The Association Excellence Awards 2026

Judging Panel

Meet our amazing panel of membership organisation leaders, influencers and CEOs

Meet the judges

2025 highlights

Associations do brilliant work for their members and these awards are an opportunity for associations to showcase their excellent work. It is particularly important for the employees to be recognised for the work they have done over the year.
Delighted to have been nominated for my work at Political Studies Association (UK) alongside my team and our dedicated board of trustees. To the uninitiated, associations, including membership bodies and learned societies, are surprisingly complex, busy and passionate organisations whose contribution and role may be somewhat taken for granted. So, brilliant to see this recognition!
Michelle Doyle Wildman , Political Studies Association
The Association Excellence Awards not only recognise the great work going on within associations, but highlight more widely that the sector leads the field in innovation and best practice. While associations are hotbeds of great ideas they are always happy to share, celebrate and learn from each other. This makes these awards so exciting: to find out what our colleagues have been working on and achieved, so we can celebrate alongside them.
We’re very proud of the success in this year’s AEA’s, and will certainly be sharing as widely as possible! Still buzzing after the Awards, and it means so much to our staff and members to have been recognised by our fellow Associations for what we do. Congratulations on a brilliant event, too. I thought the host was excellent, and everyone was incredibly positive about the event.

Ben Agnew - CEO, the Payments Association
We met some great contacts thank you. We really appreciate all the effort you guys put into the introductions and relationship building. It was another great event!
Louise Day, Manchester Central
A very well organised event. The food at the ceremony was superb as was the Guest Presenter who I thought was very funny.
We really enjoyed the ceremony and the choice of compere was excellent. The camaraderie was palpable and we all noted the tangible joy in the room so well done

Marcia Philbin, Chief Executive, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine
It really was an excellent event – really well put together and made us feel incredibly special.

Karen Smith, Regional Head of Marketing, EEMA & UK, ACCA
Super well organised and professional. Excellent food and the compere was great; Award categories good with good breadth and ceremony itself was the right length. All in all a fantastic event.
It was such a pleasure to be part of such a well run and genuinely enjoyable afternoon. Everything seemed to go brilliantly, and I think we can all agree it was a huge success

Ben Markham, Sales Executive, Church House Westminster