IBC2026 Innovation Awards spotlight Asian finalists

IBC has announced the finalists for its 2026 Innovation Awards, with projects from Malaysia and India among those recognised for collaborative innovation across the global media and entertainment industry. The awards recognise completed projects that demonstrate how media organisations and technology partners have worked together to address real-world production, distribution and audience engagement challenges. Winners will be announced during IBC2026 at the RAI Amsterdam on 13 September.

Among the finalists in the Content Creation category is How Collective Newsroom powers BBC India, a project that established a unified multilingual production operation for BBC India. Developed with newsroom platform provider nxtedition and supported by technology partners including Adobe, Blackmagic Design, Calrec, Ideal Systems and Ross Video, the initiative was designed to deliver a new production environment within a fixed deadline.

Asia is also represented in the Content Distribution category through Transforming broadcast distribution in Malaysia, which recognises Radio Televisyen Malaysia's (RTM) Technical Content Delivery (TCODE) platform. Developed with Singapore-based systems integrator Ideal Systems, the centralised digital contribution and workflow orchestration platform modernises broadcast distribution workflows. Additional technology partners on the project include Blue Lucy Media, Emotion Systems and Fortinet.

According to IBC, this year's finalists reflect wider industry adoption of AI, cloud-native and software-defined workflows, open standards and new approaches to live production, while also highlighting advances in accessibility and audience engagement.

“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.

“It is an honour for our judging panel to review these compelling projects. We remain committed to our guiding principles of innovation, collaboration and partnership as we do our utmost to fairly select the world's foremost completed innovation projects as category finalists and eventual winners.”