The Balzan Prize’s aim is to foster culture, the sciences and the most meritorious initiatives in the cause of humanity, peace, and fraternity among peoples throughout the world.

The Prizes are awarded in the subject areas:

• literature, moral sciences, and the arts;
• physical, mathematical, and natural sciences, and medicine;
• humanities, peace, and fraternity among peoples.

The four subject areas, two in literature, the moral sciences, and the arts, and two in the physical, mathematical, and natural sciences, and medicine, change every year. No more than four prizes may be awarded in any one year.

Nominations must reach the General Prize Committee by March 15.