Throughout 2025, artists and cultural figures across the globe were celebrated with major accolades. In July, American sound artist Christine Sun Kim received the inaugural Radical Transformation Award, presented by the Henkaku Center at Chiba Institute of Technology in Japan. Tibetan collective Khadhok clinched this year’s Rubin Museum Himalayan Art Prize, while Taipei’s Hong Foundation conferred its Tung Chung Prize Special Achievement Award to Taiwanese American performance artist Tehching Hsieh. President and director of the Sharjah Art Foundation, Hoor Al-Qasimi, was honored with the Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French embassy in the UAE.

In Australia, Yolŋu artist Gaypalani Waṉambi won the Telstra Art Award in August, with Sydney-based artist Sophie Cape receiving the Hadley’s Art Prize that same month. Meanwhile, First Nations artist and curator Tony Albert was honored with France’s Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters.