The UAE’s biggest celebration of corporate sustainability has returned, and this year again the public gets a direct say in who advances. Majra, the National CSR Fund, has opened public voting for the second edition of its Sustainable Impact Challenge (SIC 2026), and the window is short. Voting runs from 10 June to 30 June 2026, after which the most-supported projects move forward to expert review.
If you care about who is genuinely moving the needle on sustainability in the Emirates, this is the moment to make it count.
What the Sustainable Impact Challenge is
Majra is the UAE’s federal CSR fund, set up to amplify corporate social responsibility, ESG and sustainability work across the private and third sectors and align it with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and national priorities. The Sustainable Impact Challenge is its flagship programme: a nationwide search for the CSR and sustainability projects creating the most measurable, real-world impact in the country.
The 2026 edition is open to UAE-licensed private and third-sector organisations, academic institutions and social entrepreneurs. To qualify, a project has to tackle a tangible challenge in the UAE and have been ongoing or completed during 2025, so every entry represents work that is already underway, not just a promise on paper.
What's at stake
The numbers are serious. SIC 2026 is offering over AED 1 million in total cash prizes, alongside national recognition and official certification. The top three projects share the bulk of the prize pool:
- First place — AED 500,000
- Second place — AED 250,000
- Third place — AED 100,000
Beyond the cash, the top 100 voted projects can earn Majra’s official Qualification Certificate and Verification Stamp credentials that carry real weight when an organisation is trying to prove its impact to partners, investors and the wider market. The top 20 are honoured at an award ceremony, with the winners announced at the Impact Summit later in 2026.
How the voting works and why it matters
This is a two-stage process, and the public stage comes first.
- Public voting (now through 30 June). Every project in the challenge is published on Majra’s platform for anyone to browse and support. The top 100 projects by public vote are shortlisted and advance.
- Expert review. Majra and a panel of subject-matter experts then assess the shortlisted projects on the strength of their evidence, the scale and scope of their impact, and their contribution to national priorities, selecting the top 20 and, ultimately, the winners.
In other words, public votes are the gatekeeper. A brilliant project that nobody rallies behind can miss the cut entirely. With 198 projects in the running this year, your vote genuinely helps decide which initiatives get the recognition and funding to scale.
Voting is quick: browse the projects, select the ones you want to back, and submit. You verify with an email, and each person can vote once per project.
Cast your vote on the official Majra platform before 30 June 2026.
From our pages to the winners' podium
We have a soft spot for this challenge at Sustainable Dubai. When we covered the inaugural Sustainable Impact Challenge in 2025, we spotlighted a handful of homegrown startups we believed were doing standout work, and one of them, HeroGo, went on to win the whole thing.
HeroGo, the UAE’s food-tech platform rescuing surplus groceries and selling them at reduced prices, took first place in the 2025 edition. In 2024 alone, the company diverted more than 410 tonnes of food from landfill, created the equivalent of a million meals and cut over 1,000 tonnes of CO₂ a textbook example of a circular food economy strengthening national food security. (As a past first-place winner, HeroGo isn’t eligible to re-enter the 2026 cycle, which makes room for a new wave of innovators to be recognised.)
That’s exactly why the public vote matters. The next HeroGo is somewhere in this year’s list of 198, and it needs visibility to get there.
Green innovators to back in 2026
These are a couple of the projects we’re encouraging our community to explore and support this year:
- Goshopia: Fashion Revolution UAE. Running since 2019, this community-impact initiative rallies UAE shoppers and brands around transparency and ethics in clothing, pushing the industry to answer “who made my clothes?” and inspiring a shift away from fast fashion toward conscious, lower-impact style.
- The Waste Lab: closing the food-waste loop. This women-led, Dubai-based startup collects segregated food and organic waste from businesses and communities, composts it in-house, and returns it to local farms. To date, it has diverted more than 10 million kg of food waste, produced over 1.5 million kg of local compost, and created 60 green jobs.
- Thrift for Good: transforming fashion waste into children’s futures. Founded in 2020, Thrift for Good is a UAE-based charitable circular-fashion initiative operating four preloved clothing stores across Dubai. By rescuing quality clothing from landfill and giving it a second life, the project turns overconsumption into community impact, reducing fashion waste while funding programmes that support children in need.
- Recall: Biodiversity Bootcamp. From the Dubai platform behind the “Recoins” recycling-rewards app, a hands-on programme that helps the community understand and protect the UAE’s native ecosystems, turning everyday environmental awareness into practical action.
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We Are Tech (WAT): E-Waste Reduction & Recycling. Since 2023, We Are Tech FZ LLC has been building circular infrastructure for the UAE’s tech industry, helping businesses and communities manage electronics at end-of-life through secure collection, data handling, repair, refurbishment and responsible recycling. The project tackles one of the country’s fastest-growing waste streams by keeping devices in use for longer and ensuring unusable electronics are processed through safer, more transparent channels.
Whichever projects move you most, the principle is the same: a few minutes of your time can help a genuinely impactful initiative reach the top 100.
Don't wait: voting closes 30 June
Public voting closes on 30 June 2026 at 11:59 PM (UAE time). After that, the shortlist is locked, and the decision passes to the expert panel. If there’s a project whose work you admire, or one of your own, now is the time to rally your network behind it.
Vote now on the Majra platform →
Sustainability in the UAE isn’t a spectator sport. This is one of the rare moments where showing up, with few clicks, actually shapes the outcome.
Sustainable Dubai champions the people and companies building a greener UAE. Follow us for more on the innovators shaping the country’s sustainable future.
