They are the awards that “first make you laugh and then think,” according to their founder. The prestigious events have been held since 1991 in Massachusetts (United States); first at Harvard University, then at MIT, and then at Boston University. But its organizers have just announced that they are leaving the United States for the first time. The 36th edition of the awards will take place on September 3 in Zurich (Switzerland). In a press release, , explains: “Over the last year, visiting the country has become unsafe for our guests. We cannot in good conscience ask new winners, nor international journalists, to travel to the United States this year.”
The Ig Nobels, organized by the magazine, reward unusual scientific research with a clear vocation: to awaken curiosity about science through humor. among a rain of paper airplanes launched by the public. They included the deterrent effect on flies of cows dressing up as zebras, the predilection of lizards for four-cheese pizza or that alcohol helps to speak languages. The awards celebrate “improbable science” because it is also part of science; According to the , “the Ig Nobel Prizes are undoubtedly the most notable moment in the scientific calendar.”
Starting in September 2026, the ceremony will be held in collaboration with , such as the University of Zurich, whose epidemiologist Milo Puhan was awarded in 2017 for demonstrating that playing the didgeridoo (an Aboriginal wind instrument from northern Australia) reduces snoring and sleep apnea. “Switzerland has hosted many good and unexpected things – Albert Einstein’s physics, the global economy and the cuckoo clock – and is once again helping the world appreciate unlikely people and ideas,” says Abrahams.
The long-term plan includes alternating the venue between Zurich — every two years — and different European cities in the intervening years, “a bit like Eurovision,” according to Abrahams. The ceremony will be broadcast live on the Internet, as it has been doing since 1995. American researchers are not left without celebration: there will be an event in Boston on September 24, with previous winners. “We are simply making sure that the winners can travel and meet. Despite the strange winds that are blowing now, science, scientists and the public’s love of science are very much alive in the United States,” the note says.
Abrahams’ decision is not a symbolic gesture: it reflects a . Since then, the US Administration has canceled more than 2,400 projects from the National Institute of Health (NIH), the largest biomedical research organization in the world, and has proposed cutting its budget by 40%, from $47 billion to $27 billion. The National Science Foundation has also eliminated nearly 1.4 billion in aid. The result is a brain drain unprecedented in decades: a magazine survey Nature published in March 2025 revealed that. One in three of the beneficiaries of the Spanish researcher repatriation program Atrae, a figure that doubles that of previous editions. Added to this is an offensive against foreign researchers: last year, the Trump Administration targeted more than 600 students, professors and researchers from 90 universities. Cases such as that of , a Russian Harvard researcher detained at the Boston airport and sent to a detention center in Louisiana, have filled with doubts international scientists who want (or should) travel to the United States.
