The Helmholtz Software Award emphasises the often underestimated contributions of software developers in the association.
Research software is an indispensable tool in modern science and offers great potential for reuse in research projects and technology transfer. The Helmholtz Software Award aims to promote the development of professional and high-quality research software and to make the dedication of developers in the association visible.
The award focuses on the sustainable development and application of research software as well as cooperation between software developers. At the same time, the award is intended to help make research software usable for other areas of application.
The Helmholtz Software Award is a cooperation between HIDA, HIFIS, the HiRSE project and the Helmholtz Open Science Office.
Categories
Software applications and scientific communities are very diverse, so a single award cannot cover the entire variety. To ensure that this potential is fully exploited, different aspects of research software development are recognized and the prize is awarded in three categories:
Best Scientific Software
This prize is awarded for the innovative contribution and the scientific results
achieved with the softwareSustainability
This prize is awarded for software that is sustainable in the sense of software engineering according to the FAIR principles and for extensive support and participation of the scientific community.
Newcomer
This prize is awarded for young software solutions with great potential and a visible growth rate in application. It can be of particular interest to doctoral students or junior research groups.
Prize
The prize is meant to support the scientific work of the winners. The winners receive a one-off
prize money which they can use for their own scientific purposes:
- 5.000 Euro for Best Scientific Software
- 3.000 Euro for Sustainability
- 2.000 Euro for Newcomer
Target Group
The Helmholtz Software Award will be granted to Helmholtz scientists, engineers and teams (including PhD students) developing outstanding software solutions.
All information on application can be found here!
Timeline
- 26.02.2026: Publication of the call
- 17.04.2026: Deadline for the nomintion of a maximum of three candidated per center
- 01.05.2026: Deadline for the application via the application platform
- Oktober 2026: Presentation of the Helmholtz Software Award. The time and place of the award
ceremony will be announced in good time.
If you have any questions or suggestions regarding the award, please contact us at open-science@helmholtz.de
The Helmholtz Software Award will be presented for the third time this year. Read more about last year’s winners here!
A cooperation between
