INMA has announced 41 first-place recipients at its 2026 Global Media Awards competition, with The Wall Street Journal taking home the global “Best in Show.”
At the awards ceremony at the Tipi am Kanzleramt in Berlin in front of more than 425 guests, the winners were unveiled across 20 categories aimed at surfacing innovation and best practices in news brands, optimizing the use of media features, subscriptions, product, advertising and commerce, and newsroom transformation.
Winning the coveted ‘Best in Show,’ the top award of the evening, was The Wall Street Journal’s “Surfacing the Story: How WSJ’s ORCA Unlocks the Podcast Universe,” a powerful investigative journalism tool that turns an unsearchable podcast ecosystem into structured, analysable data, enabling reporters to track narratives, sources, and influence across thousands of hours of audio with accountability built into the system.
The 2026 Global Media Awards competition attracted a record 960 entries from 274 market-leading news media brands in 46 countries. Participants included newspaper media, magazine media, digital media, television media, and radio media.
An international jury of 60 media executives from 26 countries selected 200 finalists in March.
Judges also selected the best in six world regions from the finalists:
- Best in Africa: Media24 for “Saturday Night Fitness”
- Best in Asia/Pacific: ACM/Explore for “From Destination Site to Network Product”
- Best in Europe: Bauer Media for “Toni OS & Eva AI”
- Best in Latin America: Clarín for “Mile 201: Patrolling the World’s Most Contested Maritime Frontier”
- Best in North America: The Wall Street Journal for “Surfacing the Story: How WSJ’s ORCA Unlocks the Podcast Universe”
- Best in South Asia: Dainik Jagran for “Lights. Cities. Action.”
“It is clear from this year’s winning INMA entries that AI has graduated from experiment to strategic operating fabric, and the linear subscription funnel has given way to integrated audience systems focused on lifetime value rather than acquisition alone,” said Earl J. Wilkinson, executive director and CEO of INMA.
“Just as importantly, our members are pairing this business sophistication with a renewed commitment to immersive, human-centric, and local journalism. In a year defined by misinformation and fractured public discourse, news media organisations are proving that strategic depth and editorial purpose are not competing priorities — they reinforce each other.”
The deadline for the 2027 INMA Global Media Awards is January 29, 2027. The winners are:
Category 1: Best Brand Awareness Campaign
Regional Brands
- First Place, Fædrelandsvennen, Norway, “Behind a Story”
- Second Place, Nieuwsblad, Belgium, “The Green Playground”
- Third Place, Toronto Star, Canada, “City of Stars: A Commemorative Masterpiece for the 50th Anniversary of TIFF”
- Honourable Mention, Manorama Online, India, “Chumma MO It!”
- Honourable Mention, Rheinische Post Mediengruppe, Germany, “Düsseldorf Geht Aus: An Innovative, Cross-Channel Project That Brings Local Gastronomy to Life”
National Brands
- First Place, The Hindu, India, “The Hindu Written By Journalists”
- Second Place, Dow Jones, United States, “WSJ+ Fortune Favors The Ambitious Brand Campaign”
- Third Place, Sydney Morning Herald/The Age, Australia, “Good Food”
- Honourable Mention, Dainik Jagran, India, “The Hindi Operating System”
- Honourable Mention, Prothom Alo, Bangladesh, “HHH: Heads Held High”
Category 2: Best Public Relations or Community Service Campaign
Regional Brands
- First Place, The Philadelphia Inquirer, United States, “Philly Gives”
- Second Place, Nieuwsblad, Belgium, “The Green Playground”
- Third Place, Winnipeg Free Press, Canada, “Media Literacy and Learning Project”
- Honourable Mention, Amar Ujala, India, “Tanav Mukt Pariksha (Stress Free Exams)”
- Honourable Mention, Russmedia, Austria, “Vorarlberger Pflegeaward”
National Brands
- First Place, News Corp Australia, “Let Them Be Kids”
- Second Place, Dainik Jagran, India, “The Architects of Tomorrow”
- Third Place, Beobachter, Switzerland, “Prämienticker”
- Honourable Mention, Prothom Alo, Bangladesh, “Guiding Light: Rewriting Futures in Bangladesh’s Forgotten Regions”
- Honourable Mention, Stuff Group, New Zealand, “Swimming Campaign”
CATEGORY 3: Best Use of An Event to Build a News Brand
Regional Brands
- First Place, Media24, South Africa, “Saturday Night Fitness”
- Second Place, El Nuevo Día, Puerto Rico, “Al Son de Aquí”
- Third Place, The Hindu, India, “The Hindu: Made of Chennai”
- Honourable Mention, The Philadelphia Inquirer, United States, “Inquirer Food Fest”
- Honourable Mention, Stuff Group, New Zealand, “The Post: The Power of Proximity”
National Brands
- First Place, Dainik Jagran, India, “Lights. Cities. Action.”
- Second Place, BusinessDesk, New Zealand, “BusinessDesk CEO Index Awards: Finding Leadership Among Our Leaders”
- Third Place, Prothom Alo, Bangladesh, “NextGen Achievers: Recognizing and Inspiring the Next Generation of Leaders”
- Honourable Mention, The Wall Street Journal, United States, “WSJ Tech Live in California & Qatar, 2025”
- Honourable Mention, Die Zeit, Germany, “Zeit Verbrechen Live Tour 2025: From Headphones to Arenas — Scaling Intimacy for 25,000 Fans”
Category 4: Best Idea to Encourage Reader Engagement
Regional Brands
- First Place, Newsday, United States, “Dangerous Roads: Driving Engagement Through Multi-Department Approach to Investigation”
- Second Place, Dainik Jagran, India, “The People Without a Name”
- Third Place, Bonnier News Local and Gota Media, Sweden, “The Core Model”
- Honourable Mention, Augsburger Allgemeine, Germany, “Future Week”
- Honourable Mention, The Times of India, India, “I Am Kolkata, Amar Para”
National Brands
- First Place, Dainik Jagran, India, “Lights. Cities. Action.”
- Second Place, Blick, Switzerland, “Spin to Win: Leveraging Loss Aversion and Gamification to Triple User Registration Rates”
- Third Place, HT Digital, India, “Intelligent Notification System with Reinforcement Learning”
- Honourable Mention, Politiken, Denmark, “Voter Poster Generator”
- Honourable Mention, Die Zeit, Germany, “Plan D”
Category 5: Best Initiative to Bolster Next-Generation Readership
Regional Brands
- First Place, NTM, Sweden, “Winning the Young Ones”
- Second Place, Bergens Tidende, Norway, “The People’s Prejudices: Turning Audience Assumptions into Political Journalism”
- Third Place, Fædrelandsvennen, Norway, “FVN Young — Breaking the Feed”
- Honourable Mention, Augsburger Allgemeine/augsburg.tv, Germany, “Rocketeer Kids Reporter”
- Honourable Mention, Funke Mediengruppe, Germany, “Funke Future Audiences Lab”
National Brands
- First Place, Aftenposten, Norway, “Aftenposten Education — From Zero to 35% Market Penetration in Five Months”
- Second Place, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong, “Young Post Club”
- Third Place, The Daily Star, Bangladesh, “National Newspaper Olympiad: Turning Reading Into a National Youth Movement”
- Honourable Mention, Beobachter, Switzerland, “From Taboo to Triumph: Beobachter’s Social-First Strategy Secures Next-Generation Readership”
- Honourable Mention, Nexo Jornal, Brazil, “Nexo no Enem 2025”
Category 6: Best Use of Video
Regional Brands
- First Place, A Gazeta, Brazil, “Morro do Macaco Tragedy”
- Second Place, The New Zealand Herald, New Zealand, “Herald NOW — Moving From a Newspaper to a TV Channel”
- Third Place, San Antonio Express-News, United States, “In a Minute”
- Honourable Mention, GZH/Grupo RBS, Brazil, “GZH YouTube Streaming: Building a Hyperlocal Video-First News Channel in Southern Brazil”
