Applications are now open for Western Australia’s Innovators of the Year 2025 awards, with organisers unveiling a fresh push to spotlight younger minds and a bigger-than-ever prize pool. For the 19th year running, the awards are back to champion clever thinking and creative problem-solving across the state, and this time they’re turning more heads with a new youth category and more than $280,000 up for grabs.
The newly minted ‘Western Australia’s Young Innovators of the Year’ award is set to celebrate the ingenuity of high school students who are already making waves with practical, original ideas that address real-world issues in meaningful ways. Whether it’s a clever device to reduce energy consumption, a health tech breakthrough, or a smart system with environmental benefits, the new category is aimed at encouraging young people to keep pushing boundaries and bringing their ideas to life.
By adding this seventh category to the existing six, the awards continue to evolve alongside the people and projects they support. It’s a deliberate move that reflects a growing recognition that innovation doesn’t have a minimum age and that bright, motivated teens deserve the same opportunities to have their work seen, supported and scaled.
The WA Innovators of the Year program has long been a fixture on the state’s calendar for entrepreneurs and forward-thinkers. But it’s not just a trophy on a shelf. Finalists routinely report meaningful outcomes—connections with investors, media coverage, new business partnerships and a broader platform to raise awareness around their products or services. For many, it’s the visibility and validation that propels a concept into a viable company, and for some, it’s been a first step toward national or even global impact.
Five of the seven categories close on 11 June at 11am, while the remaining two, including the new youth award, close later on 25 July at 1pm. Those early categories are:
- Rio Tinto Emerging Innovation Award
- Rio Tinto Growth Innovation Award
- Wesfarmers Wellbeing Platinum Award
- Business News Great for the State Award
- Woodside Energy Platinum Award for Energy Innovation
These finalists will take part in a targeted Accelerator program, designed to support business development and help bring promising ideas into sharper focus with expert mentorship and resources. It’s an opportunity that past participants often say was a turning point in their journey, whether through refining a pitch, improving a product, or securing investment.
The final two categories – the WA Government Innovation Award and the new YEA WA Young Innovators Platinum Award – will remain open until late July, giving additional time for those who may be discovering the awards a little later in the school year.
Last year’s ceremony saw a record rise in applications from female founders, with entries increasing by over 40% compared to previous years. This shift was acknowledged by Science and Innovation Minister Stephen Dawson, who sees the trend as a sign that the WA innovation scene is growing more inclusive.
The Minister encouraged innovators from across the entire state to apply, especially those based in regional areas. These awards, he says, are a rare platform for Western Australians to be recognised for work that often goes unnoticed—whether it’s a sustainability solution developed on a farm in the Wheatbelt, a digital tool for remote communities, or a new way of thinking about health, education or transport.
With the expanded prize pool and the addition of the youth category, organisers are clearly aiming to increase the reach and impact of the program. This year’s awards are about more than handing out plaques and prize money; they’re about momentum, about surfacing fresh talent and ideas that deserve a leg up and a larger stage.
Across the award categories, the themes reflect WA’s priorities and challenges. There’s support for clean energy through the Woodside Energy Platinum Award, a wellbeing focus backed by Wesfarmers, and recognition of innovation with broad social or economic impact through the Great for the State Award. Rio Tinto’s involvement in two categories underlines the ongoing importance of industry support for both early-stage and scaling ventures.
The Accelerator program for finalists continues to be one of the program’s strongest offerings. Far from a generic bootcamp, it’s tailored to the needs of each finalist—giving them access to industry mentors, business development training, pitch practice, and networking opportunities with investors, potential customers and fellow entrepreneurs.
The youth category will work a little differently, though it too offers visibility and an opportunity to be part of the wider conversation around innovation in WA. By recognising the achievements of school-aged individuals or teams, the category is expected to encourage more schools to embed design thinking, science and entrepreneurship into their programs. It’s also likely to inspire a new cohort of students to think bigger about the role they can play in shaping the future of their communities.
Entries across all categories are judged not just on originality, but on whether the ideas can deliver real-world benefits to Western Australia—whether economically, socially or environmentally. That means products and services that can generate jobs, improve health outcomes, reduce emissions, drive efficiency, or create a more connected or inclusive society.
The application process itself is deliberately accessible, encouraging people from all backgrounds—whether solo inventors, research teams, small businesses or startups—to have a go. Previous winners have ranged from medical device innovators to software developers, agri-tech startups and community-focused service designers.
Each year, the awards aim to surface not just new technology, but new thinking—the kind of thinking that leads to better systems, greater resilience, smarter industries, and stronger communities. That’s what makes it such a wide-open field, and why each new announcement of finalists tends to generate plenty of interest from media, industry and government alike.
Finalists for all categories will be revealed later this year, ahead of the October awards ceremony. It’s an evening that typically brings together an eclectic mix of founders, students, scientists, funders and business leaders—united by curiosity and the drive to do things differently.
As the deadline for applications draws closer, the message from organisers remains straightforward: If you’ve got something new and useful, if you’ve solved a problem in a clever way, if you’re building something that could make WA better—this is the moment to put it forward.
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