Product Updates

The per-person limit on the Categories page now counts entries. "Entries per person" sets how many entries one person can submit: one, or up to a number you choose. Submitted entries count, including those waiting for payment; drafts and withdrawn entries do not, and editing an existing entry is never blocked. Entrants see the rule on the program page and how many of their entries they have used.

The category picker follows "Categories per entry" alone. To keep each person to one entry in one category, set both limits to One. Your team can still add or import entries past either limit.

The entry gallery has a fourth visibility setting: "Organizer team only". Members of your organization open it after signing in, at any point in the season, whether entries are open, closed, or already judged. Anyone else is sent to sign in or finds nothing there, and search engines never index it. It suits leadership who want to browse the work without sitting on a judging panel.

In the private gallery, each entry opens with its uploads: images, documents, video, and web pages. Every card says what the entry holds, such as "Prototype", "Video", or "Images · 3", plus the sites its links point to, and a program with a single category drops the category filter and badges. Entries marked Ineligible now leave every gallery, private or public.

Owners and admins now have a "Privacy and AI" section under Settings > General. "AI features" turns off program import and automatic video captions for the whole organization. "Tracking on public pages" removes page-view and load-speed measurement from your program pages, and YouTube and Loom answers on those pages then show as plain links instead of embedded players. "Privacy notice link" puts your own privacy notice on every entry form, right above the submit button.

Entry files are private as well. Images, documents, and web pages open only through short-lived signed links, issued to people a page has already let in, such as your team, the entrant, and the judges; entrant videos play through signed playback. All customer data is stored in the United States.

AwardKit has been audited against WCAG 2.1 Level A and AA and Revised Section 508 across the entrant, judge, and organizer interfaces, with automated checks, keyboard passes, and VoiceOver and NVDA screen reader runs. The defects it found are fixed, the same automated checks now run on every change, and a VPAT 2.5 conformance report is available on request. You will notice a slightly deeper terracotta and darker form outlines: both now meet contrast minimums. Your brand color is held to them too, and its setting shows whether it reads at AAA or AA, or was adjusted to stay readable.

Entrants can describe each uploaded image with "Alt text" and each video with a "Video description", carried everywhere the file appears, so judges who use screen readers get the work too. New videos get captions automatically while AI features are on, short answer, email, and URL questions can "Autofill as" the entrant's own details, and categories reorder from the keyboard with Move up and Move down.

Two limits now share one control on the Categories page. "Categories per entry" caps how many categories a single entry can compete in, so a story is entered once while its author can still enter other stories. "Categories per person" caps how many categories one person can enter across all their entries, down to "One entry per person". Entrants see the rule on the program page before they pick, the category picker turns single-choice when one slot is left, and AwardKit enforces it at submit. Your team can still add or import entries past a limit, with a warning.

The Entry Guidelines card on the entry form is yours to write too. Click a line in the form builder to rewrite it, "Add guideline" for another, or "Use defaults" to go back; empty the card and entrants do not see it at all. Duplicating a program carries both the limits and the guidelines.

Every entry now gets a short number, such as E-014, the moment it is submitted. Entrants see it on their entry page and in their confirmation, receipt, and teammate emails. Judges see it beside every entry in every round. It leads every export: the entries CSV, the files zip, and the score matrix. On the Entries page, tick the Entry # column in the column options menu, and search finds an entry by "E-014", "#14", or just "14".

Numbers never change and are never handed out twice, so deleting an entry leaves a gap instead of renumbering the rest. Test mode entries are cleared when you go live, so your first real entry is E-001, and entries submitted before numbering arrived were numbered in the order they came in.

Entry fees, discounts, and tax have their own tab now, between Categories and Entrant pages, with four views. Prices holds the entry fee, deadline pricing, member pricing, and the categories priced differently. Discounts holds multi-entry discounts and discount codes. Tax holds your tax registrations. Payouts shows what this program collected, the tax collected, what is still owed, recent payments, and a CSV of every payment. Member pricing now takes up to eight entrant types, enough for a fee card with member, non-member, student, and team rates side by side.

Canadian organizers list the taxes they are registered to collect (GST/HST, QST, BC PST, SK PST, MB RST) with their numbers, and AwardKit supplies the rates. Entrants pick their province or territory on the entry form, pay the taxes that apply there, and see GST and QST as separate lines; the invoice names the province and your registration numbers. Anywhere else, one declared rate works as before.

Any question on your entry form can now be a column in the Entries table: tick it under Questions in the column options menu, and its answers show by type, with choices as badges and links as short clickable addresses. One Filter button holds every filter (Category, Entrant type, and each question), with a chip for each active one. Search covers answers too, and the CSV and the files export always follow the filtered list.

A new "In progress" tab lists the entries people have started but not submitted: who, which categories, when they started and last edited, and how far they got, down to the next required question they have not answered. Names typed without a confirmed email are badged "Not confirmed". Export the list to CSV when you want to follow up.

The Export menu on the Entries page and the Results leaderboard now builds one zip of everything: every entry's files, a PDF of each entry in your branding, the entries spreadsheet, and a README. Group it by category, entry, entrant, or question; grouped by question, every answer to "Design sketch" lands in one folder with each file named after its entry. Choose the Judge-safe preset and folders carry only the entry number, questions hidden from judges are left out, file names are masked, and no entrant identity reaches the PDFs or the spreadsheet.

A live preview shows what the archive will hold before you start, and large exports run in the background and can email you when they are ready. The Score matrix (CSV) puts every judge's total and per-criterion scores side by side, with the round aggregate and rank, for an audit or a board pack.

Written comments can now reach the teams they were written about. When you publish results, tick "Also share written feedback with each team", or choose "Share feedback" in the Results toolbar afterwards. Each team then finds a Feedback card on its entry page, with comments "From the judges" and "From the audience", never attributed, and labeled by category and round when those vary.

Nothing reaches a team until you share it, and "Stop sharing feedback" pulls it back at any time. Judges never read one another's comments, and sharing starts switched off again when you duplicate the program for next season.

A file question can now accept web pages: one HTML file with its styles and scripts inside, such as a prototype built with an AI tool. Switch on "Web pages" under Accepts in the question's menu. Judges see the prototype running on their media stage, and it opens on the entry page and in its own tab under a banner marking it as uploaded by an entrant.

Every page runs in a sandbox: its scripts work, but it cannot see AwardKit, the viewer's account, or the page around it. Web pages are off by default and capped at 4 MB, and an entrant whose page loads files a single upload leaves behind gets a note telling them so.

Your team can now check entries against the rules as they arrive, without setting up a judging round. Open an entry and mark it Eligible, Needs follow-up, or Ineligible, from the keyboard with E, F, and X, with an optional reason and one-tap chips for the reasons you used before. Eligible moves straight on to the next entry still to check, and the last mark can be undone.

After the first mark, status tabs with counts appear above the table, and exports follow the active tab. Ineligible entries leave judge assignments, every judge's list, results, advancement, and the public ballot. Not checked and Eligible entries are judged as before, so a program that never uses the check behaves exactly as it did.

Every question on the entry form now has a "Shown to" section in its menu, with an Entrants rule and a Judges setting side by side. Judges takes one of "Always", "Except in blind rounds", and "Never". Set it to "Never" and the answer is stripped from every judging and audience page, in every round, before the page reaches a judge's browser. Use it for the questions a jury never needs: a signed consent form, "How did you hear about us?", company size, a CV. A file question named like a consent form or agreement starts there.

"Except in blind rounds" is what "Hide from judges" used to do, kept for identifying answers that should come back once names do, such as a company website hidden from a blind screening round and shown to the open final jury. Blind judging on a round now means exactly that: names, teams, bylines, and file names, plus whatever is shown to judges "Except in blind rounds". The organizer's own views, exports, and the public entry page are unchanged.

Open an entry as a judge and the work is the first thing on the page. Images, a PDF portfolio, and video now sit in a media stage at the top of the entry, shown large, with the scoring card beside it. Page through the files with the arrow keys, open any image full screen with zoom, read a PDF page by page in place, and play video in the same frame. On the judge dashboard, each entry's first image fills its card.

File questions on the entry form now come in two kinds so you decide what goes on the stage. Media is the work itself. Attachment is anything that supports the entry, such as a consent form or a CV, and stays in the answers under its question. Existing programs were sorted by each question's label, and one click in the form builder switches a question to the other kind. Entrants never see the difference.

Awards run every year; rebuilding them every year is the part nobody misses. One Duplicate action now copies an entire program into a fresh draft: categories and their groups, the full entry form with its visibility rules, judging rounds with rubrics and criteria, awards, member and non-member pricing, early-bird tiers, and discount codes, ready for the new season.

The copy starts clean where it should: no dates, no entries, no judges, no results, and back in test mode until you go live. If your program name carries a year, the suggested name rolls it forward automatically, so "Design Awards 2025" is one click away from "Design Awards 2026". Duplicate lives in your organization settings under Programs, and works on archived programs too, because last season is exactly what you want to start next season from.

Flip one switch on a judging round and judges score entries without seeing who entered. Names and team members disappear from every judging screen, questions you mark as hidden are stripped before the page ever reaches a judge's browser, and uploaded file names are masked.

Blindness is set per round, so a blind screening round can feed an open final, and if public voting is on for a blind round the audience votes anonymously too. In one long-running study of blinded grant review, nearly one in five assessments changed once reviewers learned who the applicant was. Included in the flat plan; nothing to configure beyond the switch.

Long entry forms and long category lists both got the same cure: headings. Add section headings to break the entry form into titled chapters ("About your company", "The work", "Results"); they never count toward the question limit, and judges review each entry under the same sections the entrant filled in. Group related categories under a named heading and the group renders on your program page, the category picker, and your Categories tab, so a 40-category program stops reading like a wall of text.

Free-text questions can also carry a word or character limit now, with a live counter as entrants type.

Every public program page now lives at awardkit.io/your-organization/your-program: your handle, then the program name, with no record IDs anywhere in the link. The entry form, the gallery, and entry pages follow the same shape, so the address on a poster is one a person can retype from memory.

Pick your handle once and every program shares it. awardkit.io/your-organization is a page of its own, listing your live programs, and it never changes year to year: one durable link for this year's award and last year's showcase.

Entrants now land directly on your entry form and start typing: no account creation, no password, no wall before the form. Work autosaves as they go, and at submit a 6-digit email code confirms their address and quietly becomes their account. Returning to view, edit, or pay works the same way, with a fresh single-use code each time.

Every other awards platform we track makes entrants register an account before the entry form is even visible, and forced account creation is one of the most-documented causes of online form abandonment (Baymard Institute). Nothing to configure: this is how every AwardKit program works now.

Entering several works no longer means checking out once per entry. Choose Pay later and each submission completes on the spot while its fee joins a running balance; one itemized Stripe checkout then settles everything, with the multi-entry discount counted across the whole balance.

Unlike a cart, the balance cannot expire or be abandoned: unpaid entries stay visible with the amount owed, payment is due when entries close, and reminder emails go out automatically.

"10% off 2 or more entries" is now a rule you set once, not a code you hand out. Pick a minimum number of entries and a percentage or fixed amount off, and checkout applies it automatically; several rules form a tiered ladder (5% off 3+, 10% off 6+) where the highest reached threshold applies on its own.

Entrants see the offer right where they pick categories, and it composes with early-bird deadlines, member pricing, discount codes, and your declared VAT or GST in one fixed order.

The fee grid associations actually publish, member $190 early bird and $250 regular, non-member $275 and $350, now fits cell by cell: define entrant types and set a distinct price per type for every pricing period.

Entrants answer a required "Are you a member?" question, the same honor method the established platforms use, and the answer locks once they pay. The declared type shows in your dashboard and entries CSV, and varying prices always display as the full range, never a vague "from $190".

Entry fees can now change on a schedule: early-bird discounts before your standard price, late surcharges after it, each a percentage or a fixed amount applied to every category's fee, up to five pricing periods with the last running until entries close.

Prices switch over at each deadline in your program's timezone, on the entry form and at checkout alike. "Save 20% until March 1" stops being a discount code you email around and becomes how the program prices itself.

If your organization is tax-registered, declare your tax once: the name, the rate, and whether it is added on top of your fee or already included in it. Entrants see the rate next to every price, pay the right total at checkout, and receive a tax invoice with your registration number so business entrants can reclaim what they paid.

Discounts apply before tax, and the entries CSV breaks every payment into net, tax, and gross for filing. Works for UK and EU VAT, Australian and New Zealand GST, or any declared sales tax.

Your program pages should look like your program, not ours. Upload your logo and it takes over the navigation on every public page. Pick your brand color and the entire public surface follows it: buttons, links, timelines, the entry form, judging and voting screens, and the gallery. Top it with a wide hero banner that renders exactly as you cropped it.

AwardKit handles the contrast math automatically, so your color always stays readable, and your social share images are composed from your hero, logo, and color. All of it is included in the one flat plan; elsewhere, branding like this is an enterprise-tier upsell.

Skip the blank page. Paste your award program URL, upload your entry pack PDF, or paste the text of your call for entries, and AwardKit drafts the whole program for you: categories, entry fees with early-bird pricing, key dates, judging criteria, entry form questions, and awards. You review every field before anything is created, and if one source missed something, add another and it fills only the gaps without touching your edits.

In our testing, a real 42-page entry pack became a ready-to-review program with all 24 of its categories in under a minute.

Entrants never lose their work again. The entry form now saves progress automatically as they type, with a quiet indicator confirming every save. They can close the tab mid-entry and pick up exactly where they left off, on any device: drafts appear on the program page with a one-click Continue. And if someone steps away during an entry fee checkout, their entry waits on their entry page with a Complete payment button instead of vanishing. Long forms and paid entries deserve a safety net; now they have one.

Run your program the way real juries work: a screening round narrows the field, then a final panel judges the shortlist. Add a round in one dialog, give each round its own criteria, judges, and dates, and advance your shortlist straight from the results table. Judges keep the same link the whole way through, and a live funnel view shows exactly where every round stands. Single-round programs stay exactly as simple as before.

A new sidebar layout puts every part of your program one click away. Categories, awards, entry fees, and discount codes now live together in a single Categories tab, and scoring is built right into the Judging page.

AwardKit now works for organizers worldwide. Onboard a Stripe account from any supported country, and choose from 23 program currencies for your entry fees, up from 5. Fee inputs adapt to each currency symbol automatically.

A full documentation site is now live, with step-by-step guides and instant search to help you set up and run your program from start to finish. Self-serve, no sales call required.

Charge entry fees and get paid directly. Set per-category fees, collect payments when entrants submit, and route funds straight to your own Stripe account through Stripe Connect. Zero commission, with discount codes built in for early-bird or member pricing.

AwardKit is now available! The all-in-one award management platform that lets you focus on your program, not administration. Set up in under an hour, run without stress, and save 40+ hours on program logistics.

Entrants can now add verifiable certificates directly to their LinkedIn profile with one click. Each certificate links back to a unique verification page with program details, awards, and entry info. Great for entrants looking to showcase their award program achievements where it matters most.

Showcase all submitted entries in a beautiful public gallery after your program. Visitors can browse entries, see team members, and view award winners. Each entry gets its own shareable page, perfect for entrants to highlight their work and for organizers to celebrate what their community built.

Split your judging panel into parallel rooms. Create rooms, assign judges and entries, and each room scores its own set of entries. Perfect for large programs where you need judging to happen in parallel across multiple panels.

Organizers can now enable a dedicated scoring layer for categories and subcategories. Flip it on, and judges will score each entry within its categories separately alongside the standard criteria, making it easy to determine category-level winners independently from overall rankings.

Post announcements that display as banners on your program page, and send email updates to all entrants. Perfect for sharing deadline reminders, judging updates, or important announcements during your award program.

Creating a program is now a guided multi-step experience. Set up categories, prizes, and custom form questions before your program goes live. Choose exactly which features you need (program page, registration, entries), and everything can still be changed later.

A new voting method that lets judges or audiences quickly pick and rank their top entries. Voters choose their favorite entries and rank them, with points assigned by position. Perfect for large programs where speed and simplicity matter.

Preview the full entry details directly from the results page without navigating away. Click any entry to open a slide-out panel with all the details, making it faster to review and assign winners.

Entries now support embedded YouTube and Loom videos with a clean, distraction-free player. Videos appear everywhere entries are surfaced, on entry pages, during voting, and on the results page, so judges and audiences can watch demos without leaving AwardKit.

Bulk import entrants from a CSV file. Upload your spreadsheet, map columns to fields, and import hundreds of entrants in seconds. Great for adding pre-registered participants or importing from other platforms.

Control which entries each judge reviews. Assign judges to specific categories, manually include or exclude entries, or automatically distribute workload evenly across your judging panel.

We completely redesigned the organizer dashboard with a clean horizontal navigation bar and contextual tabs. Managing your award program now feels faster and more intuitive with everything just one click away.

Entrants can now submit multiple entries to a single program. Perfect for organizations entering across multiple award categories or entrants with multiple qualifying projects.

Instantly generate QR codes for your registration and entry pages. Display them at your venue, add to slides, or print on posters. Entrants just scan and go.

Entrants now receive professional confirmation emails when they register or submit an entry. Each email includes quick links to view or edit their information.

Set up your entire award program for free. Build your forms, categories, and judging workflow, invite your team, and preview everything before you commit. You only pay when you are ready to open submissions and go live.

Download your program results as a CSV file with one click. Get all entries, scores, and rankings in a spreadsheet-ready format for reports or further analysis.

All your program URLs now live under one clean structure. Entrants get a simpler experience navigating between registration, entries, and program information.

Control who can submit to your program. Enable the new "Require Registration" toggle on entry forms to only allow registered entrants to submit entries.

Forms are now smarter and simpler. Each program gets one registration form and one entry form with purpose-built fields. System fields like name, email, team members, and categories are automatically configured.

A flexible system for organizing your program. Create categories and subcategories, define awards at each level, and assign winners directly from the results page with a dedicated award management panel.

Results page now features a two-column layout with integrated winner selection. See all entries alongside available awards, assign winners with one click, and track progress visually.

Setting up voting is now easier than ever. Choose your voting method, configure criteria, and launch voting in minutes. Smart defaults get you started faster.

Visual badges now clearly identify category types across the platform. Instantly see if an entry is competing for overall prizes, category awards, or special awards.

Added dedicated support for special award categories. Create separate categories with dedicated awards, independent from main categories but fully integrated into judging.

Everything loads instantly now. Smart data caching keeps your dashboards responsive even with hundreds of entries. Handle programs with 1000+ entrants smoothly and reliably.

Your account is now more secure and easier to access. Sign in with Google for one-click access, add two-factor authentication for extra protection, and manage your sessions across all your devices.

Invite your organizing team to collaborate on AwardKit. Work together on forms, manage entries, and coordinate judging, all in one place. No more email chains or file sharing.

Zero-friction voting is here. No accounts needed for judges, instant results, and complete transparency. Share public links or send personalized invites to judges. You control who votes and how.