Julieta Martínez named 2026 WIN WIN Youth Award laureate
Julieta Martínez, 22, from Chile has been named the 2026 WIN WIN Youth Award laureate, receiving a prize of SEK 100,000. The WIN WIN Youth Award is presented alongside the WIN WIN Award, an international Swedish award based in Gothenburg, Sweden, which since 2000 has recognised trailblazing leaders working for a more sustainable world - counting Gro Harlem Brundtland, Al Gore and Kofi Annan among its past laureates. This year's WIN WIN Award laureate is Dr. Alaa Murabit.
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The 2026 WIN WIN Youth Award is given under the theme Gender-Equal Societies, which places gender equality at the centre of democratic resilience, sustainable development, and lasting peace. Each year, the award highlights a new theme within the framework of the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
WIN WIN Youth Award 2026: Julieta Martínez
Martínez is the founder of Tremendas, a global platform she established at the age of 15 that is now active in 18 countries. Through Tremendas, young women gain the tools, training and networks to lead initiatives across seven action areas linked to the UN Sustainable Development Goals — including climate, gender equality, education and health.
In a world where women represent the majority of those most severely affected by climate change, yet remain a minority in the negotiating rooms where climate policy is shaped, Julieta Martínez has made it her mission to close that gap. Her work is built on a clear conviction: that young women should not only have a seat at the table, but lead the conversation.
Tremendas connects young women across borders and contexts through a low-threshold, digitally anchored model that can be adapted to different regions without losing its focus on local leadership. In 2021, she launched the climate academy Climáticas, which has since trained and mobilised 740 young women from Latin America to become agents of change. She has also served as a member of UN Women's Generation Equality Youth Task Force, contributing to the integration of youth voices into the Beijing+25 convention, and currently serves as an active member in the UN Women Leaders Network.
Her work has been recognised by multiple international organisations, and in a time of both climate crisis and growing pushback against women's rights, Martínez represents exactly what the WIN WIN Youth Award seeks to recognise: a young person who does not wait for change, but builds it.
Through Tremendas, Julieta Martínez has given young women and girls – too often rendered invisible in the spaces where power is exercised and the future is shaped – the tools and community to transform frustration and anxiety about the climate crisis into real drive for change. She makes it clear that gender equality and climate justice are inseparable – and that young women's leadership is an absolute prerequisite for a sustainable future. With this award, the jury wishes to honour Julieta Martínez's ability to make climate activism accessible and hopeful, and to move more people from placards to action, says Johan Holmen, Chair of the WIN WIN Youth Award jury.
This recognition is deeply meaningful to me because it reinforces something I strongly believe: in contexts like Latin America, advancing gender equality is not about charity or pity, but about reshaping the way we understand power and who gets to lead. Girls and young women are too often seen only as victims of the crises that affect them - from climate change to migration to political instability - when in reality, they are already active agents of change within their communities. We need to reshape the narrative, one where they tell their own stories and write their own futures, says Julieta Martínez, recipient of the WIN WIN Youth Award 2026
Julieta Martínez will receive the award at a ceremony in Gothenburg on 16 October 2026, as part of WIN WIN's annual programme of knowledge exchange, dialogue and international collaboration.
For further information:
Lovisa Ralpher, Head of Communications
lovisa.ralpher@winwinaward.org
+46 73 925 50 89
About WIN WIN Gothenburg Sustainability Award
WIN WIN Gothenburg Sustainability Award is a Swedish non-profit organisation that has recognised outstanding efforts addressing pressing sustainability challenges since 2000. The international WIN WIN Award carries a prize of SEK 1,000,000 and is awarded annually in Gothenburg to an individual or organisation driving systemic change toward a more sustainable and just world. In 2018, WIN WIN established the WIN WIN Youth Award — a prize of SEK 100,000 for changemakers aged 13 to 29 worldwide. Beyond the award, WIN WIN is a platform for knowledge exchange, bringing together local and international perspectives through lectures, round-table discussions and collaborative projects across sectors. WIN WIN is based in Gothenburg, Sweden, and is supported by the City of Gothenburg, Västra Götaland Region, Chalmers University of Technology, University of Gothenburg, and a number of leading Swedish corporate partners.
