The Laureus World Sports Award for Action Sportsperson of the Year, known as the Alternative Sportsperson of the Year prior to 2007, is an annual award honouring the achievements of individual athletes from the world of action sports.

[1] The awards are presented by the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation, a global organisation involved in more than 150 charity projects supporting 500,000 young people.

[7][8][9] The inaugural winner of the Laureus World Sports Award for Action Sportsperson of the Year, in 2000, was the American multi-sports athlete Shaun Palmer.

It has been awarded posthumously on one occasion, in 2006 to the Italian hang glider Angelo d'Arrigo who was killed in an air crash in March of that year.

The award has been presented to five women during its history: the Australian surfers Layne Beachley (2004) and Stephanie Gilmore (2010), the British yachtswoman Ellen MacArthur (2005), and the British mountain biker Rachel Atherton (2017), and twice to the American snowboarder Chloe Kim, who won the award in 2019 and 2020.