Call for companies with innovative products or services for freshwater ecosystems, powered by the MERLIN project.

If yes, apply now for the MERLIN Innovation Awards 2025 in one of the two categories:

PRODUCT OF THE YEAR 2025
SERVICE OF THE YEAR 2025

MERLIN seeks new and widely applicable solutions for restoring or enabling financial benefit for freshwater ecosystems. If your innovative product or service is market-ready, you are eligible to apply.

Have a look at the previous MIA award winners

• Unique opportunity to pitch your product or service to 18 European freshwater restoration project managers and many other decision makers and stakeholders
• Chance to be part of the systemic transformative change of our society and economy
• Recognition within the European freshwater ecosystem community with your product or service featured on the widely read Freshwater Blog
• Automatic inclusion in the MERLIN Marketplace if your application is accepted for the MERLIN Innovation Awards 2025

The pre-selection of 10 finalists (5 Products and 5 Services) will be conducted in January 2025 on a date to be announced, with the results to be announced to all applicants within 7 working days. The MIA 2025 online ceremony will be conducted in February 2025 on a date to be announced, with the winners of both PRODUCT and SERVICE competitions will be announced at the end of the online ceremony following all presentations based on jury members’ decisions.

The submitted applications will be evaluated by the MIA 2025 committee, consisting of CONNECTOLOGY representatives and MERLIN coordinators/steering group members. The pre-selection procedure will identify 10 finalists (5 Products and 5 Services) that will participate in an online ceremony during which they will conduct a 3-minute presentation and engage in a 4-minute Q&A session. The jury will be composed of freshwater restoration managers and other relevant freshwater community stakeholders and will evaluate finalists based on the following criteria: level of innovation, benefits for freshwater eco- system and potential impact evaluation of their product or service.

In case your company owns the rights to commercialise the product or service, you can apply until the 13 December 2024 (17:00 CET). We encourage applications to be submitted as early as possible to allow for any correction of missing data.

(Note:  both forms are externaly hosted by Connectology via GoogleDocs)