Celebrating a Decade of Ending Rabies: Highlights from the 10th World Rabies Day Awards

The tenth World Rabies Day (WRD) Awards continued to shine a global spotlight on the remarkable individuals working in their communities to eliminate rabies. Supported again by Boehringer Ingelheim, the 2025 Awards underscored the power of community-driven action, and the critical role local champions play.

This milestone year saw unprecedented engagement. We received a total of 106 nominations from 37 countries, almost double the number of nominations from 2024. We are excited to share that this year also high the highest number of nominations for the past five years. The global community could nominate their favorite rabies champions in four long-standing categories:

• Veterinary Clinic Champion.
• Animal Welfare Champion.
• Education Champion.
• Vaccination Champion.

As with previous years, the judging process remained rigorous and collaborative, involving independent experts, representatives from partner organizations, and members from the GARC team. As in previous years, public voting acted as the equivalent of a fifth judging position. WE believe this an approach encourages nominees to actively mobilize their communities to get involved in World Rabies Day. We are excited to share that we had the highest number of recorded votes to date: We received 6426 votes for the four categories.

On World Rabies Day, 28 September 2025, we released the shortlist of nominated candidates and actively encouraged our global community to start voting. And our community delivered! We announced our final awardees on One Health Day, 3 November, representing excellence in each of the four award categories. Each awardee receives USD1,500 in cash and USD1,500 in in-kind support, including tailored training and access to GARC’s data tools. Their stories and dedication to eliminating rabies serve to inspire and motivate communities everywhere. In case you missed it, you can read more about each shortlisted candidate here.

As the Awards evolve, we are already reviewing the Awards and the Awards process for 2026. We want to ensure that the process for the next 10 years will ensure fairness, enhance clarity, and better reflect the diverse contexts in which our rabies champions work.

The success of the tenth WRD Awards affirms the important message that WRD has for everyone: Global rabies elimination is only possible when dedicated individuals work tirelessly in their communities. We are proud to recognize and celebrate their achievements through the WRD Awards. We will continue working towards a world free from dog-mediated rabies in 2026: One champion at a time.

These activities were supported by Boehringer Ingelheim.