The 2026 Money Awareness and Inclusion Awards have attracted their strongest field yet, with finalists spanning 41 countries across 17 categories.
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, April 7, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — The 2026 Money Awareness and Inclusion Awards have attracted their strongest field yet, with finalists spanning 41 countries across 17 categories. Entries are up 12% on 2025, but the finalist pool has grown by 29%, a sign, perhaps, that the quality and ambition of financial education initiatives around the world is deepening as fast as the field itself is growing.
A Truly Global Competition
While the US, UK and Australia account for the largest share of finalists, the 2026 edition reveals a remarkable depth of geographic spread. Singapore has 8 finalists, while Kenya, Papua New Guinea, Palestine, Mongolia and Nepal all feature, reflecting the MAIAs‘ growing reach into developing economies and underserved communities.
MAIA co-founder, Michael Gilmore said: “Among the entries that moved us most was a programme delivering financial education to adolescents in Palestine, Yemen and Syria. It just shows how financial education belongs everywhere, even in, perhaps especially in, the most difficult, damaged places on earth.”
The Categories Tell Their Own Story
The growth in finalists across categories reflects both the broadening and deepening of the global financial education movement. Non-Profit Under-Served Communities is up strongly from 10 to 15 finalists, and the Non-Profit School-Age category has grown from 13 to 16. Non-Profit Adult Financial Education is up from 8 to 10, and the Non-Profit Developing Economy category also reaches 10 finalists, up from 7. Content Creators is up from 8 to 11, and Best Educator from 6 to 8, reflecting the growing diversity of how financial education is being delivered. The MAIAs also received the most solid set of finalists ever across its Special Categories, including Green Financial Literacy, Crypto-Education and Anti-Scam.
The Scale of Impact
The 2026 finalists collectively represent an estimated 3.7 million people reached through their financial education work, a figure that spans school pupils in Czechia and Mongolia, pension scheme members in Kenya, anti-scam programme participants across ten countries, and university students from the Americas to Southeast Asia. That number is deliberately conservative: it excludes social media impressions, projected future reach, and entries where no reliable figure was available. The true reach of the 2026 finalist community is almost certainly considerably higher.
What the Numbers Mean
Behind the statistics are organisations doing remarkable work across an extraordinary range of contexts, from primary schools to informal workers, from anti-scam education to entrepreneurship programmes embedded in universities. The diversity of approach, geography and target audience on display in the 2026 field is arguably the MAIAs’ most powerful statement: that financial education is a global imperative, and that the people responding to it come from every corner of the world.
The 2026 judging process, handled by a panel of 23 international experts, will begin shortly, and the winners announced at the end of May. Follow the MAIAs to find out more.
Michael Gilmore
The Money Awareness and Inclusion Awards
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