‘We are not powerless, not without agency’: take up the 2026 Bertha Challenge

Bertha Foundation

The 2026 Bertha Challenge has issued a call for applications, this year opening the process to filmmakers and lawyers alongside investigative journalists and activists to apply with a body of work speaking clearly to the question for 2026:

We acknowledge this as an era of emergency. The Bertha Challenge has always called for projects that investigate and expose the intersection between power, politics and profit and how that junction exacerbates the climate crisis.

This year, we are extending the framework of our question beyond the climate crisis.

Around the world we are watching a rapid dismantling of democracies that were already tenuous in their ability to be representative. This takes different forms of hybrid regimes, where there remain nods to democracy. However, the real power is shifting away from governments with checks and balances and towards ethno-nationalism and patriarchy.

That power is being supported – sometimes in the shadows and sometimes overtly – by the wealthiest men and corporations on earth, whose goal is to protect their profit and not the people that governments are meant to serve.

The playbook is to attack a free press, the rule of law and civil society’s ability to organise. The most brutal embodiment of this is the genocide against Palestinians, with people who do not want this genocide enacted in their name feeling powerless as they watch their protests criminalised and their governments continue to send arms and money that enables the killing of innocent civilians. 

We are not powerless and we are not without agency. In this world order, we are looking for stories that expose the corruption and collusion between these hybrid regimes, oligarchs and corporations

We are interested in work that confronts the tech firms, the new age robber barons, the military and authoritarian leaders who are creating a world in which data and surveillance are cementing a new feudal system.

This is a call to those of you deeply rooted within communities who are organising in defence of human rights, the rule of law and a free press.

We know that systemic change happens by disruption, that power is never ceded and that institutions can’t defend themselves – people have to defend them. We’ve seen from our Bertha Challenge Fellows over the years that a one year programme is often only a stepping stone towards your work having an impact beyond the Fellowship year.

We know that one year can never be long enough except for doing the foundational work towards change. Our ideal applicants are journalists, activists, filmmakers and lawyers engaged in the long game of holding the line to do fact-based investigations that strengthen the communities and groups fighting back.