Red Hat Ecosystem Innovation Awards
Spotlighting partners who put innovation into action
The Red Hat Ecosystem Innovation Awards celebrate partners who deliver exemplary customer solutions to drive business transformation across areas like AI, virtualization, and automation. Showcase true ecosystem innovation by submitting your nomination.
Program details
2026 Red Hat Ecosystem Innovation Awards
Overview
How does the Red Hat Ecosystem Innovation Awards nomination and selection process work?
From October to December, active Red Hat partners can nominate themselves for the Ecosystem Innovation Awards, or they can be nominated by a Red Hat associate. Partners may apply for any or all of the categories, but can only submit 1 nomination for each. Your nomination must include a clear story of how your solutions have achieved breakthrough results for our joint customers. This means you’ve helped customers gain a competitive advantage or make operations more efficient. Nominations can be submitted here.
Our panel of industry-expert judges will review and score the nominations, narrowing them down to the top projects that meet our criteria for outstanding success in partnership with open source technology. One global winner per category will be selected, with honorable mentions per region as applicable. The winners will be publicly showcased during next year’s Red Hat Summit in Atlanta, GA, from May 11-14, 2026.
Read the Red Hat Ecosystem Innovation Awards terms and conditions for complete details.
Note: English submissions only.
Categories
What are the categories for the 2026 Red Hat Ecosystem Innovation Awards?
The Red Hat Ecosystem Innovation Awards honor excellence in innovation as connected to our technology focus areas. These foundational customer decisions and challenges are heavily influenced by our partners — from evaluating solutions to offering recommendations and making final selections. Our ecosystem plays a critical role in shaping outcomes, building trust, and driving success.
The categories for 2026 are:
Hybrid Cloud Everywhere Partner of the Year
Winners demonstrate excellence in simplifying customer operations anywhere and everywhere through a consistent infrastructure for workloads across any hybrid cloud environment.
Virtualization Transformation Partner of the Year
Winners stand out in their successful delivery of a virtualization platform for customers looking to migrate or modernize their traditional virtual machines.
Container Champion Partner of the Year
Winners excel in delivering enterprise-grade infrastructure with a comprehensive container management strategy across the data center, cloud, and edge.
Platform Modernization Partner of the Year
Winners drive forward customer innovation and developer productivity through cloud-native platform development and deployment.
Automation Accelerator Partner of the Year
Winners propel customer efficiency and productivity, support mission-critical workloads, and drive innovation through automation.
AI Visionary Partner of the Year
Winners showcase excellence in developing or implementing AI-driven solutions that deliver measurable value, transform business processes, and fuel digital innovation.
Criteria
What makes an Ecosystem Innovation Awards winner?
Each Red Hat Ecosystem Innovation Awards submission must highlight a specific project you have delivered for a joint customer. These submissions will be judged against the 4 criteria listed below. Judges will score each submission, and those that receive the highest scores across all criteria per category will be the winners.
Business impact: How is your project directly benefiting the customer’s organization? Is it impacting another line of business or return on investment? Does analysis show increased productivity, reduced cost, or time savings? Share data-driven details about the project’s measurable impact.
Partnership: How did you collaborate with Red Hat to drive the project? Did your project involve multiple partners to deliver a comprehensive solution for our joint customers? Highlight how being a part of Red Hat’s ecosystem was core to your project’s success for the customer.
Innovation factor: Does your project have a uniqueness and distinct vision showing creativity, originality, or value that we haven’t seen or heard of before? Does it address a use case that may not be universally applied? Show us your “cool” factor and how you stand out among your peers in serving our customers.
Category relevance: Does your nomination expressly reflect an understanding of the category? Does your project include the relevant products, solutions, or services associated with the technology focus area? Clearly articulate the customer challenge and details of their journey while illustrating how the customer is progressing.
Recognition
What's in it for you?
Red Hat Ecosystem Innovation Awards winners will receive:
An opportunity to participate in dedicated activities during Red Hat Summit.
Inclusion in the Red Hat Ecosystem Innovation Awards winners announcement.
Promotion through Red Hat’s Partner Connect website, social media channels, and marketing efforts.
A chance to be included in other Red Hat Innovators in the Open activities throughout the year.
And a host of other opportunities to further highlight your innovation and impact.
Schedule
Dates to remember
October 15, 2025: Nominations open
December 12, 2025: Nominations close
By March 2026: Winners notified
May 2026: Red Hat Ecosystem Innovation Awards winners publicly announced at Red Hat Summit
Questions
I still have questions. Where do I go?
Email ecosystem-innovation-awards@redhat.com for support. Please allow 1-2 business days for a response.
Are you a customer with a story of innovation to share?
Each year, the Red Hat Innovation Awards recognizes successful customers that make inspiring improvements that affect their lines of business, organizations, and even the global community. If you’re a customer who has an innovative use of Red Hat solutions to share, we want to hear from you.
