Deadline: December 3, 2025
Applications are open for the Google News Initiative JournalismAI Innovation Challenge 2025. The JournalismAI Innovation Challenge, supported by the Google News Initiative, is a programme to fund projects from a wide range of news publishers to foster AI literacy and implementation through targeted innovation and experimentation. This nine-month long programme is designed by the JournalismAI team, an initiative of Polis, the journalism think-tank at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and supported by the Google News Initiative.
Following the success of the first cohort of the Innovation Challenge, and as part of their continued efforts to foster AI literacy, implementation and experimentation, they are excited to launch the second edition of this programme. The programme is targeted at small and medium-sized news publishers who are already exploring the possibilities of AI technologies. This year, they will support up to 12 news organisations who will use AI technologies to enhance and improve audience intelligence and revenue growth.
Grant
Grants will be awarded as follows:
- 8 ideas will receive US $50,000 each
- 4 ideas will receive US $100,000 each
Eligibility
- Government-owned entities or entities affiliated/owned by a political party are not eligible to apply.
- Eligible applicants must have a verifiable digital presence (such as a website primarily providing journalistic content) and have been in full operation – and active with recent content – for at least 12 months preceding the call for applications.
- Eligible applicants must be small and medium-sized news publishers (10-200 personnel) that are already exploring the possibilities of AI technologies.
- Eligible applicants must be able to launch, implement, and measure the impact of the grant on their organisation within a maximum nine (9) month period.
- This is not a reporting or storytelling grant and funding must not be used to report and produce stories primarily. Eligible grants should not focus on the creation of tools for newsgathering, verifying information, fact-checking, detecting misinformation or original journalism. Eligible ideas will utilise AI for audience intelligence and revenue growth.
- You are willing to share business insights and openly collaborate with other grantees, as well as track results throughout and submit a report of your performance at the end of the programme.
- Note that only publishers whose primary focus is news publication will be considered.
- Publishers who were awarded grants as part of the first JournalismAI Innovation Challenge are not eligible to apply to this challenge.
Eligible Geographies
Geographically, news organisations must be owned and operating in the following countries, where they primarily serve the citizens of the country where they are based:
- Asia Pacific: Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam
- Europe: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom.
- Middle East and Africa: Kenya, Nigeria, Turkey, UAE.
- United States
- Latin America: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay.
Application
For more information, visit JournalismAI Innovation Challenge.
