RNLI volunteers and staff have been nominated for four honours at the 2026 Global Search & Rescue Excellence Awards. The charity’s lifeguards, Mablethorpe RNLI, Walmer RNLI volunteer Les Coe and the RNLI International Team are all shortlisted across separate categories.
RNLI lifeguards have been nominated for Team of the Year during the service’s 25th anniversary year. The beach safety service now patrols more than 245 beaches across the UK and Channel Islands.
RNLI lifeguards mark 25 years of beach patrols with a Team of the Year nomination. Photo: Ashton Milton
Over the past quarter-century, RNLI lifeguards have carried out more than 48 million preventative actions, aided over 440,000 people and helped save more than 2,000 lives.
Mablethorpe RNLI Lifeboat Station has been shortlisted for Search and Rescue Mission of the Year following the rescue operation involving the vessels Solong and Stena Immaculate in the North Sea in March 2025. The crew launched their Atlantic 85 lifeboat into difficult conditions and helped rescue 23 people following the collision.
Walmer RNLI volunteer Les Coe has been nominated for the Lifetime Achievement Award after 71 years of service. Coe joined the station as a teenage shore crew member in 1955 and later received the RNLI’s Thanks of the Institution on Vellum for rescuing two people trapped in a cave by the tide.
Walmer RNLI volunteer Les Coe, shortlisted for a Lifetime Achievement Award. Photo: Nigel Millard
The RNLI International Team has also been shortlisted for Project of the Year for its Fishers Buoyancy Workshop in Zanzibar. The initiative brought together engineers, designers and local fishing communities to develop low-cost buoyancy solutions for East Africa.
RNLI International Team partners at the Fishers Buoyancy Workshop in Zanzibar. Photo: RNLI
RNLI chief executive Peter Sparkes said the nominations reflected the charity’s broad lifesaving work. “It is great to see such a broad spectrum of RNLI personnel shortlisted for the 2026 Global Search & Rescue Awards,” he said.
The awards ceremony takes place in London on 15 May.
