GBIF's award programmes seek to recognize excellence and innovation in the application of biodiversity data to critical scientific and social issues. The GBIF Secretariat currently administers three awards:

• the Graduate Researchers Award
• the Ebbe Nielsen Challenge
• the newly established GBIF Node Awards

Prior its relaunch in 2014-2015 as an incentive challenge, the Secretariat also presented the Ebbe Nielsen Prize, recognizing an individual who demonstrated excellence in combining biodiversity informatics and biosystematics research.