AMSTERDAM—IBC unveiled the winners of the prestigious IBC2026 Innovation Awards at an event held at the RAI Amsterdam on Sunday 13 September.

During the event, previously announced recipients of IBC2026’s International Honor for Excellence, Best Technical Paper and IBC Accelerator Project of the Year 2025 were also presented with their awards

The Innovation Awards celebrate collaborative, real-world breakthroughs across four categories – Content Creation, Content Distribution, Content Everywhere and Social Impact.

The awards recognize projects bringing organizations and technology partners together to address some of the media industry’s most significant challenges, with this year’s winners spanning open-source media workflows, live news distribution, the convergence of broadcast and broadband, and AI-powered accessibility.

“Our 2026 IBC Innovation Awards winners share a common thread in breaking down previously insurmountable geographical, language, and organizational barriers to open media workflows,” said Fergal Ringrose, Chair of the Innovation Awards Jury. “Each winner realizes a transformational environment for collaborative, cloud-native, software-first digital ecosystems.”

The 2026 IBC Innovation Awards winners across the four categories were:

• Content Creation. 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 and deployed by CBC/Radio-Canada. The project involved contribution from a wide range of industry partners.
• 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.
• Content Everywhere. Implementation of DTV+ in Brazil – Through DTV+, Globo has combined the reach of free-to-air television with the personalization 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.
• Social Impact. 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.

Additional awards previously announced and presented at the event included:

• International Honor for Excellence (IHFE). This year’s IHFE was awarded to Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS), recognizing the company’s decades of innovation in live Olympic sports production and its significant impact on the global broadcast industry. Through advances in ultra-high-definition production, immersive audio, remote production workflows, artificial intelligence, cloud-based technologies and next-generation storytelling, OBS has helped transform how audiences around the world experience the Olympic Games.
• Best Technical Paper. The award for Best Technical Paper was given to Emma Maier, Jodie Pearton, Anna Stewart, Arina Mnatsakanyan and Jonathan Freeman, of i2 media research, for their paper titled 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, identifying design barriers that can make everyday tasks harder and demonstrating how an optional age-informed overlay interface can support more confident, independent viewing.
• IBC Accelerator Project of the Year 2025. Selected from the Challenges showcased at IBC last year, the 2025 Accelerator Project of the Year was presented to AI Agent Assistants for Live Production. The project demonstrated an AI Assistant Director acting as an orchestrator of a suite of production agents, enabling simpler voice control and natural language coordination of complex control room workflows. The project also developed an open, vendor-agnostic framework for AI agents working across live production, with an emphasis on augmenting human decision-making while maintaining editorial control. It was Championed by broadcasters ITN, BBC and Channel 4, with Participant vendors CUEZ, Amira Labs, Highfield AI, Monks, CuePilot, Shure, EVS, Moments Lab and Google Cloud.

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 personalization 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 personalized, 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.

LONDON—IBC has announced the finalists for this year’s IBC Innovation Awards, taking place on Sunday, Sept. 15 during IBC2024 in the RAI Amsterdam.

The IBC Innovation Awards celebrate and honor collaborative initiatives leading to ground-breaking solutions that address real-world media, entertainment and technology industry challenges. This year’s awards bring together under one roof IBC’s innovation and social impact awards to create a unified celebration of industry advances, with five categories now being judged: Content Creation, Content Distribution, Content Everywhere, Social Impact, and Environment & Sustainability.

“This year’s entries once again showcased the global reach and appeal of the IBC Innovation Awards with projects of the highest quality received from six continents,” said Fergal Ringrose, Chair of the 2024 IBC Innovation Awards Jury. “Meanwhile, constantly evolving delivery methods and audience consumption patterns demand that content producers around the globe must innovate dynamically in order to stay relevant and competitive in the modern media and entertainment technology ecosystem. I would like to sincerely thank our panel of judges for their diligence and ability to adapt, as we brought our three Content categories together with Environment & Sustainability and Social Impact this year for our new-look IBC Innovation Awards.”

The 2024 awards will be announced in a ceremony hosted by presenter and former news anchor Sasha Qadri, taking place in the Auditorium Complex at the RAI, Sunday, Sept. 15 at 6:00 PM.

This year’s finalists in the Content Creation category include:

• The National Football League (US), ESPN, Disney/Pixar and Beyond Sports for creating the first fully animated, real-time NFL alternative broadcast set in the Toy Story universe.
• Olympic Broadcasting Services and partners for live broadcast production with more than 200 smartphones contributing video for the Paris 2024 Opening Ceremony and a sea-based 5G network for sailing competitions in Marseille.
• Aspire for working with Vislink and FocalPoint VR to develop a virtual reality over RF wireless solution for the inaugural season of Aspire’s Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League (A2RL).

Organizations named as finalists in Content Distribution are:

• Claro for creating a new approach to pay TV in Brazil, integrating streaming channels and applications, delivering entertainment to consumers with a complete pay TV offer.
• NBCUniversal Operations and Technology for its pioneering project to transform the way its TV channels are delivered to consumers worldwide.
• The National Hockey League (Canada and US) in partnership with Verizon, AWS, Zixi, Vizrt and Evertz, for producing a 5G and Edge compute framework for assembly, control and delivery of live broadcast.

The Content Everywhere finalists are:

• LaLiga for working with Play Anywhere and Ease Live to enable true fan interactivity for itself and its worldwide broadcast and streaming partners.
• Red Bull Media House for bringing together real-time GPS tracking, data management and advanced visualization to transform viewing experience across live broadcast, web widgets and AR mobile app.
• Franceinfo (France Télévisions) for working with PimpMyCompany to aggregate text/audio/video/photo messages from various platforms and broadcasting them live on air.

The Social Impact finalists are:

• Disney Star, Star Sports for working with India Signing Hands to bring cricket to almost 67 million hard of hearing and 34 million visually impaired fans watching IPL 2024.
• CultureQ for a new technology platform developed by indigenous-owned tech company Kiwa Digital that enables indigenous peoples globally to revitalize their language and culture at scale, while retaining sovereignty.
• Sesame Workshop for its Watch Play Learn Distribution Hub which allows government agencies and aid organisations to preview and request videos for children in crisis settings.

The Environment & Sustainability finalists are:

• France Télévisions for reducing CO2 emissions by 300 tons via a pioneering 100% glass-to-glass cloud production and private 5G network.
• GreeningofStreaming for addressing growing industry concerns about the energy impact of the streaming sector, with international reach and over 30 member organisations.
• Anton/Bauer for Salt-E Dog which harnesses the power of sodium chemistry to enable sustainable television production practices.

The Innovation Awards ceremony will also feature the presentation of the IBC International Honour for Excellence to an individual or organization that has made an outstanding impact in the industry, and the Best Technical Paper, with all papers being presented at the 2024 IBC Conference, Sept. 13-16, in the Auditorium Complex of the RAI.

IBC also released for the first time earlier in the month longlists of the final 10 contenders for each category of the 2024 Innovation Awards, selected from the hundreds of entries that poured in from media organizations and their technology partners worldwide. The longlists can be found here.

Learn more about the IBC Innovation Awards finalists here.

LONDON—IBC is now accepting nominations for its IBC2024 Innovation Awards, which honor achievements in technological innovation and social impact media & entertainment. This year’s awards bring together under one umbrella IBC’s innovation and social impact awards “to enable a single celebration of different industry advances across five categories.” All parts of the IBC community are invited to put forward entries for projects, program, and initiatives, IBC said.

Deadline is midnight (BST), May 31, 2024. The winners’ ceremony will take place Sunday, Sept. 15 at the RAI Amsterdam during.

The expanded IBC Innovation Awards recognize “the best in collaborative efforts to develop new solutions to real-world technical challenges and to address social and environmental issues,” according to the IBC. The winning entries will be announced at a ceremony, Sunday, Sept. 15 during the IBC Show, Sept. 13-16 at the RAI Amsterdam. The five categories are Content Creation, Content Distribution, Content Everywhere, Social Impact, and Environment & Sustainability.

“The IBC Innovation Awards are an IBC keystone, recognising industry innovations of all types – enabling our community to celebrate together those critical breakthroughs we have made during the past year,” says IBC Innovation Awards Chair of the Judges Fergal Ringrose. “This year’s awards reflect the many ways in which industry pioneers are redefining media – whether through technological or social advances. The expanded awards exemplify IBC efforts to lead innovation, highlighting the spirit of cooperation and creative accomplishments that positively impact the businesses involved and the industry overall.”

The three established technical categories of the IBC Innovation Awards recognize completed projects of any size that have overcome real-world creative, operational, or commercial challenges faced in the M&E industry through solutions demonstrating cooperation between end users and technology partners. The two further categories recognize initiatives and campaigns that are making a difference within the industry in social advancement and equality, and environmental responsibility.

The winners of the 2023 IBC Innovation Awards were: The BBC and partners for the world’s largest pop-up 5G standalone non-public network, using shared spectrum for live broadcast contributions for the Coronation of HM King Charles III (Content Creation); Sky Group for its cloud-native software playout platform enabling origination of linear content TV channels across European territories (Content Distribution); and KAN, which changed the way Israeli audiences watched World Cup Qatar 2022 and Eurovision 2023 with Sport BUFF real-time interactive engagement (Content Everywhere).

The winners of the 2023 IBC Social Impact Awards, now joined with the Innovation Awards, were: RTVE, which used Artificial Intelligence (AI) to provide local election news coverage of nearly 5,000 small Spanish municipalities; SWI swissinfo.ch, which introduced a data-driven process to evaluate the use of inclusive language in its multilingual digital newsroom; and Iron Mountain Data Centers, which are on the path to using 100% locally sourced clean electricity, 100% of the time, to make their operations carbon free.

LONDON—As IBC 2021 eyes a return to an in-person conference, the annual IBC Innovation Awards are ramping up, with the official call for entries now open. Submissions can be entered between now and June 2; winners will be announced on Sept. 12 at IBC 2021.

The IBC 2021 Innovation Awards will focus on innovations underpinned by collaboration within the content and technology industry, per IBC. There will be three categories for this year’s awards: Content Creation, Content Distribution and Content Everywhere.

“Innovation hinges on the success of collaboration, and this is why the content and technology industry has continued to pioneer new projects and services despite challenging global circumstances,” said Michael Crimp, chief executive of IBC. “Broadcasters, service providers and technology vendors worldwide have transcended the barriers of national lockdowns, restricted travel and social distancing. Coupled with the surge in consumer demand for live and on-demand content, they have accomplished the shared mission to keep TV and video on-air and on our screens.”

In addition to the IBC 2021 Innovation Awards, the IBC Accelerator Project of the Year Award will be presented, a new award that selects the most impressive Accelerator team solution as demonstrated through their Proof of Concept Showcase at IBC 2021.

The International Honor for Excellence will also be presented during the conference.

For more information, visit IBC’s website. 

LONDON—Industry innovators are now able to make the case that their latest is worthy of acclaim by entering the IBC 2018 Innovation Awards. IBC has officially issued the call for entries and have set a submission deadline of April 23.

The IBC Innovation Awards seek to identify companies that have drawn on the latest technologies to create proven solutions that find ways to meet creative, commercial and technical challenges, per IBC. There are three programs that are part of the awards: Content creation, content distribution and content everywhere. There is also the possibility of a Judges’ Prize, which can be given out by an international panel of independent industry figures.

“What the judges are looking for is innovation and collaboration in all its forms to solve a real-world challenge, something that makes the content more engaging or more commercially successful,” said Michael Lumley, chair of the judging panel.

All entries are invited to attend the awards ceremony, which will take place on Sept. 16 during the annual IBC Show in Amsterdam.

For more information on submissions, visit show.ibc.org/InnovationAwards.

LONDON—The shortlist for the IBC 2017 Innovation Awards covers the media spectrum, from a major football final to e-sports; virtual studios to channel marketing; mobile OTT on a massive scale to seamless content delivery on high speed trains.

For 2017, IBC’s 50th anniversary year, categories in the Innovation Awards were updated to reflect and respond to the shifting industry landscape. Three awards will be presented for the most innovative projects in Content Creation,Content Distribution and Content Everywhere. What has not changed is the emphasis on collaborative work to tackle a real challenge, and the trophies are taken home not by the technology partners but by the broadcasters, media enterprises and service providers who commissioned the project

“I was astounded by the quantity, and most important the quality, of entries this year,” said Michael Lumley, chair of the judging panel. “It took a lot of intense discussion to get down to 11 finalists – it was a very tough task and there were many excellent projects which did not make the shortlist, often by a very fine margin.���

“The international spread of 2017 finalists reflects the global reach of IBC, and the global significance of these most highly-coveted awards,” Lumley added. “I look forward to congratulating all the finalists and hearing the winners announced on Sunday night at IBC.”

Content Creation – three finalists
ITV in the UK has been shortlisted for its Project Phoenix. The broadcaster needed to develop a system which managed the production of promos and trailers from commissioning to transmission. The result creates more than 1,000 marketing assets every month, with almost all versioning carried out automatically. Technology partners alongside ITV were 100 Shapes, Cantemo, Codemill, NMR, Pixel Power and Vidispine.

Leading broadcaster Mediacorp made the shortlist for implementing a service-oriented architecture to break down silos across its global campuses and create a seamless production and delivery environment. Its new center includes a 3,000-square-meter newsroom producing online, television and radio news in four languages, together with six studios and a large theater, more than 100 edit suites and OTT and broadcast delivery. Systems integrator Qvest Media brought in an enormous number of technology partners, including Actus, Adobe, ATCI, Autoscript, Avid, Axon, Baton, Blackmagic Design, Cisco, Dalet, DHD audio, EVS, Fairlight, Grass Valley, Harmonic, Hitachi, HP, IBM, Ihse, Lawo, Lund Halsey, Netia, Octopus, Oracle, Raritan, RCS, SAM, Scheduall, Shotoku, Sony, ST Electronics, Telestream, TriplePlay, TSL and Vizrt.

Groupe Média TFO has transformed itself from a small, French language broadcaster in Ontario, Canada, into a major online presence producing much-loved children’s programming. Its Laboratoire d’univers virtuels, or LUV, took a fresh approach to virtual sets, using the power and cost-effectiveness of the Unreal games engine from Epic Games. Today, TFO produces as many as 40 short videos, in real time, each day, from a single studio. As well as Epic, technology partners were CEV, stYpe and Zero Density.

Content Distribution – four finalists
Arena Television is a U.K.-based outside broadcast provider, and led the industry in Europe with its first all-IP truck. It is regularly used to originate BT Sport’s 4k Ultra HD coverage of the English Premier League. Technology partners for this pioneering truck (and a second which is now also in service) were Cisco, Grass Valley, Lawo and Videlio Video Solutions.

Dutch media company DMC has migrated from broadcast playout center to comprehensive media logistics service. As part of this it has migrated to a fully virtualized private broadcast cloud that provides DMC’s clients with the asset management, publishing and distribution services they need, linking international content owners with 700 million European viewers. The new platform was developed with Cisco, Equinix, Pebble Beach Systems, Red Hat, Super Micro and VMware.

Sinclair Broadcast Group operates 233 television stations in 108 U.S. markets. As part of its program to provide a common platform for on air and online services, it has developed a revolutionary approach to terrestrial transmission. The usual American model is “high tower, high power:” a single mast and transmitter. The new approach —developed by TeamCast and ONE Media for Sinclair—takes a cellular approach, using mini-transmitters just where they are needed in a large single frequency network.

Viacom 18 is a joint venture in India between media giant Viacom and local service provider Network 18, running a multi-channel OTT network called VOOT. Faced with the prospect of delivering content to the 300 million smartphones in India, across networks which are often crowded and at high data costs, it took a fresh approach, developing a progressive web service that delivered high performance without taking valuable memory space. Within just a few days VOOT saw a 77 percent increase in conversion from visitor to video viewer and a 39 percent increase in session time per user. Google provided technology support.

Content Everywhere – four finalists
BT Sport was host broadcaster for the 2017 Champions League Final in Cardiff, Wales, and went all in to engage with as many people as possible, in as many ways as possible. Separate trucks covered the game in HD and in 4k Ultra HD with Dolby Atmos sound. A unique 12 camera VR operation provided a rich 360-degree feed, including in-vision graphics, live replays and a separate commentary. The content was available online to all platforms as well as broadcast. Technology partners included Dolby, Ericsson, Moov, SAM, Sony, Telegenic and Timeline.

ESL, the Electronic Sports League, is an eSports company that organizes gaming competitions worldwide. For the finals of the 2017 Intel Extreme Masters tournament, held in Poland, it needed to find a delivery partner that could deliver live feeds to 13 broadcasters in multiple regions, with additional OTT and digital cinema delivery to some territories. ESL partnered with Deluxe to enable the delivery of live ESL broadcast feeds over the public internet. The eSports tournament reached more than 46 million viewers.

For a decade, Google Earth has given us the ability to explore the world using just the internet. Now we can immerse ourselves in its wonders using Google Earth VR. The new app uses touch, sight and sound to engage the viewer and to receive control feedback. New techniques render imagery smoothly, maintaining the immersion without confusion or motion sickness. Technology partners were Ant Food, Even/Odd, Joshua Moshier and Richard Devine.

The final project on this year’s shortlist is a real content everywhere application—ensuring consistent media delivery on trains traveling in excess of 300 kilometers an hour. Renfe, Spain’s national railway operator, worked with Telefonica to ensure its 19 million high speed rail passengers can access premium content and live sports on trains and at stations as if they were at home. The project was led by Telefonica, with technology partners including Accedo, Cires21, Cisco, Hispasat, Iecisa, Indra, Nagra, Signiant and Teldat.

IBC2017 Awards Ceremony
The winners of these three awards will be announced during the IBC2017 Awards Ceremony, at 18:30 on Sunday 17 Sept. 17, in the RAI Auditorium. Special guest host for the evening is scientist and broadcaster Dr Helen Czerski.

As well as the Innovation Awards, the ceremony will see the announcement of the Judges’ Prize, also in the gift of the same panel of international editors and consultants who have judged the Innovation Awards. Other awards to be presented during the ceremony include the IBC International Honour for Excellence, IBC’s highest award.

The ceremony is free for all IBC attendees.