Sustainability Leaders: applications open for the 2026 call for entries

The call 2026 to apply to join the list of Sustainability Leaders, created by Il Sole 24 Ore and Statista to reward the efforts of companies most committed to the ecological, ethical, social and governance transition, is now available online. The call will remain open until 31 December.

In order to participate, companies must comply with the honourability criteria (ex Dlgs. 50/2016), share a 2024 sustainability report and a 2024 financial balance sheet or be in possession of the necessary data, calculated according to Gri, Esrs, Vsme standards or other international references. They will also have to provide the data indicated in the questionnaire prepared by Statista. Each candidate company must have its registered office in Italy and be independent (it cannot be a branch or subsidiary). If it is part of a foreign group, it must have reported on sustainability in Italy and not only at group level.

In addition to self-submissions, Statista conducts an independent survey of a sample of more than two thousand large and medium-sized Italian companies drawn from public databases, which publish sustainability reports and disclose key balance sheet data online. This is an unsolicited and objective analysis, which is not subject to payment of fees by companies.

Each company must disclose various KPIs (key performance indicators), such as energy consumption, use of energy from renewable sources, emissions, waste management, water consumption, accidents at work, welfare policies and social responsibility actions, turnover rate, diversity, employee salaries, but also transparency (symbolised by the online publication of reports) and economic sustainability (revenues, EBITDA, debts). The data must be confirmed, if not public, by the company director or a member of the executive committee, otherwise the candidature will be excluded. A score on a 100 basis is attributed to the various indicators and those who score low in one of the three dimensions of sustainability: social, environmental and economic are discarded. Only the best ones are included in the list, after careful analysis and various checks, including reputational checks, carried out by Statista and the editorial staff of Il Sole 24 Ore.

Participation in the initiative is free and transparent: entry on the list and citation in articles are not conditional on a financial transaction, like the other lists or rankings that Il Sole 24 Ore and Statista have already been successfully producing for a few years: Growth Leaders (on the companies with the highest rate of development in the last three years) and Law Firms of the Year. There is instead a fee to use the logo in advertising materials, communication materials or on the company website.