The Global Citizen Prize is an awards show organized by Global Citizen (formerly known as the Global Poverty Project), aimed at celebrating activists and leaders around the world. It began in September 2016 with the George Harrison Global Citizen Award (later renamed the Global Artist of the Year Award), and expanded to include more awards in 2018, 2019, and 2020.[1][2]
The inaugural George Harrison Global Citizen Award was posthumously awarded to George Harrison during the “World on Stage” event at the 2016 Global Citizen Festival in New York.[3]
In 2017, the George Harrison Award was given to Annie Lennox for her dedication to humanitarian work at the 2017 Global Citizen Festival in New York.[4][5]
At the 2018 Global Citizen Festival: Mandela 100 event in Johannesburg, South Africa, the Global Poverty Project presented their first ever Global Citizen Prize for a World Leader, to Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, and the Cisco Youth Leadership Award, given to Wawira Njiru.[6]
The 2019 Global Citizen Prize Awards was the first year awards were presented at a ceremony, hosted by John Legend at the Royal Albert Hall in London on December 13, 2019.[7][8] The following prizes were presented during the ceremony, which was broadcast by NBC on December 20:[9]
The Global Citizen Prize Awards were broadcast (on NBC in the United States, and the CBC in Canada) and streamed live on December 19, 2020, and were hosted again by John Legend. The 2020 awards introduced multiple new awards for philanthropy, culture and education, activism, and the Country Hero Award.[10][11][12][13][14]