The Gabo Foundation announced today that it has awarded Colombian journalist, Catalina Gómez Ángel, the Gabo Award for Excellence 2026. A journalist based in Tehran, the organization highlights “her courage, independence, and narrative rigor” in covering some of the most complex conflicts in the contemporary world “from a Latin American perspective that places victims and human experience at the center of the story.”
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The jury recalls that Gómez Ángel, a contributor to La Vanguardia, has covered the conflicts in West Asia and Ukraine “from a Latin American perspective that decolonizes the narrative of war and places victims and human experience at the center of the story.”
The award will be officially presented to her during the Gabo Award ceremony on July 24, 2026, in Bogotá, as part of the 14th Gabo Festival.
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The Gabo Award’s governing council —comprising thirteen prominent figures in Ibero-American journalism— made the decision by consensus on April 30, 2026. In the minutes supporting its resolution, it recognizes “a journalist who embodies, with unwavering independence and strong vocation, the best journalism of an era in which public space is being seized by authoritarianism and major technological and economic powers.” It highlights that her work narrates “war from two of its most critical focal points for the contemporary world order: Iran and Ukraine, conflicts geographically distant from Latin America, but whose effects ultimately alter its political, economic, and social life.”
“She embodies, with unwavering independence, the best journalism of an era in which public space is being seized by authoritarianism and major technological and economic powers”
Gómez Ángel has made freelancing “not just a working condition, but an ethical stance,” emphasizes the governing council. From Tehran, she has built an international career collaborating with media outlets such as France 24, La Vanguardia, Radio France Internationale, Noticias Caracol, the magazine 5W, El Mundo, and Cadena SER, among others. “Her career is particularly significant for having consolidated in one of the historically most masculinized areas of journalism: international conflict coverage,” the organization states in a press release.
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