EBU has revealed the shortlist for its Technology and Innovation Awards 2026. The winners will be announced during the EBU T&I Summit in Barcelona on 18 June, as the union has claimed in a statement.

Below, the nominees for the main award.

ORF Content Management Center

ORF, Austria • Markus Korhammer

A full SMPTE ST 2110 transformation of ORF’s broadcast operations, uniting radio, television and streaming signal routing across two high-availability zones, with new master control, playout and multifunctional production spaces. Uses one third of the previous rack space.

Dynamic Streaming for the Olympic and Paralympic Games

CBC/Radio-Canada • Félix Poulin

A real-world deployment of the EBU Dynamic Media Facility Reference Architecture, letting a single operator augment Olympic Broadcast Services streams from a laptop. Over 140 hours of coverage reached peaks of nearly 500,000 viewers on CBC’s OTT platform.

Alix: a converged IT-media cloud platform

France Télévisions • Heikel Manai

A multi-cloud, open-source platform bringing IT and media workflows onto a single Kubernetes foundation, with modules for subtitling, transcription, media processing and AI inference. Sovereign, vendor-neutral and built to support Dynamic Media Facility deployments.

medIAenrich: AI-driven editorial metadata at scale

France Télévisions • Romuald Rat

An AI platform built with Télécom SudParis that segments programmes into editorial sequences and combines visual, audio and contextual analysis to generate broadcast-grade metadata at a fraction of commercial costs. Free of licence fees for EBU Members.

ARD Sounds: the play button for your day

ARD, Germany • Lukas Krohn-Grimberghe and Stefan Köhler

A unified digital audio platform that brings podcasts, live radio and event streams from across ARD’s regional broadcasters into a single user-centric app, with intelligent recommendations and curated collections aimed at younger, digitally native audiences.

Fehler im System: live multi-camera virtual production

SWR, Germany • Philipp Jacobs

A new workflow that allows live switching between multiple tracked cameras on a single LED volume, overcoming the single-camera limit of traditional virtual production. Proved on a multi-hour role-playing game streamed live on Twitch.

A framework for Generative AI

Rai, Italy • Mariangela Borneo, Roberto Iacoviello and Alberto Ciprian

An IBC Accelerator project led by Rai with VRT, YLE, EBU, Globo, ITV and partners, delivering a modular framework that standardizes prompts and metadata across text, image, audio and video tools. Validated through the photorealistic trailer “Echoes of Rome”.

Neo: software-defined live production at Olympic scale

SVT, Sweden • Frida Thelin

A fully software-based production platform running on standard IT hardware, used to deliver ten parallel production environments and OTT channels at the 2026 Winter Olympics – more than 800 hours and 150 sports productions in total.

Machine-learning-assisted MCR audio monitoring

BBC, UK • Paul McGrath

A model trained to recognize what BBC Radio 5 Live should sound like, alerting when distortion appears that conventional equipment treats as valid audio. Runs on a Raspberry Pi, demonstrating that application-specific machine learning needs neither LLMs nor server racks.

Sustainable production with solar and battery power

ITV, UK • Clive Santamaria

Hybrid power systems using second-life EV batteries and solar deployed on shoots including I’m a Celebrity and Nobody’s Fool, cutting fuel consumption by up to 60%. The team is open-sourcing its learnings as a blueprint for the wider industry.

Intelligent Automation through commodity AI workflows

ITV, UK • Clive Santamaria

A self-service platform that lets teams across ITV build their own AI-powered automations by connecting everyday tools and systems, with no coding required. More than 2,000 hours of staff time saved in the first six months.

AI Agent Hub: governed multi-model access

ITV, UK • Clive Santamaria

A single governed interface for switching between approved foundation models and building prompt-based assistants, with central routing, role-based access, audit logging and provenance controls. Trial users reported time savings (70%) and quality gains (over 80%).

Qualitative Enricher: AI reasoning at scale for ITVX

ITV, UK • Clive Santamaria

An AI service that generates qualitative metadata for ITVX – ranking the most recognizable cast members and describing mood and atmosphere – with a secondary AI scoring outputs and a daily budget cap. Costs less than £10 a month to run.