The National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens (EMST) has won the 2026 European Art Museum Award, presented by the European Museum Academy at its annual awards ceremony in Alicante, Spain. The prizes were handed over on September 26, placing the Athens museum among six finalists that included the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Rotterdam's FENIX Museum of Migration and the National Gallery of Slovenia in Ljubljana. The award honours institutions that present art in innovative contexts and use it to address contemporary social issues, with judging criteria built around social justice, participation, inclusion, gender equality, community building and sustainability. EMST's artistic director, Katerina Gregos, accepted the distinction, which crowns five years of renewal and stronger international outreach for the museum. During that period the museum has run a series of thematic programme cycles, including Statecraft, an examination of nation-building, power and governance; Modern Love (or Love in the Age of Cold Intimacies), on intimacy in the digital age; and What if Women Ruled the World?, which filled the museum with work by women artists for more than a year. More recent chapters have included Why Look at Animals? A Case for the Rights of Non-Human Lives and the current programme, The Cosmopolitans, which takes up belonging and cultural exchange at a moment of rising nationalism. Greece's culture minister, Lina Mendoni, congratulated the museum, calling the award an important moment for Greek culture and noting that the museum's international trajectory shows the country producing and supporting contemporary creation, not only preserving ancient heritage. The distinction is widely read as confirmation that EMST now ranks among Europe's leading contemporary institutions.