About the Longitude Prize
The world’s most prestigious technology prize
What is a Longitude Prize?
The original Longitude Prize, established in 1714, offered a £20,000 reward for a reliable method to determine a ship’s longitude at sea. Reimagined by Challenge Works, the modern Longitude Prize is a series of multi-million-pound challenge prizes designed to solve some of the 21st century’s most pressing global issues, including tackling antimicrobial resistance (AMR), dementia, and ALS.
With your help, our next Longitude Prize will be the most globally relevant, urgent, and impactful challenge, helping millions of people to experience a greater quality of life.
Longitude Prize impact
From rapid point-of-care diagnostics and AI-driven assistive tech, to open-source medical data, our Longitude Prizes have radically shortened the runway from lab to life – delivering smarter medicine, greater patient autonomy, and real hope directly to the frontlines of global health.
45 minutes
The winning diagnostic device for AMR reduced the wait time for UTI test results from 2-3 days to minutes
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People with lived experience worked alongside the Longitude Prize on Dementia teams
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Organisations from across 12 countries comprise our 20 international, Discovery Award winners in the Longitude Prize on ALS
Our Longitude Prizes
Longitude Prize on ALS
June 2025 – February 2031 | £7.5 million
The Longitude Prize on ALS is a five-year, £7 million international programme running from 2025 to 2030. This prize seeks to incentivise the use of AI-based approaches to transform therapeutic discovery for the treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the most common form of motor neurone disease (MND). Twenty pioneering, global and multidisciplinary teams have now been selected and received their Stage 1 Discovery Awards.
Longitude Prize on Dementia
September 2022 – March 2026 | £4.42 million
The Longitude Prize on Dementia grand prize of £1 million has been awarded to CrossSense for its pioneering smart glasses solution. A built-in AI-powered assistant identifies everyday objects in the user’s field of view, guiding people living with early-stage dementia through their daily activities. The winning team was announced at a celebratory event at the Design Museum in London in March 2026, and via BBC One’s The One Show.
Longitude Prize on AMR
May 2014 – September 2022 | £8 million
The £8 million Longitude Prize on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) was awarded to Sysmex Astrego for their PA-100 AST System. This game-changing solution is a novel point-of-care diagnostic test that rapidly and accurately identifies the presence of a bacterial infection and the right antibiotic to prescribe.