As the calendar flips over into August, we are proud to share openly the result of the many nominations the community contributed for the 2026 Open Education Awards for Excellence.
Picking up on our garden and growing metaphor, the many seeds of recognition “planted” are growing. Currently they are in the hands of the 46 members of the Awards Review Committee, our master gardeners that include previous awardees, representatives of OEGlobal member organizations, and the OEGlobal Board of Directors.
Their reviews are still coming in. Next week we begin the tabulation and sorting that each year produces what we call the “Shortlist” of finalists, from which the final awardees are chosen, as we did last year to highlight 48 nominees. The 2026 Shortlist will be published to the awards website on August 17.
All the gardening effort is aimed at a live streamed announcement event of the 2026 Open Education Awards for Excellence awardees on September 2.
But as we have been focusing on the last few years on making all nominees visible, we see value in sharing not only a list of all nominees, but including all of the information that was included in their nomination. We are now excited to share the full list of 205 nominees, providing a table almost as big as that display of flowers in this article’s photo.
The nominees are organized A-Z by name from Abbey Elder (in the Individual Awards) to Zygote Quarterly (in the Open Asset Awards), and as you can see linked to all the details from their nomination published as an open Google Document, full of links to explore.
Nominees can look forward to an official notification next week, including a digital badge/certificate as official recognition for being nominated.
We celebrate that the nominees for 2026 includes people, projects, and open education practices from 49 countries including Afghanistan, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Lebanon, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Palestine, Peru, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Switzerland, Taiwan, Trinidad and Tobago, Türkiye, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Viet Nam, and Yemen.
We hope you enjoy learning more about this year’s collection of nominees. Watch as all of these seeds grow as they are demonstrating open education at work all around the globe.
Again, all of this is made possible by the process of community driven nomination and review that mark the fifteenth year of the OEAwards.