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Bloomberg Philanthropies announced 24 winners of its 2026 Mayors Challenge on Tuesday, as mayors in cities across multiple continents proposed projects aimed at improving core services. The organization said each winning city will receive $1 million to implement its initiative, alongside support from Bloomberg Philanthropies experts.

South Bend, Indiana Mayor James Mueller, a Democrat who has led the city since 2020, described a plan that uses artificial intelligence to interpret data about residents’ needs. Mueller said the approach can identify situations such as “a family falling behind on paying its water bill,” with the goal of offering services and support intended to prevent larger problems. “Technology is not necessarily good or bad – it’s how it’s used and how you protect against abuses,” Mueller said, adding that the program aims to use “cutting edge tools” to deliver city services in a proactive way.

Mueller also framed the timing of the challenge as tied to local expectations about trust in government. He said, “Trust in government is at an all-time low,” but that local governments “consistently perform better” in residents’ surveys, and that the city needs to keep building that relationship as it looks for new ways to improve daily life.

Bloomberg Philanthropies founder Michael R. Bloomberg said in a statement that the most effective city halls are “bold, creative, and proactive” and that the Mayors Challenge was launched to help more cities succeed. Bloomberg said the organization’s aim is that successful approaches from winners could be used in other cities.

James Anderson, head of government innovation programs at Bloomberg Philanthropies, said many of the 2026 winners are integrating AI “in sophisticated ways” and that the goal is to bring municipal governments closer to the residents they serve. Anderson also said that “Testing and learning and adapting new ideas don’t generally get funded with public dollars,” and that it is philanthropy’s role “to support experimentation.”

Other projects highlighted in the winners’ roster range beyond AI-focused approaches. In Pasig City in the Philippines, Mayor Vico Sotto said being selected would speed up a plan to build floating parks in the Pasig River that would create new community space and reduce flooding threats in the area. Sotto said support from Bloomberg Philanthropies would allow the project to begin sooner, and he said the city plans to form a governance council that includes people who live in the area.

In Lafayette, Louisiana, Bloomberg Philanthropies’ winners said the city confronted a different kind of constraint: parts of the sewer system update it wanted were on homeowners’ property, limiting what the city could pay for. Mayor-President Monique Blanco Boulet said the Mayors Challenge encouraged the administration to find a solution that would now allow repairs and, in turn, encourage development in the city, with the plan also named a Mayors Challenge winner.

Boulet said she viewed Bloomberg Philanthropies as having an outsized influence on local projects and cited the capacity the organization brings. She said, “Bloomberg Philanthropies, the staff, Michael Bloomberg – all of them – have such a global impact in ways that most people will never know,” and added that the organization provides “a level of capacity” and room to be creative about solutions that can “change lives.”

The winners announced Tuesday included cities and programs from As-Salt, Jordan; Barcelona, Spain; Beira, Mozambique; Belfast, Northern Ireland; Benin City, Nigeria; Boise, Idaho; Budapest, Hungary; Cape Town, South Africa; Cartagena, Colombia; Fez, Morocco; Fukuoka, Japan; Ghaziabad, India; Ghent, Belgium; Kanifing, The Gambia; Lafayette, Louisiana; Medellín, Colombia; Netanya, Israel; Pasig, Philippines; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; South Bend, Indiana; Surabaya, Indonesia; Toronto, Canada; Turku, Finland; and Visakhapatnam, India.