Nominations should be completed on this website using the 'Nominate' forms. We are not able to receive nominations via email.

There are no restrictions on who can submit a nomination, but we can only accept nominations in English.

Awards are presented to patient advocates, organisations, policy makers, scientists, companies, and media for their major achievements and their outstanding commitment to the rare disease cause. View our previous awardees.

Nominations are submitted by the general public and the winners are selected by the EURORDIS Board of Directors.

Awardees will be informed by email. If the nominee has not received an email by mid-December 2023, please assume your nomination has not been successful for this edition of the Black Pearl Awards. We encourage you to try again next year. Who knows – next time you might be more fortunate.

No – awardees are determined by merit, not by the number of submissions.

You can nominate as many people in as many different categories as you wish, but you may not nominate the same person more than once for any given category.

Yes, if you wish.

We only require your email address to send you a confirmation, but we do not use it for any future contact and it is not stored in our database.

Submissions for the EURORDIS Photo Award open in November 2023.

The names of the awardees will be announced from January 2024.

This excludes the Photo Award and the Social Media Award. The winners in these categories will be voted for by the public and revealed at the Awards Ceremony in February 2024.

No – the awardees do not know who nominated them or how many nominations they received.

The recipients of the Awards will be informed directly by EURORDIS in December 2023.

The names of the awardees are made known to the general public (via EURORDIS’ eNews, Facebook, and Twitter) beginning January 2024. Stay tuned by following the hashtag #EURORDISAwards2024!