The H&M Foundation is searching for a new group of innovators for its Global Change Award, offering a chance to win €200,000.

The annual competition aims to achieve a net-zero textile industry by 2050 by awarding grants to changemakers. Past winning projects include a dissolvable thread, plastic-eating bacteria, and custom-made clothes crafted from decomposable mushroom roots.

This year marks a significant shift in the H&M Foundation’s strategic direction for the textile industry, which previously focused on increasing circularity and finding planet-positive solutions. Now, the foundation is tackling one of the industry’s biggest challenges—decarbonisation. The 2025 Global Change Award is the first initiative to reflect this change. This year’s applicants will need to show how they will support the industry in halving its greenhouse gas emissions every decade, in line with the Carbon Law. The Carbon Law is a framework designed to meet the targets set by the Paris Agreement, aiming for the world to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C, or 2°C at most.

The 2025 Global Change Award puts materials and processes under scrutiny

Launched in 2015, the GCA has supported 46 innovations, awarding a combined total of €8 million. The H&M Foundation, as a philanthropic organisation, has the flexibility to fund and support high-potential ideas that traditional investors might consider ‘high risk.’ Winners will enter a yearlong Changemaker Programme, emerging not only with their idea at a commercially viable level but also with the personal growth and mindset needed to continue creating solutions that benefit both the planet and its people.

Instead of an open application process, the GCA has chosen a panel of nominators, comprised of a variety of stakeholders such as industry experts, research institutes, brands, garment suppliers, innovators, and non-profits. Nominees should fall into one of the following four areas:

• Sustainable materials and processes, such as low-energy materials and new and recycled fibres, sustainable energy practices, alternative wet processes, treatments and finishes, new construction techniques and more

• Responsible production, such as energy efficiency, renewable energy, prediction modelling, on-demand, waste management, zero-waste solutions and more

• Mindful consumption, such as reshaping demand, garment care, extending garment life cycles, recycling solutions, circular business models and more

• Wildcards: unexpected impactful ideas not yet thought of, or that amplify transformation within multiple areas.

The 2025 Global Change Award is tackling one of the industry’s biggest challenges—decarbonisation

Nominated changemakers will be invited into an application process where the H&M Foundation will assess their ideas and select the 10 winners.

• For more information see the Global Change Award website
• Illustrative images supplied by H&M Foundation
• All images by H&M Foundation