Award Organiser Unveils Top 100 Female Founders

The Aurora Tech Award, a global award dedicated to supporting outstanding female tech founders from emerging markets, has unveiled its Top 100 founders to watch for 2026.

In 2025, a record 3,400 applications were submitted from 127 countries, reflecting unprecedented growth from previous year’s 2,018 submissions across 116 nations.

The Top 100 highlights the global breadth of women-led innovation, with the highest number of applications coming from Nigeria, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Colombia, Egypt, Brazil, India, Chile, Pakistan, and Mexico.

According to key sector trends, Healthtech remains the strongest sector across the top 13 countries represented. This cohort comprises 23 health-focused startups, continuing last year’s trend, in which health tech also led the field. Founders are tackling many aspects of this sector, including wellbeing, longevity, digital medical tools, productivity platforms, life sciences, sports tech and more.

Across these sectors, women founders consistently gravitate toward solving real, tangible problems rooted in their local communities, which strongly shapes the types of innovations emerging from each region.