Antwerp will host the 2027 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony

The Ig Nobel Prizes recognise research that, in the organisers’ familiar formulation, first makes people laugh and then makes them think. They are not part of the Nobel institutions in Sweden and Norway, and winning one is not equivalent to receiving a Nobel Prize. They nevertheless concern genuine research, often published in academic journals, and the ceremonies have regularly involved actual Nobel laureates as presenters.

Marc Abrahams founded the awards in 1991 and remains their master of ceremonies. His organisation, Improbable Research, says the event is designed to celebrate unusual achievements, honour imagination and draw people into science. The theatrical conventions—including paper aeroplanes, deliberately compressed lectures and improbable props—are therefore part of a science-communication format rather than evidence that the underlying work is fictitious.

The 2026 winners illustrate the range. Associated Press reporting described recognised work on subjects including cockroach milk, nose-blowing, the evolutionary history of kissing and an international experiment that used buried underwear to examine biological activity in soil. The immediate joke makes such studies accessible; the second step is to ask what their methods or findings reveal about nutrition, health, behaviour or ecosystems.

That combination helps explain why an Antwerp edition could attract more than specialists. It is likely to interest researchers and students, but also families, teachers, international residents and visitors who would not ordinarily attend an academic prize ceremony. The University of Antwerp described its 2026 watch party as open to everyone with an interest in science, suggesting that the local audience already extends beyond the university community.

For most of its first 35 years, the event was associated with universities in the Boston area, including Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston University; the pandemic-era ceremonies from 2020 to 2023 were held online. Europe became the centre of the live event in 2026 after organisers raised concerns about whether international guests could travel safely and obtain permission to enter the United States.

In March 2026, Abrahams told the Associated Press that the organisation could not in good conscience ask winners and international journalists to travel to the US under the prevailing conditions. Four of the ten winning teams in 2025 had declined to attend in Boston, according to the same report. The Zurich ceremony was organised with institutions in the ETH Domain and the University of Zurich, establishing a European base from which the event can now rotate.

The relocation reveals something larger than the fate of one eccentric awards night. International science depends on the movement of researchers across borders, and even a playful ceremony is vulnerable when visa access becomes uncertain. Antwerp’s selection gives Belgium a modest but visible role in that shift: the city is not replacing the United States as a scientific centre, but it will temporarily become the meeting place for a global science-communication community.

The awards and webcast operate principally in English, making the event relatively accessible to Antwerp’s international population. Local information from the University of Antwerp and the Stad Antwerpen or Antwerpen.be portals may initially appear in Dutch, the official administrative language of the city. Visitors encountering references to a gemeente should understand that this is the Dutch term for a municipality or commune; Antwerp is both a city and a municipality divided into districts.

No language certificate, Belgian residence document or municipal registration is normally relevant to attending an ordinary public cultural event, but the eventual organiser may require advance registration and could impose age or capacity conditions. International visitors should consult Belgium’s official federal information portal for current entry requirements applicable to their nationality, rather than assuming that a conference ticket confers a right of entry. People already living in Belgium will probably find Antwerp straightforward to reach by train, but travel advice should wait until the venue and finishing time are known.

The most useful next step is to monitor the Upcoming Events page at Improbable Research and the events or press pages of the University of Antwerp. A confirmed date, host institution, venue capacity, accessibility information, ticket price, webcast arrangements and programme remain outstanding. The organisers’ 2026 calendar already lists activities for 2027 but, as of 3 September 2026, does not yet provide an Antwerp ceremony listing with those practical details.

For Antwerp, the prize is less a conventional gala than an invitation to place curiosity in public view. The city has secured the event; the questions now are where it will fit, how many people will be able to attend and whether its characteristic mixture of rigorous research and elaborate silliness can make the journey from a watch party to a full Belgian ceremony.