The winners of the 44th edition of the MASI AWARD 2025 have been announced.

The Masi Foundation is pleased to announce the winners of the 44th edition of the Masi Prize , which since 1981 has celebrated national and international personalities who are highly representative of civilization and culture, celebrating them in the heart of Valpolicella.

The 2025 Civiltà Veneta Award is awarded to three emblematic figures:

• Alberto Bombassei , visionary entrepreneur from Vicenza, for his contribution to industrial excellence and technical innovation with an emphasis on research and training;
• Fabrizio Plessi , an international artist, Venetian by adoption, a pioneer in making the tradition of art coexist with the technological language of contemporaneity;
• Federica Manzon , a writer from Trieste, who in her works explores the complex tensions between identity, belonging, and memory.

The International Wine Civilization Award is awarded to:

• José Vouillamoz , Swiss geneticist, for his fundamental ampelographic work on autochthony and for scientific dissemination.

The Grosso D'Oro Veneziano is awarded to:

• Gilles Kepel , French political scientist, for his tireless commitment to intercultural dialogue and the analysis of threats to social cohesion, as well as for placing knowledge at the service of dialogue and solidarity.

" Progress and Conflicts: Paradoxes of the Present " is the underlying theme of the 2025 edition, chosen in light of the extraordinary technological advances we see today, contrasted with global crises, inequalities, wars, and cultural divides. The Masi Prize reflects on these paradoxes, selecting figures from diverse fields—industrial, artistic, literary, scientific, and sociopolitical—who can offer critical interpretations of our present.

" We live in an era of extraordinary potential but also of great contradictions ," says Isabella Bossi Fedrigotti , president of the Masi Foundation. " Technology, artificial intelligence, and advanced scientific knowledge offer us unprecedented opportunities to improve the human condition. Yet, despite this progress, we are witnessing an increase in conflict, a crisis of values, and the return of inequalities we thought had been overcome. With the Masi Prize this year, we want to give space to figures whose vision and work help us understand this complexity. Personalities capable of transforming knowledge into responsibility, and knowledge into a tool for dialogue, civilization, and cohesion ."

" In the clash between innovation and conflict, culture provides guidance ," says Sandro Boscaini , vice president of the Masi Foundation and president of Masi Agricola . "We cannot consider progress solely in terms of technical innovation. True progress is that which is placed at the service of humanity and its dignity. Wine, in this vision, also takes on a symbolic value: the fruit of a thousand-year-old culture, of respect for the land and harmony with the landscape, it speaks to us of relationships, identity, and time. In this sense, viticulture continues to concretely represent, even in this time of difficulty and profound uncertainty, a civilization that reconciles development, human relationships, and aesthetics."

Marco Vigevani, Secretary General of the Masi Foundation , comments: "The winners of this year's Award do more than simply excel in their respective fields: they offer profound interpretations of reality, raise essential questions, and propose concrete models for action. This is also a way of affirming that progress, to be truly real, must be oriented toward a collective, inclusive, and shared good. Emblematic in this regard is Gilles Kepel, winner of the Grosso D'Oro Veneziano. For years, he has rigorously deciphered the dynamics of radicalism and the Mediterranean crisis. His commitment to promoting dialogue between cultures and civilizations reminds us of the responsibility to fully understand the causes of conflict, respecting differences to transform difficulties into opportunities for growth, cohesion, and peace."

On Friday, October 24, 2025 , after the signing of the Amarone barrel , the symbol of the award, at the historic Masi cellars , the awards ceremony will continue at the new Monteleone21 multipurpose complex in Gargagnago di Valpolicella . The event will be enriched by a moment of reflection and discussion among the award recipients, moderated by journalist Alessandro Milan.