The Wire
MemCom Awards 2026: shortlist bets on events and podcasts
The shortlist for the MemCom Excellence Awards 2026 is out. Finalists were revealed on 8 July at the MemCom Summer Party at the Barbican Conservatory in London, and winners will be named on 24 September at the InterContinental London Park Lane.
For membership teams, the list is more than a night out in waiting. Read across the categories and the shortlisted names, and you get a working map of where UK membership bodies have been putting their money this year: events, audio and member support.
The MemCom Excellence Awards 2026 shortlist was announced on 8 July at the Barbican Conservatory. UKCISA is shortlisted in four categories, IOM3 for its M3P3 flagship event, AXREM in three categories including Best Podcast, and the Builders Merchants Federation is up for Best Trade Association for a second consecutive year. Winners are announced on 24 September.
Who is on the shortlist?
The confirmed names span professional bodies, trade associations and specialist institutes. UKCISA, the UK Council for International Student Affairs, is shortlisted in four categories: Best Event (Non-Celebratory, under £100K) for its Annual Conference 2025, Best Celebration Event for the #WeAreInternational Awards 2025, Team of the Year, and the CEO Leadership Award for former chief executive Anne Marie Graham.
Elsewhere, IOM3 is shortlisted for Best Non-Celebratory Event under £100K for M3P3, its materials, minerals and mining flagship. AXREM, the association for diagnostic imaging and radiotherapy equipment suppliers, is a finalist in three categories including Best Podcast and Best Membership Support. The Builders Merchants Federation is shortlisted for Best Trade Association for the second consecutive year. The full list sits on the MemCom shortlist page.
What does the shortlist say about sector spending?
Events dominate. MemCom prices its event categories by budget, with a £100K threshold separating the tiers, which is itself an admission that events are among the largest discretionary spends a membership body makes. UKCISA and IOM3 competing in the same under-£100K bracket suggests the mid-budget flagship, conference-scale but cost-controlled, is where much of the sector now concentrates its effort.
Audio is the second signal. A dedicated Best Podcast category, with AXREM among the finalists, reflects how far podcasts have moved from experiment to standard member channel for smaller teams. Member support is the third signal: it appears as a category in its own right, with service delivery judged as craft rather than overhead.
Why do awards entries double as benchmarking?
Because an entry forces the evidence into one place. Writing a submission means quantifying attendance, renewals, feedback and outcomes against objectives set a year earlier, which is precisely the exercise membership directors say they never have time for. The shortlist then publishes the comparator set for free. UKCISA’s entry, for instance, discloses that its 2025 conference in Manchester drew over 400 attendees and that its inaugural #WeAreInternational Awards attracted 421 applications from 120 institutions. Figures like that are benchmarking data, whether or not they win. The sector’s formal version is the Influence 100 financial benchmarking exercise, covered separately.
That is the practical value of awards season for a UK membership professional. The trophies matter less than the published standard, and the published standard is visible to anyone who reads the list.
What happens next
Winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on 24 September at the InterContinental London Park Lane, with event details at memcom.org.uk. Between now and then, the useful exercise is reading the shortlist against your own programme: which categories you could plausibly enter next year, and what evidence you would need to start collecting now. Our events calendar carries the date alongside the rest of the sector’s autumn season.