Deadline: February 2, 2026
Applications are open for the Female Founder Award 2026. The Female Founder Award celebrates women leading innovative startups that are driving the disruptive technologies shaping the future.
While female-founded companies still receive only 12% of venture funding, it’s time to help women make their voices heard. The Female Founder Challenge was created 8 years ago to empower women entrepreneurs by facilitating networking opportunities, raising brand awareness, and providing access to funding. The five finalists will be invited to pitch in June at VivaTech 2026.
Benefits
- For the Top 30 Female Founders: One VivaTech Startup Pass
- For the 5 finalists
- Pitch your solution in front of a jury of top decision makers and investors
- One-to-one meetings with VCs
- Strong visibility across VivaTech’s communication channels
- Two VivaTech Startup Passes
- For the Winner
- Pitch your solution during the VivaTech Global Awards Ceremony
- Fundraising coaching by IRIS (from pitch deck revamp to intros to VCs)
- Extensive visibility
- A free Startup Corner at 2026 VivaTech
- A 5-month business development mentoring program with Forvis Mazars XFactory
Eligibility
- Open to all female founders, co-founders, CEOs or Co-CEOs of a startup in the Tech sector wishing to raise funds. A startup refers to an independent company with a tech product, fewer than 100 employees, and which was created less than 8 years ago.
- This eighth edition of the Award also remains open to all candidates from previous editions of the Female Founder Award, except for the winners of the past editions.
- The candidate must be a natural person (and not a legal entity) over the age of 18 who has participated in the incorporation of and/or is the legal representative of the startup.
Selection Criteria
- Innovation: Level of relevance, originality and innovation demonstrated by the tech solution
- Scalability & Viability: Ability of the solution to scale while remaining technically, economically and environmentally viable
- Team Profile: Profile of the female founder(s) and co-founder(s), ability to lead the project to success, hard and soft skills of the operational team
- Business Model: Your business model demonstrated traction and product/market fit
- Impact: Solutions that contribute to improving environmental and social impact
Application
For more information, visit Female Founder Award.