The Australian Drinks Awards celebrates its 14th year in 2026 If there's one thing that's stayed constant across those fourteen years, it's that the Awards themselves haven't. Every year, the categories are reviewed against where the industry is actually putting its energy and investment, and every year, something changes as a result.
That's not an accident. The drinks industry moves fast. Consumer habits shift, new categories emerge and the things worth recognising this year aren't always the things that mattered five years ago. An awards program that stood still would lose its meaning. So the Drinks Association treats the Awards the same way it treats the industry itself, as something to keep pace with, not something to set and forget.
A history of change
The evolution of the awards isn't new. In recent years, the Contribution to Industry Awards were refreshed to sharpen their focus on inclusion, wellbeing and sustainability, i.e. the areas where members were putting the most effort and resources. More recently, it was the Brand Awards' turn, with a move toward categories that better reflected shifting consumer expectations.
Each change has come from the same place: a genuine look at what the industry is doing now, not what it was doing when a category was first created.
This year's biggest change
One of the biggest changes this year is in the Brand Awards, which have been redesigned to better reflect where the industry is investing and what excellence really looks like. The 2026 Brand Awards focus on two categories: the Best New Product Innovation Award, recognising the best new product launched in the past year, and the Best Campaign Award, celebrating the best marketing campaign across any combination of channels and media.
It's also a change in how the winners are decided. In a shift from consumer research in previous years, this year's Brand Awards were judged by a panel of industry peers, people with firsthand understanding of what it takes to launch a product or deliver a campaign in this market.
"The Awards have to reflect the industry we're actually in, not the one we were in a few years ago," says Georgia Lennon, CEO of the Drinks Association. "Every year we ask ourselves whether the categories still make sense and whether they're recognising the work that matters most right now. That shows in the continual evolution of the awards that we have seen across the past 14 years.”
