The 2025 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded at the 35th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, on Thursday evening, September 18, 2025. The ceremony, as per tradition, also was webcast.
- Details of the Ceremony (event at Boston University — September 18, 2025)
- Ig Nobel Face-to-Face (event at MIT — September 20, 2025)
- Ig Nobel Face-to-Face (event in London — October 31, 2025)
- Ig Nobel Face-to-Face (event in Berlin — November 6, 2025)
- Ig Nobel Face-to-Face (events in Paris — December 9 and 10, 2025)
- Ig Nobel Face-to-Face (event in Tokyo — January 10, 2026)
- We Ask for Your Help: Donate to the Ig!
The basic info: The Ceremony (and webcast) on September 18, 2025
WHEN/WHERE: This year’s ceremony happened on Thursday evening, September 18, 2025, at 6:00 pm (US eastern time) in the ballroom of the George Sherman Union, at Boston University, in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, produced in cooperation with the Boston University College of Communication.
WHAT: Ten new Ig Nobel Prize winners were introduced. Each has done something that makes people LAUGH, then THINK. The prizes were handed to them by a gaggle of bemused Nobel laureates. The audience of showered them with paper airplanes.
WEBCAST: The event was livecast in English, with a soupçon of gibberish. There was a simultaneous livecast with Japanese-language captioning (in collaboration with NicoNico / Dwango), with an independent soupçon of gibberish.
(Curious about the previous year? Take a peek at the 2024 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony!)
ENGLISH WEBCAST:
JAPANESE WEBCAST:
Details of the Ceremony (event at Boston University on Thursday, September 18, 2025, 6:00 pm)
The 2024 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony (and the webcast) began at 6:00 pm (US eastern time). (NOTE: This year’s ceremony was difficult to produce, in a new way.)
It included these and other elements:
- Winners — Ten new Ig Nobel Prize winners were introduced. Each winner (or winning team) has done something that makes people LAUGH, then THINK.
- Presenters — A gaggle of genuine, genuinely bemused Nobel laureates physically handed the Ig Nobel Prizes to the new Ig Nobel winners. The presenters: Esther Duflo, Eric Maskin, Svante Pääbo, Moungi Bawendi, Robert Merton, William Kaelin.
- Brevity — Eight-year-old Miss Sweetie Poo will endeavor to keep all speeches delightfully brief, for the benefit of the speakers and the audience. [NOTE: In 2025 Miss Sweetie Poo was unable to attend the ceremony. A substitute performed the duties.]
- Theme — the theme of the 2025 ceremony us: DIGESTION.( The theme pertains to the opera and other things, but not necessarily to any of the new Ig Nobel winners.)
- Mini-Opera — A new mini-opera premiered as part of the ceremony. Called “The Plight of the Gastroenterologist”, it’s about gastroenterologists and their patients, and about digestion. And indigestion. The music is by W. Mozart and J. Brahms, the story and word by M. Abrahams. The opera stars singers Ted Sharpe, Pooja Usgaonkar, Maria Ferrante, and Dr. Abby Schiff; and musicians Ivan Gusev (piano), Dr. Julie Reimann (cello), and Dr. Thomas Michel (cardio-accordion); with a unique performances by Louise Reilly Sacco; plus guest stars; all directed by Maria Ferrante and portaborsed by Michele Liguori.
- 24/7 Lectures — Several of the world’s great thinkers told us, briefly, what they were thinking about (first in 24 seconds, then in 7 words) in the 24/7 Lectures. The 24/7 lecturers: Ben Smith,Gus Rancatore, Deborah Anderson, Trisha Pasricha.
- Paper Airplanes — Paper airplanes were thrown by the people in the room.
- A brief tribute to Tom Lehrer, who helped with many of the early Ig Nobel Prize ceremonies
- Welcome, Welcome; Goodbye, Goodbye — The traditional Welcome, Welcome Speech and the traditional Goodbye, Goodbye Speech (both of which were delivered by Barry Duncan) who maintained the standard for what welcome speeches and goodbye speeches should be.
- And other things.
Ig Nobel Face-to-Face (event at the MIT Museum on Saturday, September 20, 2025, 2:30-4:00 pm)
Two days after the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, a public event called “Ig Nobel Face-to-Face” happened — on Saturday, September 20 — at the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Many of the new winners gathered on stage, to ask each other questions about their work.
The event consisted of two sessions:
Session 1:
Marc Abrahams (Ig Nobel Prizes founder)
Karen Hopkin (moderator)
Giacomo Bartolucci (Physics Prize co-winner)
Tomoki Kojima (Biology Prize co-winner)
Gary Beauchamp (Pediatrics Prize co-winner)
Three bananas (time keepers)
Session 2:
Edmund Golaski (moderator)
Marcin Zajenkowski (Psychology Prize co-winner)
Julie Mennella (Pediatrics Prize co-winner)
Francisco Sánchez (Aviation Prize co-winner)
Three bananas (time keepers)
Ig Nobel Face-to-Face (event in London — Friday, October 31, 2025, 7:00 pm)
Ig Nobel Prize winners gathered on stage at the Royal Institution in London, UK, to ask each other questions about their work.
Ig Nobel Face-to-Face (event in Berlin — Thursday, November 6, 2025)
Ig Nobel Prize winners gathered on stage at the Falling Walls Science Summit, to ask each other questions about their work.
Ig Nobel Face-to-Face (events in Paris — Tuesday & Wednesday, December 9 & 10, 2025)
Ig Nobel Prize winners gathered on stage — at Chimie ParisTech–PSL on December 9, and at École Normale Supérieure on December 10 — to ask each other questions about their work.
Ig Nobel Face-to-Face (event in Tokyo — Saturday, January 10 2026)
In January, at the Miraikan science museum in Tokyo, Japan — Ig Nobel Prize winners will gather on stage, to ask each other questions about their work.
We Ask for Your Help: Donate to the Ig!
As per unfortunate tradition, the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony is funded on a thread of a shoestring. If you or your organization would like to help the Ig thrive, please donate to the Ig!
Here are some thoughts from Ig Winners
Two days after the 2025 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, the 632nm blog interviewed several of the new Ig Nobel Prize winners, as you will see and hear here in the resulting video called “How to Win the Ig Nobel Prize”:
