Frequently Asked Questions

AIPH is looking to reward nature-orientated solutions that harvest the power of plants and associated ecosystems services to help address the major challenges facing cities today – or tomorrow. Specifically, we seek strategic initiatives that are bold, pursue a meaningful impact, are being successfully implemented, have potential to further scale or spread to other cities, and exemplify resilience in how they are conducted.

Entries for the AIPH World Green City Awards 2026 must fit these objectives:

1. Be an initiative that demonstrates an ambitious approach and showcases a city-wide vision and commitment to making the city greener, healthier, and more sustainable.
2. Be an initiative which comprises a city-wide greening programme or set of projects, rather than an individual project.
3. Draw attention to a specific programme/initiative within the city’s overall greening strategy, while demonstrating how that initiative/programme is linked to the city’s overall green ambition and vision.
4. Demonstrate feasibility and proven success in implementation with measurable, and quantifiable impact.
5. Demonstrate that a significant portion of the initiative has been implemented over the last 5 years, even if there is still some implementation remaining beyond 2026.

To be eligible, such strategic initiatives must be implemented within a city. A city is defined as ‘a single urban area/human settlement, large or small, which, along with its surrounding expanse, is nationally recognised as being under the jurisdiction of a single legally defined local or sub-national government authority.’ If your entry involves a multi-city initiative, your submission must be based on the activities in your city as the primary city. You may refer to activities in other cities as ‘ripple effects’ of the initiative beyond the primary city.

Anyone involved in and well-informed about the project can complete the entry. If you are not a city official, please ensure you have completed and submitted the Mayoral Declaration form with your entry. 

The Mayoral Declaration form can be completed by the city’s mayor or equivalent city official, e.g. Lord Mayor, Council Leader, Municipal Commissioner, Head of City.

Yes, and this will need to be clearly documented in your entry. You will also be asked to nominate up to two of the most relevant award categories you would like your entry to be considered for. For 2026, there are seven award categories:

• Living Green for Health and wellbeing: Addressing the medical, behavioural, and social determinants of health for residents.
• Living Green for Climate Change: Tackling the root causes and effects of climate change in order to build more liveable and resilient cities.
• Living Green for Urban Infrastructure and Liveability: Promoting and supporting nature-positive lifestyles for all city residents, visitors and businesses, through a well planned, designed, and maintained built environment.
• Living Green for Biodiversity and Urban Ecosystem Restoration: Addressing the loss of species, habitats, ecosystem health, and genetic diversity.
• Living Green for Water: Ensuring that water resources are safeguarded and wisely used, with clean water available to all while also protecting residents from flooding risks.
• Living Green for Social Cohesion and Inclusive Communities: Fostering belonging, trust and inter-generational as well as cross-cultural relationships to prevent exclusion, marginalisation and violence.
• Living Green for Urban Agriculture and Food Systems: Creating strategies and practices that build the resilience of city food supplies to increase employment and nutritional outcomes, reduce poverty and address urban environmental degradation.

Before you can begin, you need to make an account and sign in to the Oxford Abstracts website. When you make your account, choose a password and remember it.

Each time you sign in, you’ll go to your dashboard. This is where you can:

• Click “New Submission” to start a new entry
• See and edit any entries you’ve already started

Everything you add is saved automatically. You can come back anytime to change or add more information.

You can make more than one entry for your city using the same account. Just click “New Submission” again to start another one. You’ll see all your entries on your dashboard, and you can open each one to work on it. Every entry needs its own form.

Helpful Tip

There’s a copy of the entry form on page 2 of the online form. You can use it to help plan your answers before filling them in online.

Making an account and starting an entry doesn’t mean you have to submit it later. It just helps you see the questions and decide if you want to continue.

You can come back and work on your entry as many times as you want—until entries close on 19 October 2025.

There is no limit when it comes to the number of initiatives that a city/local authority can submit. However, each initiative must be submitted through a separate online entry form. Additionally, any given initiative must be submitted only once.

This is a good thing! The greater the significance of the initiative and the wider its range of impacts, the better, since this is something we take into account in the entry evaluation process. These wide-ranging outcomes – whether fitting within the award categories or reaching beyond – should be documented in the entry. For each entry submitted, you will be able to nominate up to two categories (a primary and a secondary choice) in which the entry will be scored and judged.

We recommend that you limit overlap between categories if you are submitting multiple entries. Remember that entries in the same category will be competing against each other. We also recommend selecting categories for which you have compiled the best evidence of results.

Any city that was a finalist may not enter the same initiative in any future edition of the AIPH World Green City Awards. Any other city that has previously entered and not been a finalist may enter again, and may submit the same initiative as previously submitted, however you are encouraged to review your entry and submit a revised version. Please look at the case studies of previous winners to learn what makes a successful entry.

No, participation to the award is entirely free. We are not charging an entry fee in recognition that cities will commit resources towards putting together the application.

Yes, anyone involved in and well-informed about the project can complete the entry provided they have the support of the local authority. Key delivery partners will then also be featured in the award recognition alongside the local authority should the entry win.

All online entries must be accompanied by a Mayoral Declaration that confirms that the city supports the entry. The Mayoral Declaration is provided within the online entry form, and must be signed by the Mayor of the city or an alternative and suitable representative of the designated city authority.

No. All eligible cities are invited to submit an online entry. As soon as you create an account on the online submission portal, you will have access to the award submission system, and an offline version of the online entry form to assist you in preparing your entry.

Yes, all cities are required to put forward their submission through an online entry form. To enter, cities are required to create an account on our dedicated online submission portal to gain access to the online entry form. AIPH offers support in answering any questions you may have about your submission(s) and the award process.

English only.

You will receive a notification from AIPH acknowledging that your submission has been received.

All submissions will be reviewed and evaluated after the deadline for submission (19 October 2025, 23:00 UTC).

AIPH will notify the contact person identified in the application in January 2026 if additional information is required. Finalist cities may be asked to provide this complementary information within 30 days.

Finalist cities will be notified by early March 2026 and invited to take part in the awards ceremony at a gala event in the autumn of 2026. At this gala event the category winners will be announced to the world and the Grand Winner will be awarded the honour of winning the AIPH World Green City Awards 2026.

Compiling a submission to the AIPH World Green City Awards creates the opportunity for cities to:

• Evaluate the progress and success of their project to date
• Strengthen relationships with existing partners by working collaboratively on the submission
• Raise awareness of the city’s urban greening with internal and external stakeholders

All submissions to World Green City Awards 2026 will be evaluated by the Resilient and Inclusive Cities Lab and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Feedback will be provided based on the project summary supplied by each city.

Finalists and Winners also stand a chance to:

• Have their initiatives featured on the AIPH website and integrated into the AIPH Green City Case Study Collection. All Finalists will be featured.
• Win an award certificate and a trophy. Winners can nominate key partners and key staff so that additional award certificates can be prepared in their name.
• Gain global recognition and profiling opportunities. Winners will be promoted via AIPH and the World Green City Awards partners’ and sponsors’ media channels.
• Have their city’s work displayed to a significant global audience in the AIPH pavilion of an International Horticultural Expo.
• Receive up to four complimentary tickets to the gala event of the Awards ceremony.

Congratulations! If your city initiative is selected as a Finalist, you will be invited to attend the AIPH World Green City Award 2026 gala ceremony. 

We would absolutely love you to join us. However, if you are unable to join the Awards Ceremony, this does not affect your status as a Finalist or affect your chances of becoming the overall Winner. 

Finalists and Winners will be invited to participate in various promotional activities both in-person and online. These activities are a great way to show the world and your own city the work you have been doing. These activities will all be optional.