bnetwork Wins 2026 UFI Industry Partners Award

bnetwork has been named winner of the 2026 UFI Industry Partners Award, recognised for a strategic partnership model developed to support the relocation and long-term development of a major international event.

UFI, The Global Association of the Exhibition Industry, has named bnetwork as the winner of the 2026 UFI Industry Partners Award, recognising an initiative that demonstrated how collaboration across the exhibition ecosystem can turn a complex relocation challenge into an opportunity for strategic development.

The award celebrates outstanding initiatives and organisations that demonstrate innovation, collaboration and forward-thinking approaches to partnerships, with the aim of strengthening the wider exhibition ecosystem. For its 2026 edition, the competition focused on the theme “The Biggest Lesson Learnt: From Zero to Hero”, placing particular emphasis on practical learning, resilience and innovation.

The theme sought to spotlight initiatives in which industry partners and their collaborators had transformed adversity into opportunity, generating value not only for the organisations directly involved but also for stakeholders across the exhibition industry.

For bnetwork, the winning project centred on accommodation and its role in supporting the relocation of a major international event. The initiative brought together event organiser Clarion Gaming, Barcelona’s hotel community and other partners to address the practical and strategic challenges associated with moving a flagship event to a new destination.

Stephane Teboul, Co-Founder of bnetwork, describes the recognition as confirmation of the collective effort behind the project.

“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.”

The jury highlighted precisely this broader understanding of partnership. Sebastian Witt, Chair of the UFI Industry Partners Working Group, said the winning entry distinguished itself by addressing a tangible industry challenge through a deliberately strategic approach to collaboration.

"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 emphasis on applicability is significant. Beyond recognising a successful individual project, the jury saw in bnetwork’s approach a model with potential relevance for other international events facing the complexities of relocation, destination integration and stakeholder coordination.

The 2026 competition also recognised a broader field of initiatives across the industry. Aditus was named this year’s Finalist, while ADNEC Centre Abu Dhabi, Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions (CITEM), ILTM by RX Global, and Map Your Show were recognised as Best Practices.

The Industry Partners Award forms part of the wider UFI Awards programme, which each year celebrates achievement across a range of disciplines including digital innovation, marketing, sustainable development, operations & services, people & culture, and industry partnerships.

An important component of the programme is the sharing of recognised projects beyond the awards themselves. Selected UFI Award projects are made available through UFI’s Best Practices Library, creating a resource through which exhibition professionals around the world can examine leading initiatives, share knowledge and draw lessons from approaches developed elsewhere in the industry.

The 2026 UFI Award winners will receive their formal recognition at the 93rd UFI Global Congress, which will take place from 2–5 November 2026 in the Kingdom of Bahrain. Further details of the recognition programme will be announced by UFI in due course.
 

In a previous HQ interview, bnetwork Co-Founder Stéphane Teboul shared his views on the future of event accommodation and the growing importance of quality. Read the full interview here

Published by Meeting Media Company, the publisher of Headquarters Magazine (HQ) – a leading international publication based in Brussels, serving the global MICE industry and association community.