Wellcome and Challenge Works have today launched a global challenge prize to reward and scale practical solutions that address the major barriers to accessing snakebite treatments to stop preventable deaths and injuries.
The Wellcome Snakebite Innovation Prize will award 15 teams of innovators and on-the-ground problem solvers in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia, with up to £100,000 each in January 2027 to develop innovative solutions and community-based approaches that contribute to the WHO’s 2030 goal of reducing snakebite deaths and disabilities by 50%.
Four winning teams will go on to win between £750,000 and £1.75 million each in winter 2027 to drive the impact of their solutions.
Snakebite envenoming is a neglected public health crisis, estimated to cause over 100,000 deaths annually and leaving another 400,000 people with life-changing disabilities.
For those who survive a venomous snakebite, lasting impacts can include limb loss, lasting organ damage and PTSD. Agricultural workers and children are some of the most affected with children often suffering more severe effects than adults.
Most snakebite deaths and disabilities are preventable, but people affected often cannot reach the right care fast enough. The prize is seeking innovative approaches that close the gap between the bite and access to effective emergency care - the critical hours where speed, transport and community response can determine survival.
George Phillips, Senior Research Manager for Snakebite at Wellcome said:
“Vitally important work is being done to improve existing antivenoms and develop new treatments for snakebites. However, there remains an urgent need for technological, social and system-level solutions to maximise the reach of these treatments and ultimately improve health outcomes for people most at risk. To contribute to the WHO’s ambitious target of halving snakebite deaths and disabilities by 2030, we must solve the challenges across the patient journey that prevent or limit access to treatments in the first place.”
The Wellcome Snakebite Innovation Prize will support innovations across the snakebite patient journey, including:
First aid response: Immediate, informed, and accurate community and health worker responses with improved first aid tools or methods.
Access and logistics: Getting people who have been bitten to appropriate emergency medical care or bringing appropriate care closer to patients faster.
Assessment and diagnosis: Supporting clinical decision-making pathways by understanding patient need and treatment required.
Emergency and supportive care: Addressing the venom’s effects on the patient, including timely pain management and resuscitation, knowledge of proper antivenom administration, management of adverse reactions, ancillary care, and wound management.
To save lives, the prize is seeking teams that bring together diverse perspectives to solve the complexities of snakebite challenges, connecting innovators with lived-experience partners and organisations to codesign solutions. Successful solutions must be centred around the end users, including people bitten by snakes and healthcare workers, so that they meaningfully contribute towards improving the outcomes for people bitten by snakes.
To ensure lasting impact, solutions must be culturally relevant to maximise the chances of adoption and demonstrate a credible path toward long-term sustainability (for example, having local public health authority buy-in). Finalist teams will be provided with funding and an innovator support package to meet these aims during the development period.
The prize is structured as 3 key phases:
Phase 1 Entry:
17 June 2026 | Prize opens.
June – Sept 2026 | Entrant support. Three months of webinars, matchmaking, and SnakeHacks
16 Sept 2026 | Entry deadline.
Phase 2 Finalists’ development phase:
29 Jan 2027 | Finalists announced: Up to 15 teams selected £1.25M total funding awarded (£75K for 10 Launch teams, £100K for 5 Growth teams).
Jan – Oct 2027 | Cohort development. A 10-month period for finalists to utilise funding and advance their solutions.
October 2027 | Finalist Deadline: The 15 finalists submit their refined solutions for judging.
Phase 3 Winners’ development phase:
December 2027 | Winners announced. Up to 4 teams awarded a share of £5M (£750K each for 2 Launch winners, £1.75M each for 2 Growth winners).
Dec 2027 – Dec 2030 | Scale & implementation. Three-year phase for winners to prepare for implementation or achieve full-scale, sustainable operations before the prize concludes.
Timeline of the Prize:
Caroline Purslow, Head of Health, Challenge Works said:
“Challenge prizes are an incredible method of innovation to bring new ideas and new people together around underserved issues, just like snakebite. We want to bring innovators from across the globe into snakebite, partner them with people that already have a deep understanding of the field, and provide support and financing to stimulate their innovation journey.
Snakebite is an underserved and forgotten area of global health. An innovation prize can open up snakebite and bring in new ideas and fresh thinking, and really stimulate the progress towards the World Health Organisation’s goals of reducing morbidity and mortality by 50% by 2030.”
The prize is open to new solutions and those ready to expand operations and achieve greater impact. While all innovators will be working to the same challenge, criteria and timeline, the prize is offering two tracks to best support the development of solutions at different stages:
The Launch Track is designed to support teams to transform new ideas into proof of concepts and then into viable solutions. Whether a team is developing a brand new idea or significantly adapting an existing solution for snakebite care, this track will support them to take an initial design through to feasibility testing. Early ideas are welcome and supported.
The Growth Track is designed to support tested solutions to be further developed, fully validated, implemented, and scaled to fundamentally improve outcomes for snakebite patients.
The prize has partnered with Appropedia, Villgro Africa, MRFRI & Villgro Philippines during our three-month entry period to ensure innovators based in regions most affected by snakebite are supported to develop solutions for the prize.
Entries to the Wellcome Snakebite Innovation Prize are open to international organisations from today until 16 September 2026.
