Ig Nobel Prizes reward research on kissing, candy and urinals

Research into how to blow your nose, whether wealthy people are more likely to take sweets from children and how to design a urinal that does not splash has been honoured at the 2026 Ig Nobel Prizes.

The 36th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony was held in Zurich, Switzerland, on Thursday 3 September. The prizes, run by the magazine Annals of Improbable Research, celebrate work that "makes people laugh, then think".

This year's winners

The Biomechanics Prize went to Matilda Brindle, Catherine Talbot and Stuart West for devising a more precise definition of kissing in ants, birds, polar bears and humans.

The Economics Prize went to Paul Piff, Daniel Stancato, Stephane Cote, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton and Dacher Keltner, for gathering evidence that upper class people are more likely to snatch from a children's supply of sweets and to engage in other kinds of unethical behaviour.

The Chemistry Prize honoured research finding that cockroach milk contains three times as much energy as cow's milk.

The Medicine Prize went to a study called "How to Blow the Nose: An Aerodynamic Study of the Nose Blowing".

The Physics Prize went to a team led by Zhao Pan at the University of Waterloo in Canada for theoretical and experimental attempts to design a splash-free urinal.

The Peace Prize went to researchers led by Jaimie Arona Krems of the University of California, Los Angeles, for a study of how people want their friends to behave towards them compared with how they want them to behave towards others.

The Technology Prize honoured work that used mosquito mouthparts as nozzles for 3D printing, a process described as necroprinting.

Serious science, light touch

The Ig Nobels are affectionately ridiculed and genuinely loved. Many of the winning studies are serious research published in respected journals, and the prizes are handed out by real Nobel laureates. Their aim is to draw attention to the strange, surprising and often useful corners of science.

This year's ceremony was held in Zurich rather than in the prizes' long-time home in the Boston area of the United States.