Nine People, Eight Countries, One Year of Unconditional Income

Most conversations about unconditional basic income are arguments. This one is a bank transfer.

UBI4ALL is a European non-profit, founded in 2020, that does something almost nobody else in the basic income movement does: it raffles a real year of basic income to a real person, funded by small donations, and then pays it. Nine people have now received it. Not nine pilot participants in a study with a control group and a five-year write-up. Nine people who got money every month and went on with their lives.

That distinction is the whole point of the organisation, and it is why the project is worth knowing about whether or not you think UBI should be public policy.

How it actually works

Registration is free. You create an account on ubi4all.org, you must be at least 16 years old, and that is the entire cost of taking part. Nobody has to buy anything to be eligible, which matters more than it sounds: a lottery you must pay to enter is a very different object, legally and morally, from one you do not.

Donations come from supporters rather than participants. When enough has been collected to fund one winner, the draw happens on a public livestream, and the winner verifies their identity before payments start.

If you do not donate, you register again for each raffle. If you donate monthly, from as little as one euro, you become what they call a UBI Beaver and you are entered automatically every time, without re-registering. It is a small piece of design that quietly solves the hardest problem a volunteer organisation has, which is people meaning to come back and forgetting.

The detail most coverage misses

Each winner is funded with the same amount, 9.600 euro. What changes is how that amount is paid out, and it changes by country.

In a higher-income OECD country the money arrives as roughly 800 euro a month for one year. In a lower-income country it can be paid as around 160 euro a month across five years instead.

Stop on that for a second, because it is the most thoughtful decision in the whole scheme. A fixed 800 euro a month means something completely different in Dublin than it does in a small town in eastern Europe. By holding the total constant and varying the duration, UBI4ALL keeps the gift equal in cost and roughly equal in effect. In one place it is a year of breathing room. In another it is five years of a floor under your feet.

Very few organisations bother with that, because it is harder to explain than a flat number. It is also more honest.

The nine

Lucie in France was first. Then Thomas in Ireland, who at first assumed the notification was spam. Then Balázs in Hungary, Alexandra in Germany, Christelle in France, Athanasios in Greece, Yi Yin in Taiwan, Luca in Italy, and Irina in Latvia.

Nine names, eight countries, one of them outside Europe entirely. That last detail says something about how the idea travels.

What they did with the money is their business, and UBI4ALL does not ask them to justify it, which is the definition of unconditional. The winners who have spoken publicly describe the same thing in different words: the money did not make them rich, it made the next decision less frightening.

What it costs to care about this

Nothing, if you want to take part. Register at https://ubi4all.org and you are in the next draw.

One euro a month, if you want to help fund the next winner, and that also enters you automatically in every raffle from then on.

An email, if you want to give time instead of money. They are a small team and they are genuinely short-handed. Write to info@ubi4all.org with the subject line "Becoming a team member" and tell them what you can do. Web work, translation, admin, outreach, all of it is useful.

Why this article exists

Full disclosure, because it belongs at the top of anything like this rather than buried at the bottom.

We are not affiliated with UBI4ALL, we are not paid by them, there are no affiliate links on this page and we earn nothing if you register or donate. We wrote about them in 2024, after hosting a Basic Income Regulars' Table in our own garden in Sântandrei, near Deva, and our family has been registered in every raffle since. In September 2026 we asked to join as volunteers, and that is the only relationship we have with them.

This piece exists because the original version of it, published on an older site of ours, went offline without us noticing, and somebody at UBI4ALL tried to open it and could not. That seemed like a poor way to treat people doing unglamorous work with very little help, so it is now here, corrected and brought up to date.

The 2024 version said there had been three winners and that the payment was 800 euro a month. Both numbers have moved. There are nine winners now, and the payout scales by country. If you read the old article, that is what changed.