Recognising, celebrating and connecting the outstanding within the UK creative industries, from rising stars to industry leaders.
The Creative Circle Awards 2026 are open for entries now. This is your opportunity to gain industry recognition whilst becoming part of a network at the heart of the UK creative industries.
If you are not in position to enter this year, you can still take part by being a judge, register now to join us.
The awards ceremony is hosted at the UK Creative Festival, where the creative industry comes together for two days packed with inspirational talks, thought-provoking panels, networking, parties and more.
In addition to the Creative Circle Awards, the Creative Circle Talent Awards will take place at lunchtime on the same day.
You will also be able to enjoy every shortlisted entry featured in our Best of British Creativity Exhibition, running throughout the UK Creative Festival event.
2025 awards highlights
2025 awards highlights
Judging & entry categories
The Creative Circle awards are uniquely judged by the creative community itself. Winning an award is about reaching a standard, not first past the post.
Judging:
We invite every creative working in the UK creative industries to register to be a part of our judging process, giving us a judging team of over 1,000. To find out how to be a judge, click here.
This enables us to allocate smaller more manageable batches of work to judges, making their job easier and more focused whilst ensuring fairness, where no judge should be judging any work they have connection to.
Work is judged in three rounds, rounds one and two take place online, round three takes place in live judging sessions by our Gold Jury.
The awards are there to celebrate the best creative work from the past year in the UK. We are not about first past the post where there is only a Gold, Silver & Bronze in each and every category, winning a Creative Circle award is about reaching a standard, meaning there can be multiple winners in each category.
Categories:
1/ Audio, Radio, Sound Design, Sonic Branding & Podcasts
2/ Design, Craft & Branding (inc Packaging)
3/ Event & Experience
4/ Film (Inc Short Film)
5/ Film Craft - Animation
6/ Film Craft - Editing
7/ Film Craft - Music (use of and composition)
8/ Film Craft - General (Direction, Cinematography, Prod Design, Casting, Costume & Performance)
9/ Film Craft - Colour Grading
10/ Film Craft - VFX
11/ General (Integrated Campaigns, Low Budget executions & Innovation)
12/ Music Video
13/ Online, Digital, Direct & Gaming
14/ Photography & Illustration
15/ PR & Social
16/ Press & Outdoor
17/ Writing
