Most prestigious mobile app and website awards

The list of 18 global awards for startups and well-established companies, from Awwwards and FWA to Apple Design Awards ans Clio Awards. Last update May 22.

Most prestigious mobile app and website awards

Most prestigious mobile app and website awards

Most prestigious mobile app and website awards, photo 1

We checked the Internet carefully and collected the most significant awards for digital studios in one place. Every new or unrecorded prize from the digital world will be here. We also assume the responsibility to update the deadlines for applications in time. So, bookmark this article. We will post this publication in the monthly newsletter for our subcribers, when we will be able to do that (pretty soon).

Last update: March 26th.



Best Mobile App Awards

About the award

In 2012, the BMAA organizers set their minds on attracting the public attention to deserving apps and games. The advantages of participating in this award are apparent: a spike in downloads, a lifetime presence of the nominated app in the special section of the website and overall media exposure.

Entry fees and deadlines

Privileges that the nominees get depend on the selected offer package. The Silver package is worth $75 and includes lifetime website presence, nominee and winner badges that can be inserted on websites, coverage in social media and email promotion for the winner. The entry gets checked out in 3 to 5 days.

The Platinum package is priced at $125 and guarantees an interview, a badge, broad social network and international press release coverage, and the entry gets through in just a day or two.

The award is divided into several contests. At the January 2019, there are four of them: "Best New Mobile App", "Best Designed Mobile App","Best Mobile App of 2019" and "Best Mobile Game of 2019". Entries are accepted up until January 31, 2019 (first and second contests) and until December 31, 2019 (third and fourth contests). Choose a contest and leave a request here.


ADCE Awards

About the award

ADCE stands for Art Directors Club of Europe. Since 1990, top Old World experts in design and advertisement have rallied the creative minds of Europe to carry the banner of European design to the world. Awards are given out for commercial video and audio clips, advertisement campaigns, events, packaging, graphical design and many other things, not excluding websites and mobile apps.

The number of participant works can go as far as fifty thousand. Out of this enormous amount, the jury panel picks Silver and Gold star contenders; the former group can include several participants in each category, while the latter has only one place per category. The highest award, the Grand Prix, is given out by the jury to what they find to be the very best of the projects. All winning entries are issued certificates and are mentioned on the website. Entry fees and deadlines.

The club consists of a multitude of studios and agencies from European countries, and awards similar to ADCE are presented locally in these companies. Even though everyone can participate in ADCE Awards, club membership provides certain privileges. For instance, local winners in the Gold Awards nomination participate in the main contest for free, while Silver and Bronze awardees and those shortlisted pay a special reduced fee. In 2016, the fee was €100 for Silver nominees and €170 for Bronze nominees and shortlist contenders. The fee for those outside of the club is €270.

Each project has to contend in the same category in which it won in the local contest. If there is no identical category, the closest category is selected. You can read more about fees and terms of participation here.

Entry fees and deadlines

Gold Award winners from the national competitions participate for free. Silver winners participate for €100, Bronze and Shortlist winners participate for €170. The exact fees and payments can be found on the "Rules & info" page.

The 5th ADCE European Creativity Festival will be held in Barcelona 9 and 10 November.


Apple Design Awards

About the award

Apple Design Awards exist since 1996 and are traditionally given out as part of the WWDC conference. This prize is reserved for the most technically refined and elegant apps for iOS and OS X.

Entry fees and deadlines

There’s no need to submit your entry — you’ll know if the Apple reps like your app and nominate it. The next WWDC conference and the award ceremony will be held in 2019.


Awwwards

About the award

This award has been given out to the best websites since 2009 and is based in Valencia (Spain). It’s given out to designers for usability, creativity, content and design quality, and to developers for intricacy of code. Projects are selected daily and monthly. The award culminates in an international jury panel meeting in one of the iconic Old or New world cities where the best websites of the year are decorated. As for the award’s website, it is in itself a place to look for inspiration and keep up with the latest trends — especially if you wish to end up among its nominees one day.

Entry fees and deadlines

There are two types of fees. A fee of €50 guarantees that the winner in the «Website of the day» nomination is included in «The Best 365 Websites Around the Globe» book. A fee of €150 provides the winner with additional privileges: one extra entry, a discount for future entries, ads and featuring in a separate category where it’s easier to get noticed by customers, specialists and advertisers. The entry submission form can be found here. No deadlines are specified.

Cannes Lions

About the award 

The first Cannes Film Festival happened on september 20, 1946 in the French city of Cannes. At the beginning of the next decade, it already had the prestigious status and inspired european advertisers who were selling advertising time slots at the cinema shows: they wanted to put advertisement into the rank of art and achieve recognizing at the same level as the participants of the Cannes Film Festival. 

The first festival of advertising and creative communications "Cannes Lions" was held in Venice, in September 1954. Since 1984, it is held in Cannes every June. The festival eventually went beyond its format and began to include seminars, workshops and other kinds of interactions, which eventually resulted in a program lasting from five (in 2017) to seven (in 2013) days. 

In the 2017 16,000 people took part, among them were advertisers, designers, media, marketers, representatives of brands, media and entertainment industry. 

The list of nominations expanded all the time. In 2011 festival launched Mobile category. The shortlist of the nomination includes those who, in the opinion of the jury, use technologies, mobile websites, applications and games in the most resourceful and creative way to tell about their brand or idea. In different years, the Grand Prix received the newspaper The New York Times (for the VR-film The Displaced), Nivea (for a mobile application, with the help of a bracelet watching how far the child went for a walk), DDB Group Philippines (for the project to deliver Filipinos books in the form of sms) and Recruit Lifestyle Co. (for a mobile application to test male sperm for activity)

Entry fees and deadlines 

The official launch of Cannes Lions 2019 was take place on November 1st. The ceremony itself will be held from 17 to 21 June 2019. 

The cost of an application for nominees in 2018 was vary at each milestone and in the Mobile category is €525, €685 and €765 from January 18 until March 22, from March 22 until april 12 and from april 12 until march 22 respectively. 

For a complete list of categories with prices, click here. You can apply on the main page of the festival’s official website.


Clio Awards

About the award

The Clio statuette was first awarded in 1960. The award’s founder, Wallace A. Ross, was an active New York advertiser from 1940 to 1970. Back then, the awards were given out for accomplishment in TV advertising, but today this nomination is just one of many, from brand design to best student projects, including Digital/Mobile nominations contended for by mobile apps, websites and games.

There are two elimination rounds in which the jury let only one fifth of the participants through.

Entry fees and deadlines

Clio Awards 2018 awarded on October 3rd.

The entry fee in the Digital / Mobile nomination is $600. A full list of nominations and prices can be found on the "Entry fees" page. 

More details on the procedure for filing an application can be read in "Application package" document. 


CSS Design Awards

About the award

Nominees are expected to bring new solutions to web design and development. There are daily, monthly and yearly awards; winners enjoy respect, coverage and invitations to new interesting projects, while website guests get new ideas for projects of their own.

Entry fees and deadlines

The entry fee is $44 and there are no deadlines. The entry form can be found here.


DRIVEN x DESIGN

About the award

The interbranch award encouraging design in all its diversity from graphic design to design of textiles, food and beverages and applications as well.

The prize was grew up from the company Design100, headed by Mark Bergin. Design100 is a community of 75,000 design experts who support dare moves, protect the value of their industry and stimulate demand.

The award includes three international and eight city programs (London, Berlin, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Melbourne, Sydney). In second case participants had to work in these cities or target to market of a particular city.

Prize places are distributed by experts in each separate area of design. Experts are selected by members of the Advisory panel in conjunction with the founder of the award. In total, the commission has 200 leaders from different areas of the industry.

Members of the Advisory panel illustrate the significance of the award. One of the members is Willy Wong, creative consultant in New York City. Prior to this position, he was the Chief Creative Officer of New York City’s official marketing and tourism organization in 2006–2014. He built a multidisciplinary team that ran the city’s brand and worked on civic initiatives, involving several agencies, establishing public-private partnerships, and integrated global campaigns.

Entry fees and deadlines

The participants of the award acquire one of two types of packages. The package for $2000 gives the opportunity to submit five works, post content on the profile page, use the advertising package and present a film about the project. A package for $5000 gives all the same opportunities, but the number of applications increases to 14. For each program there are certain deadlines.

We found the only way to find out about the dates — watch the dates on the website. There is a dedicated block that tells which program is currently accepting applications (the closest of all deadline programs) on the main page of drivenxdesign.com on the right.


European Design Awards

About the award

Since 2007, experts from important European communication design magazines have been rewarding what they found to be outstanding examples of the craft. Among the eight categories of the award, there is a category called «Digital» that has nominations for the best mobile app and website. Apart from the established assessment criteria (quality, creativity and general adequacy), the website will be evaluated for usability and technical execution. The ranks are usual: gold, silver and bronze, but only gold awardees are decorated at the ceremony which takes place in various European cities. In May 2017, the ceremony was hosted in the city of Porto in Portugal.

Entry fees and deadlines

Registration is closed. Fee was €140, but if you submitted five or more entries, the price was lowered to €112. Students can participate for as little as €40.

The awards ceremony (and accompanying festival) will take place in Warsaw June 7-9.

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FWA

About the award

An award that has been around since 2000, FWA encourages digital professionals to push the limits of technology, in the vein of similar contests. FWA declares gender balance in the jury (no less than 100 men and 100 women all around the globe), and all changes in the jury’s opinions can be tracked live. The jury panel selects the project of the day, month and year, and these awards are complemented with the annual popular vote.

Entry fees and deadlines

The entry fee is 70.5 pounds and no deadlines are specified. The entry form can be found here.


Glomo Awards

About the award

The award was founded by a British company called GSMA, a trade body with 800 mobile operator companies as its members. GSMA started Global Mobile Awards in 1996 to propel the development of mobile technologies. The awards that have been presented in these 20 years are a testament to the evolution that the industry has undergone, from the best GSM services to quality of life and business-oriented apps and devices. The award ceremony takes place in Barcelona as part of the Mobile World Congress.

In 2018, the jury will award the winners in 42 nominations, split into ten categories: «Mobile Tech», «Consumer», «Fourth Industrial Revolution», «Device», «Content&Media», «Social Good», «Government Excellence Awards», «Outstanding Achievements», 4YFN and 5G. The full list of awards is located here.

Entry fees and deadlines

The ceremony took place in Barcelona from February 25th to February 28th.


Golden Drum Awards

About award 

The Golden Drum Award is presented within annual festival of advertising Golden Drum, established in 1994. As founders write on the site, Golden Drum participants can be agencies, design studios, media companies and their clients who are engaged in marketing in Albania, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Macedonia, Russia, Slovakia, Ukraine and other countries of Eastern Europe and the former USSR. A full list of countries is provided on the About Competition page.

A distinctive feature of the award is that the participants are awarded by the international jury not only for what they produced (so-called WHAT section), but also for the value that lies in their work and campaigns (so-called WHY section). The WHAT section is divided into categories such as Film, Print, Out of Home, Audio, Digital & Mobile, Reach, Integrated and Craft. 

Participants can submit visual identity (logos, branding), annual reports, calendars, corporate gifts, package design, product design, websites and apps design, games, UX, data visualization and directly the websites themselves, social media, interactive tools and other digital solutions, able to say a new word in the online communication between the brand and the consumer. 

Detailed rules of participation and refereeing can be found in the Golden Drum Entry Handbook.

Entry fees and deadlines

In 2018, the festival was held in Portoroz, Slovenia. The cost of the application in the Digital & Mobile nomination in 2018 was €270. The cost of submitting works in other categories can be found on the Fees Payment page.



Golden Hammer International Advertising Festival

About the award

This award started in Latvia in 1999, and it’s presented to organizations and private individuals for ingenuity in positioning a product or service, whether through advertising, direct marketing, PR campaigns, apps, websites or branded games that serve to increase customer loyalty. Golden Hammer offers its nominees to contend for Gold and Silver hammers in thirteen categories and a plethora of subcategories.

Even though the format is global, a quick glance on the list of 2016 awardees is enough to see that the winners are predominantly based in Eastern Europe; Hungary is especially prominent in the list.

Entry fees and deadlines

Information on the deadlines has not yet been found. In 2017, the fee for a single entry in each subcategory was €219 (€200 for each subsequent entry).


Horizon Interactive Awards

About the award

Since 2001, Horizon Interactive Awards has become one of the most prestigious prizes in the field of interactive and creative media. Multimedia, graphical design and advertising experts in the jury assess thousands of websites, mobile apps, online ad campaigns, video and printed media from all around the world.

Awardees are given gold, silver and bronze medals, and a single project can get several prizes. Still, the «Best of show» and «Best of category» titles are only given to the best of the best.

Entry fees and deadlines

Registration will be open on August 1. Extended deadline: January 19th. The entry fee for a nomination is $55. A single project could contend in an unlimited amount of nominations. The list of categories and nominations can be found here


Mobilewebawards

About the award

The founders of the award are the Web Marketing Association (WMA), voluntary association consisting of marketers, PR specialists, advertisers and designers that work on the Internet. All 20 years of its existence this union encourages sites that enhance the quality of the industry in general and the work of its professionals, including members of the WMA itself. At some point, it was decided to make a reward for the best sites created specifically for mobile devices or adapted for them into a separate award. Judges award prize figurines to the best of the sites presented in 96 categories and reserve the right to add or remove categories during the competition. The same studio, company or individual can submit an unlimited number of applications.

Entry fees and deadlines

Registration is closed. In 2017, the cost of the application in each category was $249, except for non-profitable, which is $195.


Tappawards

About the award

The award is founded by the Cuberto development studio. The purpose of the award is to collect and encourage innovative, beautiful and high-quality applications and give food for inspiration to colleagues in the industry.

Tappawards contrasts itself with large conservative awards, which, according to the founders, declare themselves only during the announcement of the winners and do not pay due attention to the project, which did not take the prize. Therefore, the project plans to become a service for the inspiration of designers, managers and other industry professionals, where each user can assemble their own collection from the favorite nominees. So, not only winners will get attention and traffic. As it should be, Tappawards has its own mobile application.

The jury evaluates the application in three dimensions: the visual design of the application, the usability and the extent to which animations and transitions are developed in the application. The evaluation is carried out on a ten-point scale. The project, which received the highest average score for these three parameters, becomes the «Application of the Day».

At the end of the month, the jury selects applications with the highest average score and selects the «Application of the Month» by a new vote. The winner receives a certificate and a medal of the award.

The service was launched in July 2017 and according to the co-founder, Roman Khramov, has not yet planned to monetize. Users of the service can submit an application to Tappawards for free at least until the end of the year.

The jury consists of founders and art directors of Russian and European digital agencies. Among the jury — Clay CEO Anton Zykin and creative director of REDMADROBOT Maxim Desyatykh.

Entry fees and deadlines

The «App of the day» nomination can be claimed every day. It’s enough just to send a link to the application through the form on the site to be on the list of nominees.


Webby Awards

About the award

The Webby Awards began in 1996, sponsored by the Academy of Web Design and the Cool Site of the Day project. The award evolved alongside the Internet itself, and has become the symbol of ultimate recognition of a project in the online sphere. Two years after its foundation, Webby was taken under the wing of The Web Magazine, a title of the IDG publishing house, known for its series of guides «for dummies».

Since 1998, winners are selected by IADAS (the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences), who are committed to creative, technical and professional excellence in the Internet and evolution of various forms of interactive media. Famous characters on the jury panel include (or included at some point) Vinton Cerf, one of the «fathers of the Internet»; Grimes, a singer-songwriter; Biz Stone, Twitter’s co-founder; Shane Smith, executive director of the VICE mediaholding, and hundreds of other digital visionaries. Votes cast by an online audience are taken into account as well.

The jury is on the lookout for the most exciting and influential mobile apps and websites, films and video clips, ads, media and PR campaigns, social projects and podcasts.

Among the winners of the latest (20th) ceremony are The Weeknd, Vice Media, the Onion channel, Netflix, the «Hotline Bling» music video by Drake, the Slack corporate messenger, Docusign and Pocket.

Entry fees and deadlines

Registration is closed. Nomineed announced April 2nd, 2019. For more information, contact denise@webbyawards.com, and if you require the latest news, subscribe to the monthly newsletters.


World Summit Awards

About the award

World Summit Awards is a global award supported by the UN, the World Summit on the Information Society, UNESCO, UNIDO and GAID. It takes place among 178 countries, each having their own WSA expert. The experts measure the impact your website, app or other digital project made on mankind in general and evaluate its role in forming the information society.

Entry fees and deadlines

Entry is free, you only have to contact the expert from your country; however, getting the expert’s approval is only the first step in the multiple-stage selection process. Later, you have to get into the online jury’s shortlist which contains 30–40 projects in each of the eight categories, and only 5 projects per category will be picked. More details on how to participate can be found here.

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