NEW YORK — Covering Climate Now announced 49 winners of its 2026 CCNow Journalism Awards on 17 September 2026, naming Kim Min-wook, Roli Srivastava and Sammy Roth as Journalists of the Year and awarding Fiona Harvey of The Guardian its second Lifetime Achievement honour.
Now in its sixth year, the awards programme is described by CCNow as a globally recognised standard for excellence in climate storytelling. The collaboration said winners come from outlets large and small and together offer a model for journalists covering what it calls the biggest story of our time.
Journalists of the Year — verified names
According to Covering Climate Now’s 17 September release, the three Journalists of the Year are:
Kim Min-wook, a broadcast journalist and filmmaker at South Korea’s MBC News; Roli Srivastava, founder and editor of The Migration Story, which covers India’s migrant labour force through a climate lens; and Sammy Roth, who in 2025 founded the culture-focused newsletter Climate-Colored Goggles after working at the Los Angeles Times.
CCNow said that beyond their reporting, each awardee participates in journalism and climate communities — including professional organisations, public climate expertise and mentoring of younger journalists.
Lifetime Achievement: Fiona Harvey
CCNow issued its second-ever Lifetime Achievement award to Fiona Harvey of The Guardian, describing it as a special honour for a journalist with longstanding and transformative impact on the profession.
“It’s a joy for CCNow to celebrate three colleagues — Kim Min-wook, Roli Srivastava, and Sammy Roth — who exemplify the same commitment to excellence and service to the public demonstrated by the Journalist of the Year winners who came before them,” said CCNow executive director Mark Hertsgaard. “And we’re particularly proud to give CCNow’s second Lifetime Achievement award to Fiona Harvey, who, for decades, has told the climate story with exceptional rigor, panache, and impact, while never losing sight that it is fundamentally about people and the future we all will inhabit.”
Scale of the 2026 competition
CCNow said it received more than 1,200 entries from journalists in dozens of countries. Winners were selected by a judging panel of 120 distinguished journalists from more than 30 countries, many of them past winners or finalists.
Judges named up to three winners in each of 14 subject-based categories, plus three entries in a large-projects-and-collaborations category and three Emerging Journalists of the Year, the organisation said. The full roster is published at coveringclimatenow.org/awards.
Outlets among other winners, CCNow listed, include The Associated Press, BBC World Service, the Miami Herald, Grist, Carbon Brief, Canary Media, Kenya’s Nation Media Group, Mexico’s El Universal and Brazil’s Agência Pública.
Why the awards land now
“Lifting up excellence in climate reporting is particularly important this year, as some newsrooms around the world have retreated from climate coverage even as the effects of a warming planet become more urgent,” said CCNow co-founder Kyle Pope. “This work offers a blueprint for re-engaging with the climate story.”
The Journalists of the Year category is sponsored in memory of Ginny Michaux by the Michaux Family Foundation, which also supported creation of the awards in 2021; the Solutions category is sponsored by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, CCNow said.
For newsrooms and freelancers, the 2026 list is a verified snapshot of who peers judged outstanding — not a ranking of every climate desk. Names and titles above match Covering Climate Now’s primary announcement.
