LONDON—IBC has unveiled the finalists for the IBC2026 Innovation Awards, recognizing collaborative projects from around the world that solve real-world challenges and demonstrate notable tech advances in the media, entertainment and technology industries.
This year’s finalists cover four categories—Content Creation, Content Distribution, Content Everywhere and Social Impact. The awards celebrate projects that show how collaboration between media organizations and technology partners is delivering meaningful innovation in production, distribution, audience experiences and societal impact.
"The number and standard of entries received from around the globe for the 2026 Innovation Awards has been amazing – truly outstanding," said Fergal Ringrose, Chair of the IBC2026 Innovation Awards Jury. "Seeing more than 120 high-quality deployed innovation projects competing for recognition underlines the ever-growing appreciation of our unique Awards across the media and entertainment community.”
The IBC reported that this year's finalists reflect an industry embracing AI, cloud-native and software-defined workflows, open standards, new approaches to live production and distribution, personalized audience experiences, and greater accessibility.
The winners of the IBC2026 Innovation Awards will be announced on Sunday September 13 at 18:00 CEST on the main stage of the IBC Conference at the RAI Amsterdam.
The 2026 Finalists for Content Creation:
- How Collective Newsroom powers BBC India — Building a unified, multilingual production operation from scratch against a fixed deadline. Working with the BBC and nxtedition, supported by Adobe, Blackmagic Design, Calrec, Ideal Systems and Ross Video.
- Media eXchange Layer (MXL) — An open-source initiative established by the European Broadcasting Union in collaboration with the North American Broadcasters Association, hosted by the Linux Foundation.
- Formula E Strategy Agent — Developed with Google Cloud, the AI architecture processes and contextualizes a sub-millisecond, multi-feed torrent of racing car data within a compressed window to predict and simplify complex racing strategies for the viewer. Technical support: Aurora Media Worldwide.
The 2026 Finalists for Content Distribution:
- Capacity that follows the live news story — Reuters replaced fixed-capacity infrastructure with a Global Shared Memory ecosystem powered by TVU Networks' MediaMesh, enabling event-driven, API-orchestrated news distribution, including partner integrations: InSync, Kinetiq, Sony, Elecard and TAG Video Systems.
- Transforming broadcast distribution in Malaysia — Technical Content Delivery (TCODE) is a centralised digital contribution and workflow orchestration platform for Radio Televisyen Malaysia, developed with Ideal Systems. Technical supporters: Blue Lucy Media, Emotion Systems, and Fortinet.
- Server-guided ad insertion at scale — RTBF Belgium migrated from CSAI/SSAI to standards-based SGAI. Launched for the FIFA World Cup, with Bitmovin’s Player, AIP’s AdBlendr, HLS interstitials and SVTA2053. Technical support: Dotscreen, Red Bee Media, and Régie Média Belge.
The 2026 Finalists for Content Everywhere:
- Implementation of DTV+ in Brazil — Through DTV+, Globo has combined the reach of free-to-air television with the personalisation and measurability of digital media. By integrating broadcast and broadband, it reconnects mass audiences with digital capabilities. The project involved collaboration across government, broadcasters and industry.
- The connected fan experience — Built with Microsoft, the Premier League Companion powered by Copilot reimagines fan engagement at global scale, connecting 1.8 billion fans in 189 countries to 30 seasons of Premier League content through personalised, real-time AI conversational experiences. Technical partner: Beyond Sport.
- Tilly Norwood (and the Tillyverse) — Created by Particle 6, with its talent studio Xicoia, the AI-generated performer has reached an estimated 80 million people globally with approximately 500 million cumulative impressions.
The 2026 Finalists for Social Impact:
- AI for Good — Established by the International Telecommunication Union, the platform convenes governments, start-ups, researchers, UN agencies, industry leaders, civil society and youth from over 180 countries, with the mission of unlocking AI's potential to serve humanity.
- IOC Cyber Abuse Protection Service (CAPS) — This system protects athletes, teams, coaches and officials from online abuse at the Olympic Games. Technical supporter: Signify AI.
- Closing the sign language gap — G&L Systemhaus brought together AI company Signapse, software company Norsk/id3as and CDN provider Akamai to build a broadcast-grade, AI-powered sign language solution for live and on-demand streaming.
- The IBC2026 Awards presentation will also feature the IBC International Honour for Excellence, recognizing an outstanding contribution to the global media industry, along with the Best Technical Paper, selected from the peer-reviewed papers presented during the IBC2026 Conference.
Learn more about the IBC Innovation Awards and finalists at: https://show.ibc.org/ibc-awards
IBC2026 takes place at the RAI Amsterdam from September 11-14.
