Awards Record

Mathematics

Fields Medal: winners and how it is awarded

The Fields Medal, first awarded in 1936, is given by the International Mathematical Union every four years at the International Congress of Mathematicians to up to four mathematicians who meet an age limit tied to their 40th birthday.1,2

Awarded byInternational Mathematical Union (IMU)
Established1936
FrequencyEvery four years, at the International Congress of Mathematicians
Prize valueMedal and CA$15,000 (amount since 2006, per Wikipedia). The IMU overview page does not state a cash amount (as of 27 October 2026)

How the winner is chosen

A Fields Medal Committee chosen by the IMU Executive Committee and normally chaired by the IMU President selects the medallists. The chair's name is public but other members stay anonymous until the awards are announced at the Congress. The committee is asked to choose at least two, with a strong preference for four, and a candidate's 40th birthday must not occur before 1 January of the Congress year.

Winners

  1. 2026Yu Deng1,2Work on partial differential equations, including a rigorous derivation of the Boltzmann equation
  2. 2026John Pardon1,2Symplectic geometry, including new approaches to virtual fundamental cycles
  3. 2026Jacob Tsimerman1,2Developing o-minimality as a method in arithmetic and complex algebraic geometry
  4. 2026Hong Wang1,2Harmonic analysis and geometric measure theory, including advances on the Kakeya problem in three dimensions
  5. 2022Hugo Duminil-Copin1,2Solving long standing problems on phase transitions in statistical physics
  6. 2022June Huh1,2Applying Hodge theory to combinatorics
  7. 2022James Maynard1,2Advances in analytic number theory on the structure of primes and Diophantine approximation
  8. 2022Maryna Viazovska1,2Proving that the E8 lattice gives the densest packing of identical spheres in 8 dimensions
  9. 2018Caucher Birkar1,2Proof of the boundedness of Fano varieties and contributions to the minimal model program
  10. 2018Alessio Figalli1,2Contributions to optimal transport and its applications
  11. 2018Peter Scholze1,2Transforming arithmetic algebraic geometry over p-adic fields
  12. 2018Akshay Venkatesh1,2Synthesising analytic number theory, homogeneous dynamics, topology and representation theory
  13. 2014Artur Avila, Manjul Bhargava, Martin Hairer, Maryam Mirzakhani1Fields Medal 2014

Notable facts

The IMU records that Grigori Perelman declined the Fields Medal in 2006. He also did not attend the Congress.1,2

In 1998 the IMU offered Andrew J. Wiles a silver plaque as a special tribute.1

Alexander Grothendieck boycotted the 1966 Moscow Congress, and Sergei Novikov (1970) and Grigory Margulis (1978) could not travel to receive their medals because of Soviet government restrictions.2

The chair of the 2026 Fields Medal Committee was Hiraku Nakajima.1

Sources

  1. International Mathematical Union, Fields Medal (27 October 2026)
  2. Wikipedia, Fields Medal (27 October 2026)