Paris — 08/09/2026:UFI, The Global Association of the Exhibition Industry, has named bnetwork as the winner of the 2026 UFI Industry Partners Award.
The UFI Industry Partners Award celebrates outstanding initiatives and organisations that demonstrate innovation, collaboration and forward-thinking approaches that elevate partnerships and strengthen the exhibition ecosystem.
This year’s UFI Industry Partners Award topic was “The Biggest Lesson Learnt: From Zero to Hero”, which focused on practical learning, resilience, and innovation. It aimed to spotlight initiatives where industry partners and their collaborators turned adversity into opportunity, creating value for stakeholders and the broader exhibition industry.
Stephane Teboul, Co-Founder of bnetwork, comments: “Winning the UFI Industry Partners Award is a fantastic recognition of the expertise, commitment and collaborative spirit of the entire bnetwork team.
This project showed that accommodation can be much more than a logistical requirement; it can play a genuinely strategic role in the successful relocation and long-term development of a major international event.
We are extremely proud of what we achieved together with Clarion Gaming, Barcelona’s hotel community and all the partners who helped make this possible.”
Sebastian Witt, Chair of the UFI Industry Partners Working Group, adds: “bnetwork’s winning entry stood out to the jury for its highly strategic use of partnership to solve a real industry challenge: the relocation of a flagship event. This year’s competition featured many good entries, with two shortlisted as finalists and four recognised as best practices.
bnetwork’s submission scored well across every criterion. The jury was particularly impressed by the initiative’s innovation in engaging partners across the ecosystem, exactly the kind of forward-thinking collaboration this award was created to celebrate, and saw strong potential for the model to be applied by other large international events.”
The jury also congratulates this year’s Finalist, Aditus, and Best Practices: ADNEC Centre Abu Dhabi, Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions (CITEM), ILTM by RX Global, and Map Your Show.
Each year, the UFI Awards celebrate excellence in digital innovation, marketing, sustainable development, operations & services, people & culture, and industry partners. Selected projects from the UFI Awards are shared through UFI’s Best Practices Library, supporting knowledge sharing and helping exhibition professionals worldwide learn from the industry’s leading initiatives. Discover more at www.ufi.org/awards.
The 2026 UFI Award winners will be recognised at the 93rd UFI Global Congress, taking place from 2–5 November 2026 in the Kingdom of Bahrain. Further details on the recognition programme will be shared in due course. To learn more about the UFI Global Congress, please visit www.uficongress.org.
