This year’s Awards reflected an industry maturing beyond experimentation, recognising organisations and individuals building sustainable, trusted, and responsible AI foundations.
“Two things made the 2026 DataIQ Awards particularly special,” said ceremony host David Reed, DataIQ Chief Knowledge Officer and Evangelist. “For the first time, we created a standalone stream for the Data and AI teams who do the real work behind the scenes. To ensure they got the spotlight, we closed with our recognition of their efforts. Then, our Grand Prix was the highest scoring entry we have seen at our Awards this decade! Remarkable given the strength of what is being delivered by everyone who made our shortlist. A special evening live from The Roundhouse – I am still dancing on the ceiling!”
Highlights from the 2026 Winners
Financial services were well-represented, demonstrating the strides forward being taken by the highly regulated industry.
Allianz Trade took home Best Data Academy or AI Literacy Programme – Financial Services for its work on the company-wide cultural movement, GenAI Ready! campaign, where more than 6,000 employees have been trained.
Best Data Governance Programme – Financial Services went to the collaboration between Talan and NatWest which helped 19 million customers and delivered commercial value inside a new governance framework.
Lloyds Banking Group won New Ways of Working with Data – Brand by transforming how its teams develop and deploy AI through Atlas, a cloud-native ML and AI platform that embeds governance, automation, and collaboration.
The big winner of the night was Bank of Georgia, taking home Best Data or AI Team – Brand (International), Most Innovative Use of AI – Brand, and Breakthrough with Data or AI – International.
Elsewhere, EDF claimed the title Data or AI-Driven Transformation of the Year – UK for taking its Sunday Saver programme from an AI-driven flexibility proposition into a blueprint for operationalising data, ML, and GenAI at scale.
With governance being the hot topic right now, the award for Best Data Governance Programme went to Boots UK & ROI for transforming its data governance from a fragmented compliance activity into an enterprise-wide capability.
Read the full list of 2026 DataIQ Awards winners.
Celebrating Individual Excellence
There was a great array of individual achievements being highlighted:
- Emerging Data and AI Leader of the Year went to Fay Churchill, ITV, for her combined technical excellence with commercial insight, establishing her as one of the most promising data and AI leaders.
- Data and AI Leader of the Year (SME) was presented to Jean Perez, Valuedynamx, for her work from the first data hire during the pandemic to now leading a multidisciplinary team supporting a global business.
- Data and AI Leader of the Year (Large Organisation) – Solution Provider was won by Satyajit Saha, Evalueserve, for turning GenAI from an experimental capability into a core growth engine.
- Data and AI Leader of the Year (Large Organisation) – Brand was taken home by Mikheil Nadareishvili, Bank of Georgia, for his work transforming AI from a specialist capability into a contributor to business performance across the bank.
Judging Process
Around 400 entries were assessed by a distinguished panel of senior data and AI leaders. Each entry was scored independently, and category winners were selected through aggregated panel scores. The Grand Prix was awarded to the entry with the highest overall score, which this year went to Domino’s Pizza Group UK & Ireland for its work taking one data scientist’s unfunded idea (Domi Vision) and utilising it to transform how Domino’s measures, manages, and talks about the quality of its core product.
View all the 2026 DataIQ Awards winners.
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