The Microsoft partner ecosystem plays a vital role in delivering value to customers and communities worldwide through innovative, secure, and scalable solutions. Now it's our turn to celebrate your achievements. We are accepting self-nominations for the 2026 Partner of the Year Awards (POTYA) through 6:00 PM Pacific Time on July 7, 2026. Winners and finalists will be announced on November 11, 2026, ahead of Microsoft Ignite.
The Partner of the Year Awards offer partners an opportunity to elevate their profile, increase visibility with customers, access public relations resources, and strengthen market recognition. Benefits for 2026 winners and finalists include customized logos and public relations templates, recognition collateral, and visibility opportunities surrounding Microsoft Ignite.
Partners can nominate themselves across a broad range of categories recognizing excellence in Cloud & AI Platforms, AI Business Solutions, Security, Industry, Partner Innovation, Business Transformation, and Social Impact. Beginning with the 2026 awards cycle, each award category requires its own nomination submission so partners can align customer success stories and business outcomes to award-specific criteria.
Introducing the Regional Partner of the Year Awards
The new Regional Partner of the Year Awards recognize partners that deliver exceptional customer outcomes and measurable business growth using Microsoft technologies across a region. These awards celebrate organizations demonstrating scalable customer success, innovation, and strong engagement with Microsoft across multiple markets. Eligible partners may select a region in which to participate and nominate themselves in one of several award groups:
- Regional System Integrator (SI) award: Recognizes SI partners driving impact with either enterprise or Small Medium Enterprises and Channel (SME&C) customers. One winner will be named per customer cohort in each region.
- Regional Independent Software Vendor (ISV) award: Recognizes one ISV partner per region with a commercially available solution demonstrating innovation anchored in Frontier technologies and adoption across the region.
- Regional Channel award: Recognizes one Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partner per region driving customer impact through indirect go-to-market motions. Eligible partner types include telco, hoster, scale solution provider (SSP), and distributor partners.
- Regional Device award: Recognizes one Microsoft device partner per region driving Windows device growth, customer adoption, and market impact.
These awards complement existing Category and Country Partner of the Year Awards, providing additional opportunities for partners to showcase success at a regional scale.
Developing stronger award submissions
The Partner of the Year Awards recognize the innovation and impact our partners bring to customer engagements every day. Our updated process means that you can tell multiple detailed stories to support each specific submission. Here are some tips for building a stronger nomination:
- Ensure your story matches the category: Review the eligibility requirements and judging criteria carefully so you can align each submission to the award that best reflects your solution, customer impact, and business outcomes.
- Lead with your strongest customer story: Focus on customer engagements that clearly demonstrate innovation, measurable results, and meaningful business value.
- Collect supporting evidence: Gather customer references, case studies, deployment details, testimonials, and performance metrics that validate your story and demonstrate real-world results.
- Highlight innovation and measurable impact: Focus on the business value delivered to customers, including quantifiable outcomes such as productivity gains, revenue growth, cost savings, security improvements, or operational efficiencies.
- Show how your success can scale: Highlight any repeatable intellectual property, solution accelerators, industry expertise, or methodologies that can be applied across additional customers, industries, or markets.
Resources and next steps
The first step toward submission is learning about this year’s categories and related eligibility requirements. We recommend reviewing these resources to get started:
The nomination window closes at 6:00 PM Pacific Time on July 7, 2026. If you have questions about eligibility, categories, or the nomination process, contact the Partner of the Year Awards support team. When you're ready, submit your nomination through the Partner of the Year Awards nomination tool.
We look forward to celebrating the innovation, customer success, and business transformation being delivered every day by partners across the Microsoft ecosystem.