The EDIH Network Awards 2026: many ways to measure a good idea

How do you measure a good idea? Across a network as varied as Europe’s European Digital Innovation Hubs, no single answer will do. So the EDIH Network Awards, presented at the Summit 2026 in Brussels, use several: the judgment of a jury, the vote of the network itself, a project’s contribution to the green transition, and hard performance data. This year’s winners show what each of those measures can reveal.

The project the network chose

Start with the one the network picked for itself. The EDIH Community Award is decided by a live vote of EDIHs at the Summit, and this year they chose AI based robot Robic helps in social services, a project led across borders by EDIH NEB in Czechia and EDIH Madrid Region in Spain.

It is easy to see why it resonated. The two hubs piloted Robic, an AI-based social robot, in care facilities supporting people with cognitive and mental disabilities, where it guides structured exercises and takes on routine session admin. The point is not the robot. It is that, by handling the repetitive parts, Robic gives carers back time for the direct, person-to-person support that no technology can replace. When a question as large as “what does responsible AI look like?” gets a concrete answer, peers notice.

Excellence, and a greener kind of it

Where the Community Award speaks for the network, the Award for Excellence speaks for a jury, and this year it went to AI instead of Waste (EDIHDO, Germany). The idea is almost mundane in the best way: predictive analytics forecast how many meals a school canteen will actually serve, so providers can match portions and purchasing to real demand. Less guesswork, less waste, no drop in quality. It is digital innovation doing quiet, measurable good in a sector not known for it.

Within the same Excellence process, a Special Mention for Best Green Initiative went to LIH in Finland, the national hub for location data and geospatial AI. Through its GeoAI Opportunities programme, LIH took a technology most companies assumed was out of reach and made it usable without in-house specialists, helping businesses in farming, forestry, logistics and the built environment turn location data into lower emissions. Together, the two projects make a useful pair: one shows digital tools trimming waste, the other shows them serving the green transition directly.

Two kinds of impact

The last award, Best Improvement in Digital Maturity, does not rely on a story at all. It draws on the network’s performance data, and it comes with two trophies, because reach and depth are not the same thing and a network needs both.

Robocoast in Finland took the award for reach. Working nationwide with manufacturing SMEs, it connects companies through a one-stop-shop model to the expertise, test environments and facilities of 14 Finnish universities and the wider European AI ecosystem, delivering AI, robotics, cybersecurity and skills support at real scale. EDIHLV in Latvia took the award for depth, with measurable gains in its clients’ digital maturity: it brings together the country’s leading research and technology organisations and is building an Applied AI Knowledge Centre to carry advanced AI and robotics from the lab into everyday business use. One award rewards breadth, the other rewards change. Read together, they describe what real progress looks like.

What it adds up to

Five projects, four ways of judging them, five countries: Germany, Finland, Latvia, Czechia and Spain. That spread is the point. It is a reminder of the European scale of the EDIH community and of what hubs achieve when they work across borders, in sectors that touch people’s daily lives, from social care and schools to manufacturing and the environment.

It also says something about the network’s quieter work. Behind each winner is a hub building local AI capacity, sharing what works with its peers, and helping organisations find the skills and confidence to take the next step. The Awards make that visible for a moment on a Summit stage. The rest of the year, it happens hub by hub, client by client.