Generation AI, a Finnish initiative for AI literacy in education and research has been awarded the 2026 UNESCO ICT in Education Prize. This internationally recognised prize is presented annually to projects promoting the creative use of technologies to enhance learning, teaching and overall educational performance in the digital age. The UNESCO King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa Prize for the Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Education was presented at an award ceremony held on 9 September 2026 in Paris.
This year’s UNESCO ICT in Education Prize aimed to surface and amplify innovative best practices demonstrating how teachers and learners are engaging with AI systems in ways that encourage critical thinking, creativity and imagination.
In particular, the international jury highlighted the strong research basis of the Generation AI project and considered it an important example of research-informed AI education: “The numerous peer-reviewed studies conducted as part of the Generation AI project demonstrate sustained research of a high scientific standard, focusing on critical thinking and creativity in the age of AI. At the same time, the project is an important example of how AI can be used in education on the basis of research evidence.”
Generation AI promotes creativity and critical thinking
Led by the University of Eastern Finland, Generation AI is a multidisciplinary research project funded by the Strategic Research Council (SRC) within the Research Council of Finland. The project involves researchers from the University of Eastern Finland, the University of Helsinki and the University of Oulu. It develops learning materials and educational technologies in close collaboration with schools and universities offering teacher education.
A key objective of the project is to strengthen children’s and young people’s AI literacy, critical thinking and creative agency. Learners are supported in understanding where AI technology is used in everyday life, how these AI systems work and what kinds of limitations, biases and societal impacts they involve. Critical thinking is strengthened through inquiry-based approaches and creative activities, allowing pupils to design and create different AI-based applications themselves. For example, pupils can build a simple classifier or their own language model, critically examine how social media algorithms work and explore the effects of algorithmic biases.
The educational technologies developed by Generation AI enable pupils to explore the operating principles of AI without programming skills. In addition to ease of use, the solutions developed by Generation AI pay particular attention to data protection, safety and children’s rights. The tools run locally in the user’s browser, they do not track users, they comply with GDPR requirements, and they do not transfer user data outside the classroom.
The openly accessible and freely available tools have already been used more than 200,000 times in over 50 countries. This demonstrates growing international interest in and demand for research-based learning solutions that strengthen AI literacy.
Earlier this year, Generation AI was selected as the winner of the EU’s 2026 Digital Skills Award. The project has also won the 2025 national Open Educational Resource of the Year award and has received awards at the international IEEE ICALT 2024, ACM Koli Calling 2025 and AACE EdMedia 2025 and 2026 conferences.
The tools and learning materials for developing AI literacy are freely available at https://gen-ai.fi/
