The European Pride Business Network has been nominated for the Publikumspreis of the Deutscher Engagementpreis 2026. Germany’s umbrella award for civic engagement, bringing together the roughly 650 engagement prizes awarded across the country. The public decides the winner, and voting is open until 29 October. One catch: only German mobile numbers can vote. Which is exactly where you come in, whether you have one or not.

You cannot apply for this. You can only be nominated if you have already been recognized by one of those 650 prizes. EPBN qualified through Impact of Diversity Award. From 1 to 29 October, the public decides. Last year nearly 100,000 people voted.

Why this matters for our work

The Publikumspreis carries €10,000 for first place and a professionally produced film about the winner’s work. Second place receives €7,500, third €5,000. The ten organizations with the most votes are invited to the award ceremony in Berlin on 26 November, and the top fifty join a networking event next year. But the money is not the main thing, and we want to be honest about that.

EPBN works in a space that rarely makes headlines. We bring the workplace perspective into European policymaking, support LGBTQIA+ professionals across the continent, and help our member organizations do that work in their own countries, including in places where it carries real personal risk. Most of that happens in meeting rooms, consultation submissions and personal conversations between employees and employers. Recognition of that kind of work does something practical. It opens doors with more institutions. It gives our member organizations something to point to at home. And it tells every LGBTQIA+ person who has ever had to calculate how much of themselves to reveal at work that this is being taken seriously.

One important thing: you need a German mobile number

This is a German award, and the voting system accepts German mobile numbers only. A number from any other country cannot cast a vote. For a network that spans more than twenty European countries, that is an obvious problem. So here is what we are actually asking.

If you have a German number: please vote. It takes two minutes and it genuinely counts.

If you do not: you are not out of the picture, you are the more important half of this. Send our link to the people you know in Germany. Colleagues at German offices of your company. Friends, family, former classmates, people you met at a conference once. A message from someone they know gets read; a post from an organisation they have never heard of does not.

Become our amplifiers. Share our posts on social media, and ask your own network to do the same. Every like, share and comment pushes this further into feeds where someone with a German number will see it. It costs you seconds and it genuinely moves the needle. That is how a European network wins a German prize. Not through our own reach, but through yours.

How to vote

It takes about two minutes. It is free and requires no registration.

🔹 Open our voting page
🔹 Enter your mobile number
🔹 Enter the code you receive by SMS
🔹 Click “Jetzt abstimmen”

Each phone number has three votes, but they must go to three different projects. So voting for EPBN still leaves you two votes for other organisations you want to support. You can only vote for us once per number.

Voting closes on Thursday, 29 October at 17:59 CET.

Thank you. Every vote is a small statement that workplace equality in Europe is worth the work.