The 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics

The 11th Breakthrough Prize ceremony was held April 5, 2025, at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, CA. The 2025 ceremony celebrated remarkable scientists driving discoveries in gene editing, human diseases, the search for the fundamental laws of the Universe and pure mathematics. The gala event brought together high-profile leaders in the science, tech and business communities alongside actors, filmmakers, writers, singers, and musicians for a glittering celebration of science and scientific achievement. The show was hosted by James Corden and included presenters Jodie Foster, Lily Collins, Mark Zuckerberg, Vin Diesel, MrBeast, Julia Milner, Christina Aguilera, Greg Brockman, Jeff Bezos, Yuri Milner, Anne Wojcicki, Jeremy Strong, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sergey Brin, Edward Norton, Seth Rogen, Drew Barrymore, Ke Huy Quan, Lauren Sánchez, will.i.am, Gayle King, Salma Hayek Pinault, Gal Gadot, David Blaine and Anna Deguzman. Katy Perry and Sia brought the house down with their performances.

The 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics is awarded co-authors of publications based on CERN’s Large Hadron Collider Run-2 data released between 2015 and July 15, 2024, at the experimental collaborations ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb. (ATLAS – 5,345 researchers; CMS – 4,550; ALICE – 1,869; LHCb – 1,744).

The $3 million prize is allocated to ATLAS ($1 million), CMS ($1 million), ALICE ($500,000) and LHCb ($500,000). In consultation with the leaders of the experiments, the Breakthrough Prize Foundation donated 100 percent of the prize funds to the CERN & Society Foundation. The prize money will be used by the collaborations to offer grants for doctoral students from member institutes to spend research time at CERN, giving the students experience working at the forefront of science and new expertise to bring back to their home countries and regions. The name of each winner can be found on the experiment pages here for ALICE or ATLAS.