into action, this Award recognises projects that use futures thinking to improve lives. Whether guiding policy, driving social change, or transforming institutions, this category celebrates foresight with a human heart—because the future needs foresight

City of Longevity

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A revolutionary cross-domain taxonomy with AI- Powered foresight enabling policy makers to deliver longevity solutions to citizens. From reactive “Age-Friendly Cities” to proactive “Cities of Longevity” that actively influence how we age throughout the life course.

Key impacts

Designing proactive cities that support longer, healthier lives

Futures that Heal

Three scenario projects from Hawai‘i, Cyprus, and Ethiopia. Each one used foresight to support people living through political tension, social division, or post-conflict recovery

Key impacts

Using foresight to help societies recover and reconnect after conflict

For Our Future

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“Foresight for People” democratises futures thinking, fostering intergenerational solidarity, and driving systemic change, laying the foundations for a resilient, equitable Australia that plans boldly for generations to come.

Key impacts

Embedding intergenerational fairness and foresight in governance

Foresight for the Planet

Honouring those safeguarding our shared future, this Award recognises individuals and teams leveraging foresight to protect nature, biodiversity, and climate resilience. Their work turns long-term thinking into ecological action.

Congo Basin Futures

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#CongoBasinFutures deploys participatory foresight, storytelling, and indigenous knowledge to explore alternative futures, both undesirable and preferred, for the Congo Basin. The Basin is of immeasurable importance to the world, notably in terms of biodiversity, cultural diversity, carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation.

Key impacts

Using foresight and local storytelling to protect one of earth’s vital ecosystems
Nsah Mala (Kenneth Nsah) PhD

Cool Climate Collective's Three Futures Test

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Three Futures Test translates foresight into investable narratives by mapping climate tech startups across plausible scenarios and stress-testing for resilience,​ leverage and catalytic potential.

Key impacts

Reframing climate foresight to guide innovation and sustainable

Seeding the Future

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“Transforming agriculture in Egypt’s Nile Delta” applies strategic foresight to address climate vulnerability in one of the world’s most at-risk regions. The project reimagines agriculture through innovation, sustainability, and community engagement.

Key impacts

Applying foresight to transform agriculture and build resilience in the Nile Delta

Foresight Changemakers

Celebrating pioneers who have pushed the boundaries of futures thinking, this Award honours those who design and evolve transformative tools, frameworks, and methodologies—those shifting how the world anticipates and shapes what’s ahead.

Pasifika Futures Report

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Foresight that embeds Indigenous Pacific knowledge systems into futures thinking. In a field often dominated by Western paradigms, this work canters Pacific philosophies rooted in relationality, place-based wisdom, and intergenerational responsibility.

Key impacts

Embedding Indigenous Pacific wisdom into foresight to reshape how futures are imagined

UNICEF Innocenti Youth Foresight Fellowship

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The UNICEF Innocenti Youth Foresight Fellowship (UYFF) is the UN’s first youth foresight function, established to meaningfully engage adolescents and youth in the long- term decisions that impact their lives.

Key impacts

The UN’s first youth foresight program empowering adolescents for long-term change

Sustainable Futures

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Global scale, boundary-aware approach to embedding planetary limits in foresight and engaged scholarship that unites research and action in real time.​

Key impacts

Making foresight global by linking research, action, and planetary responsibility

Meet our Judges

Cheryl Doig

Steven Kenney

Florence Gaub

Ingrid LaFleur

John Sweeney

Patrick Noack

Olga Tarasov

Cheryl Doig

Dr. Cheryl Doig is the Director of Think Beyond and Founder of Otautahi Futures Collective. She is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the University of Canterbury and a global influencer in the futures, foresight and learning ecosystems spaces. Special projects include the development of the Aotearoa Futures Barometer in partnership with indigenous future makers from Tokona te Raki; supporting global city communities of practice for intergenerational fairness; and the creation of research to support intergenerational ambition and future generations. In 2017 Cheryl was a finalist in the NZ Westpac Women of Influence Awards, in the Innovation and Science category.

Steven Kenney

Steven Kenney is the CEO of Foresight Vector, a futures consultancy, and a founding partner at WhiteLabel Impact, a firm advising social enterprises. He has advised governments, corporations, and non-profits for thirty years on strategy development and implementation, foresight, and organizational change. Steven was the founding director of the Strategic Foresight Initiative at The Middle East Institute. Prior to his current roles, Steven was a Partner with a sixteen-year tenure in Toffler Associates, the consultancy founded by world-renowned futurist Alvin Toffler, and a Vice President at Monitor360 (formed from “Art of the Long View” author Peter Schwartz’s Global Business Network).

Florence Gaub

Florence is a French-German national and has worked as a futurist for international organisations such as the EU and NATO in various capacities. In 2019, she penned the EU’s Global Trends to 2030 report, and her book “The Future: Manual” became a bestseller in Germany.  Florence serves on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Complex Risks and is a member of the World Science Fiction Society. She holds a PhD from Humboldt University and degrees from Sciences Po Paris, the Sorbonne, and the University of Munich.
 

Ingrid LaFleur

Ingrid LaFleur is a futurist, curator, and cultural strategist exploring the intersections of emerging technology, race, and decolonization. With over 20 years of curatorial experience, she merges futures research with Afrofuturism to inspire transformative change. As Founder of The Afrofuture Strategies Institute (TASI), she advances equitable futures through foresight methodologies. Ingrid has presented at institutions like the Centre Pompidou, Harvard, and Oxford, with her work featured in The New York Times and Time magazine. She holds an MS in Foresight from the University of Houston.
 

John Sweeney

Dr. John A. Sweeney is the UNESCO Chair for Futures Studies in Anticipatory Governance and Sustainable Policymaking at Westminster International University in Tashkent, Uzbekistan and a Senior Research Fellow and faculty member at the Chiang Mai University’s School of Public Policy. He also currently serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of World Futures Review: A Journal of Strategic Foresight, Senior Advisor on Foresight for CMI – Martti Ahtisaari Peace Foundation, and faculty for the University of Houston’s MA in Foresight. As a practitioner, consultant, and educator, John has organized, managed, and facilitated workshops and seminars, multi-stakeholder projects, and foresight games and simulations in 50 countries on six continents in-person and online with participants from all over the world.

Patrick Noack

Dr. Patrick Noack is Executive Director of the Dubai Future Institute at the Dubai Future Foundation, where he oversees the research team, the Dubai Future Academy, the UAE C4IR in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, and the Dubai Future Forum. He is Policy Fellow at the Centre for Science and Policy at the University of Cambridge and is a member of the WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean Region’s Technical Advisory Committee. Time permitting, he writes an opinion column in The National on foresight topics. Patrick holds a MSc in Social Policy from the LSE and a PhD from the University of Aberdeen.

Olga Tarasov

As Vice President of Inquiry & Insights, Olga leads Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors’ thought leadership efforts, developing original research and tools to accelerate philanthropic practices and innovation. In this capacity, Olga has lead hallmark programs, including the Theory of the Foundation and Strategic Time Horizons initiatives catalyzing knowledge, collaboration, and impact. She currently leads the Foresight & Futures Initiative to help philanthropy innovate, envision and build a better future. Olga holds a masters of international affairs from Georgetown University and a bachelor’s in international affairs from The George Washington University.

Our panel of judges is drawn from the Friends of the Forum group.

Prizes

We are seeking 3 finalists per category. Each finalist will receive

A Trip to Dubai to attend the Dubai Future Forum

Travel assistance will be provided for the successful finalists. In the event that a group of individuals are nominated, only one person per group will be eligible for travel assistance.

Award Recipients will gain

Prestigious Award Presentation

Awards will be handed over by a well-known figure in Dubai and/or in the global futures community.

publicity & Recognition

Winners will be included in Dubai Future Forum media and promotional materials, including on social media.

Dedicated Coverage

The Dubai Future Foundation will produce a short film series on each winner and the work for which they were awarded. 

Dubai Future Forum 2026 Engagement

Winners will be asked to contribute to a session, providing them with an opportunity to showcase their work.

Connect with Us

Dubai Future Forum
Global Futures Society
Phone
+971 50 4377995
Engage with us
#DubaiFutureForum

Dubai Foresight Awards

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