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The winners of the 2026 Global Change Award (GCA) focus on emissions-intensive challenges, such as those in material production and wet processing. Projects feature next-generation materials and bio-based alternatives as well as advances in textile-to-textile recycling and low-impact production.
The GCA is an annual award given out by the H&M Foundation to early-stage innovators in the textile industry working in sustainable materials and processes, responsible production, mindful consumption, and what the foundation calls “wildcards,” or “ideas that don’t fit neatly into other categories but show strong potential to shift the system.”
“The solutions we need already exist; what’s missing is speed and scale,” says Karl-Johan Persson, board member, H&M Foundation. “By supporting changemakers at an early stage, we can help unlock the kind of innovations that don’t just improve the textile industry but transform it.”
Winners this year include:
• Agro-Lyocell by Canvaloop (India): Turns agricultural waste into textile fibers, replacing wood-based inputs
• Alu (U.S.): Uses psychology and artificial intelligence to make consumer-interactive digital product passports drive circular behavior
• ArtSilk (Sweden): Creates spider silk-inspired fibers using microorganisms
• EntroMetrix (U.K.): Develops its own AI models to optimize energy and material use in manufacturing
• Fiberly (France): Turns textile waste into precision-engineered, cotton-like fibers
• KelTex (Tanzania): Turns seaweed into biodegradable leather alternatives
• MicroBlue by Microbeworks (India): Biodegradable dyes that work in existing dyeing systems
• RheaCycle™ by Rhea’s Factory (U.S.): Uses AI-designed enzymes to break down polyester waste to create new feedstock
• Tera Mira (U.K.): Turns seaweed into stretch fibers, replacing elastane
• threadBridge: (Bangladesh): Brings real-time defect detection to factory floors using smart glasses
Each year, 10 Global Change Award winners receive a €200,000 grant ($227,599) and take part in the yearlong Changemaker Programme designed in collaboration with Accenture and KTH Royal Institute of Technology. The program provides support across three tracks: personal development, systems thinking and idea refinement.
The goal of the GCA is to accelerate innovation to support the textile industry in halving its greenhouse gas emissions every decade, to reach net zero by 2050.
Check out cutting-edge research, projects and art in the Swatches section of Specialty Fabrics Review each month.
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