LONDON—The organizers of IBC 2026 has announced that show's most prestigious honor, the International Honor for Excellence (IHFE), will be presented to Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) in recognition of the company’s decades of innovation in live sports production and its far-reaching impact on the global broadcast industry.
IBC also announced the winners of its Best Technical Paper award, which this year recognizes research into reducing interaction barriers for older viewers of internet-delivered TV.
The IHFE and The Best Technical Paper will be presented at the IBC Innovation Awards event, which takes place Sunday 13 September at the IBC2026 Conference, which runs from Sept. 11 to 14 in Amsterdam.
In announcing the IHFE award, the IBC noted that for decades, OBS has set the benchmark for innovation in live sports production, consistently pushing the boundaries of what is technically possible. Through pioneering developments in ultra-high-definition production, immersive audio, remote production workflows, artificial intelligence, cloud-based technologies and next-generation storytelling, OBS has transformed the way audiences around the world experience the Olympic Games.
Beyond its technical achievements, OBS has played a defining role in raising standards across the wider broadcast sector, the IBC said. The innovations developed to meet the unique demands of the Olympic Games have frequently become catalysts for industry-wide adoption, influencing broadcasters, technology partners, manufacturers and production teams across every genre of live television.
“We are truly honored to receive this award and sincerely thank IBC for this recognition,” Yiannis Exarchos, OBS CEO said. “This distinction is a tribute to the passion, expertise and dedication of everyone at Olympic Broadcasting Services, whose work enables us to bring the Olympic Games to audiences around the world. It recognises our team’s commitment to innovation, excellence and service to the Olympic Movement, as we continually seek new ways to enhance the coverage and audience experience of the Games. We are especially proud to receive this award from IBC, whose role in bringing together the international broadcast community is so highly regarded.”
OBS has previously received multiple broadcast and sports industry awards. At IBC, this has included the IBC2024 Innovation Award for Content Creation, with OBS winning, along with its technical partners, for its live broadcast production for the Paris 2024 Opening Ceremony, which used more than 200 smartphones contributing video, and a sea-based 5G network for Olympic sailing competitions in Marseille.
The IBC also announced that Emma Maier, Jodie Pearton, Anna Stewart, Arina Mnatsakanyan and Jonathan Freeman, of i2 media research are being awarded the coveted Best Technical Paper at IBC2026 for their work entitled Measuring and reducing interaction barriers in internet-delivered tv systems through age-informed human factors design.
The paper explores how internet-delivered TV can be made easier for older viewers so they can access everyday services with confidence. Using observational testing with adults aged 65–89 at the i2 media research lab at Goldsmiths, University of London, it identified how design barriers including a lack of hierarchy, layered menus, unclear feedback and unfamiliar terminology can make everyday tasks harder than expected. It then demonstrates how a simple, optional age-informed overlay interface can reduce barriers and support more confident, independent viewing.
Andrew Dumbreck, Chair of the IBC2026 Technical Papers Committee, explained that “among many excellent papers in this year’s IBC Technical Conference, this paper on how to make TV more usable for older viewers clearly reports a well-conceived and executed scientific study. It is highly relevant to the current thinking about how to transition to greater delivery of content by internet while retaining public service goals of universal coverage and access. We can also look forward to a diversity of top-quality papers from the broadcast industry and academia including from: BBC, UK; NHK, Japan; RAI, Italy; and RTÉ, Ireland.”
The IBC2026 Technical Paper Program brings together the technical media and broadcast community to consider what direction technology should take for the industry. It features original research on solutions to real-world problems faced by the international broadcast and digital media industry.
Its expanded scope this year includes papers dedicated to technical policy alongside traditional technical papers, with focused sessions spanning AI Production, Coding, Trust & Provenance, XR & Multiview, the Future of TV Distribution, Dynamic Media Facility developments and AI Indexing.
The IHFE and The Best Technical Paper will be presented at the IBC Innovation Awards event, which takes place Sunday 13 September at the IBC2026 Conference.
For more information on the IBC Technical Papers Program, please visit: https://show.ibc.org/technical-papers.
Learn more about the IBC Awards at: https://show.ibc.org/ibc-awards.
