2027 RISK Award — Homes at Risk: Up to €100,000 From the Munich Re Foundation and UNDRR for NGO Projects Building Climate Resilience in Informal Urban Settlements

2027 RISK Award — Homes at Risk: Up to €100,000 From the Munich Re Foundation and UNDRR for NGO Projects Building Climate Resilience in Informal Urban Settlements

This page is a historical reference for the closed 2027 RISK Award. The official Munich Re Foundation call page now states that the deadline has passed and that no further applications will be accepted. The Phase I deadline was 31 July 2026 at 12:00 noon CET. The official pages reviewed do not announce a subsequent RISK Award cycle, so this page does not invent a replacement deadline or suggest that applications remain open.

The topic was “Homes at risk: Climate resilience for informal settlements.” The Munich Re Foundation and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) offered up to €100,000 in project funding for an operational, non-profit project reducing climate-related disaster risks in informal and semi-formal urban settlements. The RISK Award began in 2012 and is granted every two years. Its purpose is to support practical local initiatives that turn disaster-risk reduction priorities into action in highly vulnerable settings.

The closure changes how to read the information below. The eligibility, budget, templates, and review stages describe the 2027 call as published by the organisers; they are useful for understanding the programme and preparing for any future announcement, but they are not instructions for submitting to the closed round. No claim here should be read as confirmation of a future topic, amount, or deadline.

Key details at a glance

What the award actually funds

The €100,000 was not a personal prize or an unrestricted institutional gift. The official guidelines say that the funding had to be used for implementation of the proposed project, with an individual funding agreement for each awardee tailored to that project’s situation and needs. Because the 2027 call is closed, there is no current award to claim and no new funding agreement to seek through this page.

That framing mattered for the 2027 call’s scope. The proposed project had to include an implementation component; a proposal based solely on research was not sufficient. Risk assessments, vulnerability studies, or participatory mapping could support a submission, but the project also needed an action that reduced risk in practice. Examples consistent with the topic include housing or neighbourhood improvements, community flood alerts, maintained drainage, heat-response measures, or evacuation arrangements. Those examples illustrate fit with the published topic; they are not a promise that a future call will fund them.

The risks addressed must relate to climate change and natural hazards. Risks arising solely from social turmoil, war, chemical disasters, or political crises fall outside scope. This is a real constraint for organisations working in complex emergencies — a project protecting displaced people from monsoon flooding is in scope; a project addressing displacement itself is not.

The organisers also expressed a preference for people-centred approaches and community-based initiatives. The topic focused on settlements where residents often manage escalating risk through incremental household and neighbourhood measures. A strong 2027 concept therefore needed to show how residents and local organisations shaped and carried out the work, rather than describing residents only as passive beneficiaries.

Who is eligible

Eligibility is defined tightly and is worth checking before you invest time:

• Non-profit organisations only. Business development cannot be supported, and the project itself must be non-profit.
• Institutions, not individuals. The RISK Award is given to institutions or organisations. Individual applicants cannot be considered.
• Local presence required. Applicants may be local entities, or international organisations that have a regional or local office in the project region.
• Country classification. The project must be based in a middle-income or low-income country according to World Bank classification. Note that this is about where the project is based, not where the applicant is headquartered.
• Consortia are welcome, with a caveat. Multi-stakeholder initiatives are explicitly welcomed, but the application requires a clearly designated focal-point organisation. Decide who that is early — it determines who signs the funding agreement.

The two-phase application process used for 2027

The 2027 Phase I window ran from 1 June to 31 July 2026 at 12:00 noon CET and is now closed. It was open to legitimate organisations. The applicant had to register in the online system, complete the online form in full, download the concept template that became available after registration, complete it, and upload it as a PDF. The application had to be in English. The guidelines said that all relevant information had to be in the system by the deadline and that late submissions or additions could not be considered.

The organisers scheduled Phase I review for 1 August to 30 September 2026. Applicants were to be informed no later than two months after Phase I ended, and the strongest submissions would receive an invitation to Phase II. Organisations not selected in Phase I could not be considered further in the 2027 cycle. This page cannot submit a form, extend the deadline, or provide an invitation.

Phase II (1 October – 30 November 2026 at 12:00 noon CET) was by invitation only. An invited organisation had to complete the online form and upload four fully completed Word templates as PDFs:

1. Detailed Description
2. Detailed Milestone Plan
3. Detailed Impact Framework
4. Detailed Budget

The templates were available in the application portal only to organisations invited forward. The scheduled Phase II review ran from 1 December 2026 to 31 March 2027, followed by individual notification in April 2027 and final status no later than May 2027. The guidelines said that interim updates would not be provided. These dates belong to the published 2027 process and should not be reused as dates for a future round.

The official guidelines required documents to be submitted through the online application system using the provided templates. Applications sent by post, email, or another channel would not be considered. Since the official call now says that no further applications will be accepted, sending materials through any channel is no longer a route into the 2027 competition.

The five evaluation indicators — and how to write to them

Phase II proposals are evaluated against five named indicators, and the guidelines advise applicants to highlight how the project contributes to each and to structure the proposal text accordingly:

1. Potential for impact. How much measurable risk reduction, for how many people, in what timeframe.
2. Equity. Who inside the settlement benefits — and who is usually missed. Tenants versus owners, women-headed households, older residents in upper-floor heat traps, people without documents.
3. Scalability. Whether the approach can move beyond one neighbourhood without a proportional increase in cost or a founder-dependent delivery model.
4. Viability and sustainability. What survives after the funding ends — maintained assets, trained committees, a municipal agreement, a revenue mechanism.
5. Institutional capacity. Whether your organisation can actually deliver and account for the money.

Even though these are formally Phase II criteria, the Phase I concept is what determines whether you ever see Phase II. Reviewers reading a short concept are effectively looking for early evidence on the same five dimensions. Naming them implicitly — a sentence on who is reached, a sentence on what persists, a sentence on your delivery track record — costs little space and signals that you have read the guidelines.

Budget rules that catch applicants out

The budget section contains several specific constraints that are easy to get wrong:

• Funding is limited to €100,000, the value of the award.
• The proposed project budget should not be less than €50,000. A very small project will not fit.
• The overall project budget — combining your own contribution, external funding, and the RISK Award — must not exceed €1,000,000. Above that, the organisers judge the award’s contribution too small to be meaningful.
• If your total budget exceeds the award, you must state the overall project volume and where the remaining financial resources will come from.
• The RISK Award contribution must have a visible impact within the project. Where the award funds only part of a larger effort, it must be clear what specifically the award money buys.
• The proposal should include milestone planning and a rough budget plan explaining how the funding will be used.
• Project timeline must be between 12 months and a maximum of 2 years.

The most common structural failure here is co-funding vagueness. “The remaining €400,000 will be raised from institutional donors” is weaker than naming secured and pipeline sources with amounts and status. The second most common is burying the award’s role inside a large budget line so a reviewer cannot see what €100,000 actually delivers. Carve out a discrete, attributable workstream.

Who decides

The final decision rests with a jury of internationally recognised disaster risk reduction experts. Munich Re Foundation describes the board as representing varied backgrounds, including developing and developed countries, politicians, scientists, and practitioners, with a gender-balanced composition. The official jury page identifies Paola Albrito, Renate Bleich, Michael Havbro Faber, Nuraini Rahma Hanifa, Benjamin S. Karmorh, and Xiaomeng Shen among the named experts. That mix is a useful reminder that a proposal needs a credible delivery plan as well as a clear account of risk and impact.

The practical implication: this is not a panel that needs disaster risk reduction explained to it, and it will notice unsupported impact claims. But it is also a mixed panel of scientists and practitioners, so a proposal written purely in academic register or purely in advocacy register will lose part of the room.

What past winners tell you about fit

The award’s history is a useful calibration tool. Recent and earlier winners include:

• 2025 — ChildFund Bolivia, emergency preparedness in indigenous schools
• 2023 — The Association for Water and Rural Development (AWARD), a holistic early warning system for climate-induced water insecurity in the transboundary Inkomati River Basin, South Africa
• 2021 — “Strong Roots, Strong Women”
• 2019 — Resilient floating homes in Bangladesh
• 2017 — The EpiNurse project in Nepal
• 2015 — Community self-assessment in India
• 2014 — Peñaflor inclusive safe community: resilience for all, Chile
• 2012 — Making Beira resilient to floods and cyclones, Mozambique

The pattern is consistent: concrete, place-based, community-anchored, and legible in a single sentence. Floating homes. Nurses doing epidemiological surveillance. Schools that know what to do. None of these are large-scale infrastructure, and none are pure knowledge products.

The Foundation also publishes “Best Project Proposals” compilations for past cycles, including 2025 (“Children and youths as agents of change for DRR”), 2023 (“Climate resilience and early warning”), and 2021 (“Eco- and nature-based solutions for disaster risk reduction”). Reading the compilation for a recent cycle is probably the highest-value hour you can spend before writing, because it shows you the standard of shortlisted work rather than only the single winner.

Why this topic, this cycle

The framing document sets out the reasoning. Urban populations are growing fastest in low- and middle-income countries, and according to UN-Habitat and World Bank estimates more than one billion people currently live in informal or semi-formal urban settlements — a figure expected to rise significantly. These neighbourhoods are often on floodplains, steep slopes, or inside dense urban heat islands, with inadequate housing, weak infrastructure, limited access to basic services, and insecure land tenure. Climate hazards translate quickly into health, safety, and livelihood impacts: recurrent flood losses, heat-related illness, water contamination.

The 2027 topic is aligned with the UNDRR International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction 2026 and its theme, “Resilience starts at home.” The award as a whole is anchored in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, and the organisers position projects in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals.

If you are choosing which of your projects to submit, the alignment signal is clear: household-to-community scale, immediate lived hazards (extreme heat, flooding, storms), and a settlement type that formal planning has skipped.

What a future applicant could learn from the closed call

The following sequence reconstructs the work required by the 2027 guidelines. It is not a live application checklist for this page’s archived cycle. If the Munich Re Foundation announces another call, an organisation should first confirm that the new official notice adopts the same requirements.

1. Read the new official notice first. The 2027 topic and dates cannot be assumed to carry forward to a later cycle.
2. Confirm the country classification. The 2027 guidelines required the project to be based in a middle-income or low-income country under World Bank classification.
3. Register in the online system if a future call opens. For 2027, the concept template became available after applicant registration.
4. Name the hazard and settlement. The 2027 topic invited work on locally experienced climate and natural-hazard risks such as extreme heat, flooding, and storms in informal or semi-formal urban settlements.
5. Show the action. The 2027 proposal had to explain what would change in practice, for whom, and how the organisation would deliver it.
6. Sketch the budget honestly. The published rules capped the award at €100,000, set a preferred project budget of at least €50,000, and capped the overall project budget at €1,000,000.
7. Designate the focal point. Multi-stakeholder initiatives were welcome, but the 2027 application required a clearly designated focal-point organisation.
8. Submit before the stated cut-off. For 2027, the cut-off was noon CET on 31 July 2026, and late additions were not accepted.

Common mistakes

• Submitting a research project. The single clearest disqualifier in the guidelines.
• Treating the deadline as midnight. It is 12:00 CET on 31 July 2026.
• Applying as an individual. The award goes to institutions only.
• Applying from outside the project region without a local office. International organisations need a regional or local presence where the project runs.
• Proposing a project under €50,000 or a total volume over €1,000,000. Both fall outside the stated budget range.
• Proposing a project longer than two years. The maximum duration is firm.
• Submitting outside the online system. Post and email submissions are not considered.
• Addressing conflict or political crisis risk. Outside scope unless the hazard is climate or natural.

Frequently asked questions

Is the RISK Award annual? No. The official programme page says it is granted every two years. The 2027 call is closed, and the official pages checked here do not announce the next topic.

Can I apply if I am an individual researcher or community leader? No. The award is given to institutions or organisations.

Does my organisation have to be headquartered in a low- or middle-income country? Not necessarily. The project must be based in one, and an international applicant must have a regional or local office in the project region.

Can I submit in a language other than English? No. The form and concept must be completed in English.

Will applicants get feedback if they were not selected in Phase I? The 2027 guidelines said applicants would be informed no later than two months after Phase I closed, and that applicants not selected could not be considered further. Detailed feedback was not promised, and interim updates during Phase II review were not provided.

Can the award fund part of a larger programme? Yes, provided the total project volume stays at or below €1,000,000 and it is visible what the RISK Award contribution specifically funds.

When was the 2027 result expected? The published schedule placed individual notification in April 2027, with final status no later than May 2027. The ceremony was listed for May/June 2027, to be confirmed. Each awardee was to conclude an individual funding agreement; the official pages did not promise a universal payment date.

Official links and next steps

The official record is the Munich Re Foundation’s 2027 RISK Award call page. It contains the topic, published schedule, funding amount, and the notice that the deadline has passed and no further applications will be accepted. The RISK Award application guidelines contain the eligibility, budget, duration, templates, and evaluation indicators used for the 2027 call. The main RISK Award page explains the programme’s every-two-years structure and lists past winners.

For archive readers, the main takeaways are clear. The 2027 RISK Award was aimed at non-profit institutions and organisations, not individuals. The project had to be operational, non-profit, connected to climate change and natural hazards, and based in a low- or middle-income country. A local entity or an international organisation with a regional or local office in the project region could apply. A research-only proposal did not meet the published content rule. A multi-stakeholder initiative needed a named focal-point organisation. The project timeline had to be between 12 months and 2 years, the proposed budget should not be below €50,000, and the overall project budget could not exceed €1,000,000.

Those rules make this entry useful as a programme record, not as an open opportunity. The topic’s emphasis on household-to-community resilience, practical delivery, and community participation remains a helpful description of what the organisers sought in 2027. The dates, amount, eligibility rules, and application sequence above are specifically the facts published for that cycle. Readers should return to Munich Re Foundation’s official RISK Award pages before relying on any of them for a future application.