Breakthrough Prize is a annual academic recognizing excellence in Science. Organized by Breakthrough Prize Foundation, it covers the Global region. Established in 2012.
The Breakthrough Prize is one of the world's largest monetary science awards, founded in 2012 by Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Anne Wojcicki, and administered by the Breakthrough Prize Foundation. Often dubbed the 'Oscars of Science', it honors transformative advances in fundamental physics, life sciences and mathematics. Winners are chosen by Selection Committees composed of previous Breakthrough Prize laureates in each field, which keeps the judging squarely inside the scientific community.
Each year the program awards three $3 million prizes in Life Sciences (one reserved for Parkinson's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders), one in Fundamental Physics and one in Mathematics. Early-career researchers compete for up to six $100,000 New Horizons prizes in physics and mathematics, while the Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize and the newly announced Vera Rubin New Frontiers Prize award $50,000 each to women mathematicians and physicists who completed their PhDs within the previous two years. Laureates are honored at an annual gala ceremony broadcast globally, and the prize sits at the very top of what a working scientist can list on a CV.
Nominations are free and open to the public — anyone may nominate a candidate online, though self-nominations are prohibited. The 2027 cycle ran from 22 April to 17 July 2026; a valid nomination needs basic biographical details, at least one third-party recommendation letter and up to ten citations from a specified academic publication database. Realistically this is a prize for research programs that have already reshaped a field, so the strongest nominations document a sustained, community-validated body of work rather than a single recent paper.