The American Astronomical Society (AAS) has announced its selection of the DESI collaboration as the recipient of the 2026 Lancelot M. Berkeley–New York Community Trust Prize. Established in 2011, the prize is awarded annually for highly meritorious work advancing astronomy in the previous year. Previous recipients have included both individuals and teams for their work in diverse areas of astronomy.
The 2026 prize recognizes the DESI collaboration for its work on two papers published this year. The first, published in February, presents baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) results from the first year of DESI data, while the second, released in March, reports BAO results from observations of 14 million galaxies and quasars, obtained in the first three years of DESI operations.
The observations not only constitute the largest 3D map of the Universe ever made, they also provide new insights into the nature of dark energy and the evolution of the Universe. When combined with other cosmological constraints, the DESI results provide strong hints that dark energy evolves over time, challenging our current leading model of the Universe, Lambda CDM.
The prize comes with a monetary award and an invitation to present a prize lecture at the AAS winter meeting. Daniel Eisenstein will accept the award on behalf of the collaboration and give the closing plenary lecture of the 247th AAS meeting on 8 January 2026 in Phoenix, Arizona.
