Nominations are open from 1 June – 31 July for 19 new categories that redefine excellence in the fast-evolving cloud, data center and telco industries.
Standards of excellence keep shifting in fast-evolving industries – w.media keeps this spirit alive by coming up with “A New Standard of Excellence”, its theme for their 2026 Awards.
Keeping up with new standards forces industries to innovate to remain at the top of their game.This is crucial in the face of the fast-changing pace across the data center, cloud and telco industries.
“Standards have to be redefined over and over again – one cannot be static when the industry innovates at breakneck speed. The only way to counter this is to keep up with the flow and make innovation your firm’s aspiration at all times,” said Vincent Liew, Co-Founder and Publisher at w.media.
In keeping with this spirit, the 2026 w.media Awards still retains the 5P framework of Project, Platform, Power, Planet, and People, but infuses it with some changes to reflect better the ground realities.
The 5P framework establishes 19 new award categories that recognize leadership beyond technical execution, and zoom into team excellence and community impact, in addition to sustainable and holistic infrastructure.
The awards reward excellence displayed across the five pillars encompassing: Project (AI-Ready Data Center Design, Hyperscale Data Center Campus Development, Data Center Construction & Engineering Excellence); Platform (AI Infrastructure Ecosystem Innovation, Data Center Platform Innovation, Neocloud Platform Innovation); Power (Energy Infrastructure Innovation, Power Procurement Strategy, On-Site Power Generation Innovation); Planet (Energy-Efficient Data Center Design, Water Innovation in Data Center Cooling, Sustainable Data Center Campus); and People (Data Center Operations, Digital Infrastructure Engineering, AI Infrastructure Deployment, Data Center Sustainability, Data Center Construction & Delivery, Market Intelligence & Advisory, and Community Impact Teams).
A global panel of the finest practitioners – people already at the top of their industries – will assess all nominations to pick the best for each category based on merit and peer validation. Nominations in previous years for all categories have exceeded 100 each year and this year is expected to be no different. But only 38 will be announced at the black-tie Gala Dinner on 27 November in Bangkok, Thailand. More than 200 decision-makers from across the region are expected to attend.
The 2026 edition welcomes Bridge Data Centres (BDC) as Platinum Sponsor, and Onion Technology and Freyr as Industry Sponsors.
Nominations are open until 31 July 2026.
Now in its sixth year, the w.media Awards celebrates excellence and innovation across Asia’s cloud, data center, and digital infrastructure ecosystem.