The 2026 Ig Nobel Prizes, the annual spoof awards for research that "first makes people laugh and then makes them think," have been announced, celebrating quirky but genuine scientific studies. This year's winners include work on designing a splash-free urinal, using mosquito proboscises to "necroprint" tiny nozzles, measuring how quickly buried cotton underwear decomposes, and analysing the aerodynamics of blowing one's nose. One notable winner devised a more rigorous scientific definition of kissing across species including ants, birds, polar bears and humans, concluding that most great apes kiss but eastern gorillas appear to have lost the behaviour.

For the first time in 35 years, the ceremony was held outside Boston, taking place instead in Zurich, Switzerland, with organisers citing growing safety concerns among international guests travelling to the United States. Four of last year's ten winners skipped the event rather than travel to the US, prompting organiser Marc Abrahams to say it had become "unsafe for our guests to visit the country." The ceremony will now rotate through European cities, moving to Antwerp next year before returning to Zurich in 2028 and every even-numbered year thereafter, a pattern Abrahams likened to the Eurovision Song Contest.