Congolese virologist Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum received the 2026 Virchow Prize in Berlin on Saturday, October 10, an award recognising his pioneering work on the Ebola virus and his commitment to fighting epidemics. The Democratic Republic of Congo’s health ministry paid tribute to a researcher devoted to scientific research, infectious disease prevention and the protection of communities.
Muyembe shares the award with Belgian scientist Peter Piot, another leading figure in the fight against Ebola. The two men split the €500,000 prize equally. The ceremony took place at the Rotes Rathaus, Berlin’s city hall, in front of some 300 guests from science, politics, business and civil society.
The laureates had been announced on June 2. At the time, the independent prize committee said it wanted to honour their role in discovering, controlling and understanding epidemic threats, as well as their contribution to fairer international cooperation in the face of infectious disease outbreaks. Nominations had closed on February 28, followed by three months of deliberation.
The timing gives the award particular weight. The year 2026 marks fifty years since Ebola first emerged. In 1976, during the first identified outbreak in what was then Zaire, now the DRC, Jean-Jacques Muyembe was among the researchers carrying out investigations on the ground. The committee traces both laureates’ careers back to that defining moment.
Since then, the professor at the University of Kinshasa, who is affiliated with the National Institute for Biomedical Research (INRB), has studied outbreak after outbreak in his country. He has also built scientific and medical structures there capable of detecting and fighting epidemics. He himself sees the prize as a symbol of international recognition for the pioneering work he and Peter Piot carried out.
Created by the Virchow Foundation under the motto “Towards Health for All”, the prize is named after Rudolf Virchow, a 19th-century German physician and politician. Each year it honours individuals who share his conviction that health cannot be separated from society, politics or equity.
The tribute comes as Ebola is once again in the headlines. The virus continues to spread in eastern DRC, where the number of cases passed 8,000 at the end of September, and Kenya recorded its first ever case, an imported one, in early October. In Berlin itself, a patient with Ebola was successfully treated this year, fifty years after the two laureates’ first work on the disease.