Messi has been awarded the 2026 Princess of Asturias Award for Sports.
As revealed by Marca, this was decided by the jury, chaired by Teresa Perales, which met for two days in Oviedo to choose the winner from among the 27 nominations, from 12 nationalities, submitted.
The Paralympic swimmer announced the choice of Messi because, "in addition to his dazzling talent, his exceptional sporting career and his formidable and ongoing charitable work to promote access to education and healthcare for the most disadvantaged children".
The Argentine succeeds Serena Williams in the list of winners, who received this award a year ago for "her extraordinary sporting career and competitive mindset and for always having been a firm defender of gender equality and equal opportunities between men and women in sport and in society in general".
Messi's candidacy prevailed over the other 27 submitted. For the third consecutive year, the award goes to a woman, following Carolina Marín being honored in 2024 and Serena Williams in 2025. The jury for this year's edition was made up of Teresa Perales (chair); Paloma del Río (secretary); Juan Ignacio Gallardo, director of MARCA; Teresa Bernadas; Joaquín Folch-Rusiñol; José Félix Díaz; Andrea Fuentes; Patricia García; Santiago Nolla; Jennifer Pareja, Alberto Suárez; Joan Vehils and Theresa Zabell.
Among the winners of the Sports award, established in 1987, are Sebastian Coe; the Refugee Olympic Team; the All Blacks; the Gasol brothers (Pau and Marc), Lindsey Vonn, Haile Gebrselassie, Rafa Nadal, Fernando Alonso, Eliud Kipchoge, Carl Lewis, Carlos Sainz, Severiano Ballesteros, among others.
It is the first time that the Princess of Asturias Award for Sports has been granted individually to a footballer, although football had previously paraded through Oviedo's Campoamor Theatre with the Brazil national team (2002), Spain's national team (2010), and Iker Casillas and Xavi Hernández (2012).
The Sports award is the sixth of the eight prizes called annually by the Princess of Asturias Foundation to be decided, after the Arts award was granted to the American singer and writer Patti Smith, the Communication and Humanities award to the Japanese animation studio Studio Ghibli; the Scientific and Technical Research award to British chemists David Klenerman and Shankar Balasubramanian and French biophysicist Pascal Mayer; the International Cooperation award to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, and the Social Sciences award to the British historian, journalist and essayist Timothy Garton Ash.
