The local government of Pasig on Tuesday, Feb. 24, announced that it has been named one of the 24 winners of the Bloomberg Philanthropies 2025–2026 Mayors Challenge, a competition to spur local government innovation that improves lives in cities around the world.

The sixth Mayors Challenge awarded municipalities that have proposed and tested the best breakthrough ideas to bolster essential services at scale.

Selected from over 630 applications, and from prototypes developed by 50 finalist cities that tested their core ideas with residents, the winners were chosen for the novelty of their solutions, potential impact, and strength of implementation plans.

The 24 winners include: As-Salt, Jordan; Barcelona, Spain; Beira, Mozambique; Belfast, United Kingdom; Benin City, Nigeria; Boise, United States; Budapest, Hungary; Cape Town, South Africa; Cartagena, Colombia; Fez, Morocco; Fukuoka, Japan; Ghaziabad, India; Ghent, Belgium; Kanifing, The Gambia; Lafayette, United States; Medellín, Colombia; Netanya, Israel; Pasig, Philippines; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; South Bend, United States; Surabaya, Indonesia; Toronto, Canada; Turku, Finland; and Visakhapatnam, India.

The 24 winning city halls represent 20 countries and serve over 35 million residents.

“Together, they reflect the significant role municipalities play in tackling complex public service challenges—and the ingenuity that animates local governments across the globe,” the local government said.

As one of the winners, Pasig City will receive $1 million as well as operational support and additional funding for dedicated staff to co-design floating parks with its residents so that it can create more community spaces that reconnect Pasigueños to the historic Pasig River.

“Through the Bloomberg Philanthropies Mayors Challenge, the city government of Pasig will address the lack of open, usable spaces through floating parks along our historical river,” Mayor Vico Sotto said.

Sotto added that beyond building new or floating parks, the goal is to model participatory governance, involving Pasigueños in every step—from designing and constructing to managing and operating the parks so they are active participants, not just visitors.

“As one of the winners, the Pasig City team is looking forward to being able to connect and get inputs from a larger community of experts through Bloomberg Philanthropies’ network. In particular, we are eager to improve how we do things in the city government, how we plan for projects, and how we can further get inputs from our stakeholders to make the LGU's development programs more sustainable and fruitful,” the mayor stated.

Michael R. Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg Philanthropies and Bloomberg L.P., and three-term mayor of New York City, said that the most effective city halls are bold, creative, and proactive in solving problems and meeting residents’ needs.

“We launched the Mayors Challenge to help more of them succeed,” he said.

“We look forward to supporting this year’s 24 winners as they bring their innovative projects to life—and to seeing their ideas spread to more cities around the world,” Bloomberg added.

With the operational support to be given to the local government, it will now have the resources to execute and expand its Mayors Challenge-winning program.

The local government said that in the coming weeks and months, it will finalize the design and begin construction of the floating parks and riverside easements.

It will also continue to consult with communities to form a Governance Council for Parks, building on insights from previous prototyping workshops, and collaborate with the private sector to enhance the project’s impact.

“As part of the ongoing Mayors Challenge program, Pasig City will continue to use these innovation practices to implement the Bloomberg Philanthropies-supported intervention,” it said.

This year's Mayors Challenge was launched by Mike Bloomberg in October 2024 at Bloomberg CityLab in Mexico City. More than 630 cities applied.

In July 2025, 200 municipal chiefs from the 50 finalist cities, including top officials from Pasig City, gathered at Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Ideas Camp in Bogotá to hone their concepts with experts and peers.

As a finalist, Pasig City received $50,000 and technical guidance to prototype its idea locally. This enabled local officials to gain valuable resident feedback and fine-tune the proposal based on what worked.

During the finalist phase, the city pivoted its initial proposal from crafting a masterplan for a unified parks system to actually piloting a floating parks system.

“This shift informed Pasig’s prototyping and led to more resident engagement that validated the design and acceptability of floating parks. It also made it more urgent to discuss with national government agencies on the regulatory framework around

“This shift informed Pasig’s prototyping and led to more resident engagement that validated the design and acceptability of floating parks. It also made it more urgent to discuss with national government agencies on the regulatory framework around floating parks, and to carry out deeper studies of the site conditions that may affect design and construction techniques. For pilot implementation, the shift means that the city government can immediately engage communities in project implementation,” the city government said.

The 2025–2026 Mayors Challenge builds on more than 10 years of work led by Bloomberg Philanthropies to discover, nurture, and drive innovation in cities.

The awards across five previous rounds of competition have provided 38 winning municipalities with funding and technical assistance to realize their ideas for addressing civic issues.

By supporting the replication of the most successful winning ideas, from Providence Talks, an early literacy program that boosts childhood learning, to Visor Urbano, Guadalajara’s pioneering initiative to digitize permitting and reduce corruption, Bloomberg Philanthropies has expanded the impact of the Mayors Challenge to 337 cities worldwide, reaching over 100 million residents.