Awards always provoke mixed feelings. I’m aware this might seem an incongruous point to make in an article devoted to awards, but this is very much a trend of today. The charge sheet against them includes the accusations that there are too many of them, that only certain types of work win, and that they are too expensive.

None of these points are unreasonable. They are something we’re keenly aware of at Creative Review and try to overcome in our Annual Awards (while being honest about their importance to CR’s bottom line – love them or loathe them, awards are a vital resource in the modern media landscape). To keep things fair, we try to have a wide variety of judges from around the world, resulting in an expanse of different styles of work being recognised, which is where the excitement comes in.

There will always be projects I’ve never seen before that might win a Grand Prix, and those that are familiar that will cause heated debate by juries (and possibly come away with nothing).

Our awards have always been rooted in our print magazine, where we feature everything that wins. Even though it’s our biggest issue of the year, this does introduce limitations in the amount of work that is featured, meaning we only have two prizes: Winners and Grand Prix. Both are focused on celebrating the best (and the very best) work of the year.

This does mean that the process behind the Annual Awards is sometimes a bit hidden: to try to counter that, this year we’re featuring the work that was shortlisted, those projects that made it to the final round of judging (a video call where the judges debate the work) but didn’t quite make the cut. This gives you the chance to see what nearly made it and consider what you might have put in instead, had you been judging.

In an industry that is always travelling at hyper speed, awards offer an important moment to reflect on and celebrate what has happened over the year, what work has stood out and why. They of course don’t show everything: this year the advertising and design industries have been through the wringer, with mergers, closures and – more optimistically – a huge number of smaller agencies opening.

You can’t see all that change in what’s won, but there is evidence of an industry in flux. Whereas once the pages of our awards issue would have been filled with glossy commercials, only a few made the cut this year. Instead, it was the diversity of work for brands that stood out, crossing into tech, culture and entertainment.

Just look at Ikea, which has won our Most Creative Brand award this year. The retailer showed up all over the place: in a pop-up shop on London’s Oxford Street, on Roblox, and in more traditional spaces in print or on social. Ikea’s work has always been different and surprising and yet always, somehow, very Ikea.

Much of this work came from Mother, which picked up our Most Creative Agency award for the second year running. Like Ikea, Mother’s work was appearing everywhere, in every style possible – from a hard-hitting campaign about the power of free journalism for the Wall Street Journal, to the creation of a ludicrous cult for KFC. Whereas once clients may have picked an agency for its house style (be it comedy or craft, etc), Mother knows that the biggest power a modern agency can have today is to be a chameleon.

In design and branding, change is evident in the sheer number of rebrands that continue to take place. This is something we’ve commented on over consecutive years now, but which shows no sign of slowing. Where it gets particularly interesting is in the embrace of design by sectors that might traditionally have been sceptical of the need for branding. This can be seen in the work of JKR (our Most Creative Design Agency this year) for organisations such as the RSPCA or Mozilla. In joining forces with type designers Studio Drama, they have created branding that makes them stand out from the crowd and attract new audiences while remaining true to themselves.

There is a lot to be worried about these days, and this also came out in the work that won this year. Despite the joy featured in campaigns such as Telstra’s charming 26-film stop-motion epic, there are many projects reflecting the concerns of the world, be they political or cultural.

But some of the fears that have been rumbling around the creative industries lately were also counteracted by winning projects this year. We saw multiple entries into the Creative Use of AI category, for example, which showed that this rapidly evolving tech – which is painted as a creative death knell by many – is sparking plenty of clever activations too.

And craft still matters, thank goodness. From animation to cinematography, direction to writing, the Craft section produced many Grand Prix winners. As Matthew Fone, owner of Riff Raff Films (which won our Most Creative Production Company prize this year) points out, it’s all about finding the right collaborators, “those great agencies that push [you] or have great clients who allow you to do great work”.

So there are plenty of reasons to be cheerful, despite the state of the world right now. And I hope there are enough reasons in the work featured here to set aside a little bit of awards cynicism and enjoy what it all shows about the state of the industry today.

I look forward to doing it all again with you in 2026.