The Laureus Awards will once again place one of their most meaningful spotlights this year far from medals, records or the biggest stars. The Laureus Sport for Good Award 2026 once again brings together organisations that use sport as a tool for inclusion, protection and support in contexts shaped by disability, educational poverty, violence, urban exclusion or childhood vulnerability. More than a list of inspiring projects, the shortlist works as a portrait of everything sport can do when it stops being measured only in victories.

That is, in fact, the deeper meaning of this nomination. While other categories reward performance, what matters here is something else: the ability to sustain communities, open safe spaces, improve coexistence, work on emotional wellbeing or provide continuity for children and young people growing up in fragile environments. This year’s six nominees do so through very different languages, from neighbourhood-based multi-sport programmes to social boxing, from tennis in public housing to dance as an educational pathway, rugby as psychosocial intervention and community football turned into an international methodology.

Six nominations that show sport at its most important beyond the scoreboard

In Turin, A.S.D. Gruppo Sportivo Valanga is probably the nominee most deeply rooted in the neighbourhood and the least recognisable through the logic of a major brand. Its work combines sport, territory and social support for children living with disability, school absenteeism, educational poverty or the risk of marginalisation in areas such as Borgo Vittoria and Vallette. Laureus presents it as a structure that uses athletics, basketball, dance and skiing to improve the physical and mental wellbeing of young people with disabilities, but the project’s most distinctive feature seems to lie elsewhere: in the way it operates close to families, not selling itself as a universal model but as a stable presence within the neighbourhood. One of the images that best captures that logic is its collaboration with Paralympian Massimo Giandinoto, invited to spend time with the children in the programme in a scene that feels simple and powerful, more connected to belonging and continuity than to a one-off event.

Also born from a community setting, though with a much broader reach, Fútbol Más turns play into an educational and emotional tool with international scope. Founded in Chile in 2008, the project works through socio-sport sessions and has made the Green Card its defining educational identity: a card that does not punish negative behaviour, but instead recognises prosocial conduct linked to respect, joy, responsibility, creativity and teamwork. Over time it stopped being a neighbourhood-based Chilean initiative and expanded across countries in Africa, Europe and Latin America, working in neighbourhoods, schools, residential settings and humanitarian contexts. Among the anecdotes that best reflect its philosophy is the visibility the Green Card gained during the 2015 Copa América, when it was used as a gesture of respect during the national anthems and helped project, across the continent, a methodology that is now understood not simply as community football, but as an intervention in coexistence, mental health and integration.

From public space to the neighbourhood gym: sport where the city needs it most

In Brooklyn, Kings County Tennis League begins with an almost foundational scene that explains the project on its own. Its founder, Michael McCasland, was playing on a deteriorated court near Marcy Houses when direct contact with children and families in the area eventually led to summer lessons on that very same court. That story matters because it neatly captures what makes the organisation different: it was not born out of a traditional club or academy, but out of public space and a community with no real access to the sport. Today the project reuses courts inside public housing areas to offer free tennis instruction and life-skills development, while also leaving a very visible physical mark on the neighbourhood. The reopening of the court at Marcy Playground and the expansion at De Hostos Park show that its impact is not limited to training young people, but also transforms deteriorated urban corners into safe, accessible and recognisable spaces for the community.

In Tacubaya, in Mexico City, Transformación Social TRASO works in a different setting, but with a similar logic of local rootedness. Its main tool is boxing, alongside other contact disciplines, in one of the most vulnerable and violent areas of the Mexican capital. Laureus describes it as an organisation that tackles deeply embedded problems in the neighbourhood’s social fabric, such as substance use, violence, poverty and early exposure to criminal dynamics. What stands out most about TRASO is that it does not remain within the classic image of the gym as a place of discipline or physical release, but connects that space to broader support and to professional group therapy sessions for children and teenagers. That alliance between the community organisation and Box Gym Lupita, a gym with decades of boxing history, explains why the nomination is so distinctive: it does not only train, it also contains, guides and offers a support structure in a neighbourhood that has often appeared in public conversation for very different reasons.

When sport also becomes a way to measure confidence, autonomy and future

MindLeaps may offer the most structured and least intuitive model on the entire shortlist, precisely because it does not treat dance as an end in itself, but as a gateway to education, employability and autonomy. Founded in 2005 and now internationally present, the organisation combines its Dance & Data programme with mentoring, school access, family work and, in some countries, support towards employment or micro-enterprise. Its most distinctive feature is the way it tries to measure participants’ socio-emotional and cognitive progress in concrete terms, something still unusual in this kind of initiative. Yet even within that methodological architecture, its most eloquent story remains deeply human: that of Emmy Turikumwe, who began as a student in 2009, graduated, joined the organisation and eventually became a director in Rwanda. That journey, from beneficiary to programme leader, says more than any figure could about the ambition behind MindLeaps.

Rugby for Good, in Hong Kong, also understands sport as something more than physical activity or group entertainment. It presents itself as the city’s first charity specifically focused on sport and has built a broad network with projects across 18 districts, hundreds of partner schools and tens of thousands of beneficiaries. Within that structure, one of its most distinctive programmes works with children with ADHD and their families, using rugby and structured play to develop emotional and social skills. The value of the project can be seen precisely in those small daily changes that often stay outside major headlines: on its own website, a participant explains that he now has fewer tantrums and better self-control on the field. That is one of the keys to this nomination: showing that sport can also become a very concrete tool for regulation, connection and learning for profiles that have not always found a place in community sport.

The category that best explains what sport is for beyond success

Taken as a whole, the shortlist for the Laureus Sport for Good Award 2026 does not reward a single model, but several ways of understanding sport’s social impact. Valanga brings neighbourhood closeness and multi-sport support; Fútbol Más, a recognisable and exportable methodology that has turned the Green Card into a symbol; Kings County Tennis League, the combination of free access and urban-space recovery; MindLeaps, the measurement of change and long-term pathways; Rugby for Good, a highly structured psychosocial intervention; and TRASO, the hybrid value of a gym turned into a community refuge. They are very different projects, but all share something essential: they do not wait for children and young people to arrive at sport under ideal conditions, but instead bring sport to places where reality is harder.

That is probably what makes this category one of the most relevant in the entire Laureus ecosystem. At a time when much of elite sport is measured in audiences, contracts or trophy counts, these nominations bring attention back to another scale of success: school retention, self-esteem, coexistence, emotional wellbeing, access to safe spaces or the possibility of imagining a different future. There, far from the champion’s photo, sport continues to find one of its deepest reasons for being.