What's New for the 2026 Azbee Awards

We've been busy! ASBPE's Awards Committee updates the Azbee Awards every year based on entrant and judge feedback. Check out these updates for the 2026 Azbee Awards.

Submitting to the Azbees:

• All ASBPE members receive a $100 per entry discount, and freelance members receive an additional $20 per entry discount.
• We've expanded our deadlines to provide additional time to enter. The regular entry deadline is Friday, Jan. 9, 2026, and the final late entry deadline is Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026.
• An updated Eligibility & Rules page clarifies our eligibility requirements, simplifies many of our submission rules, and compiles the details and exceptions in one place:
  • We've streamlined our rules around submitting the same material, and you can now submit the same material in up to three categories without further caveats.
  • We no longer disallow collaborative work — if you've successfully worked together with another brand to create award-winning work, you can submit it, so long as it meets the category requirements.
  • We've clarified our rules around use of stock images and generative AI.
• Our entry form now offers three options for donations to ASBPE and the ASBPE Educational Foundation. Please see our entry form for additional details.

New Categories:

• Introduced in 2025: One staff journalist, one freelance journalist and one designer will earn a coveted Best Body of Work award for their portfolio of 2025 work. While other Azbee Awards recognize the work of a publication's editorial team, ASBPE's newest Overall Excellence category celebrates the top individual portfolios from B2B journalists and designers. Winners must demonstrate creativity, range, impact, skill and craft across their top five work products from the year.
• Our new Best Conversion from Print to Web category joins the Online division to celebrate publications who converted their print magazine to a new website in 2025. Both publications that have moved to digital-only and those that have transitioned to hybrid publishing may complete in this category.
• For design teams that go above-and-beyond for singular issues, we introduce Best Design for a Single Issue in the Design division. Show us your best-designed regular issue, special issue or supplement.

Category Updates:

• Feature Article and Feature Series have been combined under the All Content division; now both print and digital features are submitted and scored together. (Feature design is still awarded in the Print Article Design and Web Article Deisgn categories.)
• Likewise the Industry News Coverage categories have been combined in the All Content division.
• Our requirements and judging criteria for the Digital Magazine of the Year category have been updated to reflect the evolution of and new innovations in digital issues.
• We've clarified our requirements for Social Media Account of the Year, while listing examples of what delivers winning entries in this category.
• The Front Cover categories and Opening Page/Spread categories have been combined into a single category each. This allows the Awards Committee to recognized incredible design work on front covers and opening spreads, while also supplementing the Design division with new categories — without taxing judges' workloads.
• The Breaking News Coverage category now allows tracker articles.
• The Special Issue or Supplement category no longer requires a prior regular issue, so publications that no longer print regularly, but have special print issues, can submit.
• The Podcast category now accepts "video podcasts," however judges still will focus on audio only.
• The Microsite category has been updated to Web Special Section, removing outdated requirements for sections of specialized content.
• We've removed design/graphics requirements and judging criteria from many of our editorial-focused categories. These requirements are retained where design and/or graphics are imperative to conveying information or organizing data.
• Other category descriptions were updated to simplify submissions and judging, to better define our requirements, and to state clearly the criteria judges look at when scoring your submissions.

Judging:

• Judges who complete their scoring are now eligible for $100 in Azbee Bucks to use towards ASBPE expenses, including future Azbee Awards submissions; membership dues; and conference, event or webinar registrations.
• Plus, judges who complete scoring on two or more categories also will receive an additional $100 in Azbee Bucks earmarked for attending ASBPEvolve 2026, our national conference.
• Our conflict of interest rules have been clarified on our About Judging and Judge FAQs pages. 

As always, if you have ideas and feedback for the Azbee Awards, please reach out to the Awards Committee through our contact form.

How to Enter

Members: Starting Oct. 31, 2025, use our members-only login with your ASBPE.org username and password. Signing in via your member account is the only way to access members-only discounts inside the Azbee Awards system. We highly recommend renewing and updating your profile on ASBPE.org before beginning the entry process, as your contact information will be pulled from your member account.

Non-Members: If you are not an ASBPE member, you can create a non-member account and start submitting entries on Oct. 31, 2025. However, any entries created via a non-member profile will not be eligible for ASBPE member discounts. Please consider becoming an ASBPE member.

The online entry system will walk you through the steps to submit an entry. Submit as many entries as you like, and then pay for all your submissions at once with a simple checkout system. You also may submit and pay for entries one at a time; please remember to save each invoice. We require PDFs for print entries and URLs for web entries (a combination is allowed in the All Content division). View our submission requirements to help you prepare your entries.

Please review our eligibility and submission requirements, categories, entry fees and deadlines and regions before submitting.

Entry Deadlines

• Early-bird deadline: Enter by Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, at 8 p.m. ET to save $30 per entry!
• Regular deadline: Friday, Jan. 9, 2026, at 8 p.m. ET
• Late Entry Period: Entries received after the regular deadline and through Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026, at 8 p.m. ET will include an additional $20 late entry fee.
• Don't forget to sign up to judge the Azbees today!
• Note: There will be no deadline extensions. The late entry period allows additional time to enter all categories for an additional fee of $20 per entry.
• Support hours are from 9:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. ET.

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