This year's Golden Bee Award will be presented for achievements in research

SLOVENIA, May 5 - The Golden Bee Award Committee will select this year’s winner from among candidates from Spain (three nominations), Serbia (two nominations), Germany, Croatia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Togo and Italy.

Each candidate for the Golden Bee 2026 award will be featured on the World Bee Day Facebook page in the days leading up to the ceremony. The winner’s name will remain a secret until the award ceremony, which will take place on in Maribor on World Bee Day, Wednesday, 20 May 2026. The winner, who will receive the award statue from the President of the Republic of Slovenia, Dr Nataša Pirc Musar, will be announced at the ceremony by Mateja Čalušić, the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Food, and Committee Chair.

By presenting the Golden Bee Award, the Ministry encourages and supports innovation and excellence among individuals or legal entities that have made a particularly significant contribution to the protection and raising awareness about the importance of bees and other pollinators at the global level, while also encouraging the strengthening of activities related to the work and exceptional achievements of individuals or legal entities in the aforementioned fields. By presenting the Golden Bee Award, the Republic of Slovenia promotes World Bee Day (20 May), proclaimed by the UN General Assembly on 20 December 2017 as a result of cooperation between the Slovenian Beekeepers’ Association, which initiated the proposal, and the Republic of Slovenia. The aim of World Bee Day is to raise global public awareness of the importance of bees and other pollinators for humanity in the context of the global fight against hunger.

Through the World Bee Day and the Golden Bee Award, Slovenia is working to share knowledge and technology and to consolidate Slovenia's global reputation as a green, healthy, proactive and innovative country.