In an exciting finale to the Digital Preservation Awards 2026, organizations and practitioners of digital preservation from around the world gathered together for a glittering presentation ceremony at the No Time to Wait conference at the National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute (FINA) in Warsaw on Thursday 15 October!
The Digital Preservation Awards are the leading international celebration of achievement in digital preservation. Hosted by the Digital Preservation Coalition, and introduced by the Chair of Judges Dr Sonia Ranade, Head of Digital Archiving at The National Archives (UK), the event highlighted the achievements of individuals and organizations who have made significant and innovative contributions to creating a sustainable future for our digital assets.
Meet the 2026 Digital Preservation Awards Winners
ICA Award for Collaboration and Cooperation:From Basement to Citizen Digital Archives Flanders An integrated approach to the digitization, preservation and public access of environmental permits, securing records of lasting legal, administrative and societal value. |
NLB Singapore Award for Research and Innovation:An OAIS-Compliant Archiving Platform with DNA Connector within OLOS Pierre-Yves Burgi, Hugues Cazeaux, Dario Genga, Michaël El Kharroubi, Florient Serex and Jérôme Charmet Connecting DNA storage with an established digital preservation platform, demonstrating new possibilities for storing and retrieving digital archives. |
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KB National Library of the Netherlands Award for Teaching and Communications:
Digital Ghosts – Visualising Scotland’s Web Archives Dr Andrea Kocsis Using creative visualizations and artworks to make web decay, digital loss and the work of web preservation visible and understandable to public audiences. |
DPC Award for the Most Distinguished Student Work in Digital Preservation:Preserving ‘Research Objects’ – Challenges and Requirements Manuela Pallotto Strickland, Aberystwyth University Exploring how complex research outputs can be preserved, with practical insights into an emerging challenge for long-term access to research. |
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RDA Award for Most Outstanding Digital Preservation Initiative in Commerce, Industry and the Third Sector:GOG Preservation ProgramGOG
Keeping older videogames playable on modern hardware through a sustained commitment to preservation and continued access. |
The National Archives (UK) Award for Safeguarding the Digital Legacy:Archive of Personal Testimonies: The Russian Invasion of UkraineAnna Eliseeva and project teams of The Helpdesk, KRONIKA, and Zukunft Memorial, including interviewers, editors, archivists, researchers, managers and engineers responsible for collecting, processing, preserving, and publishing the archive. Preserving eyewitness accounts of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, safeguarding personal experiences for research, journalism, human rights work and the historical record. |
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APTrust Award for Resilience, Maintenance and Continuity:
PRONOM RefreshSam Palmer, Steve Daly and Andrew Hosgood Delivering a major refresh of the PRONOM file format registry, sustaining essential infrastructure that supports digital preservation worldwide. |
DPC Fellow Award:Kevin AshleyRecognizing nearly three decades of leadership and advocacy, with lasting contributions to digital archiving, professional training and research data management. |
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Watch the recording of the 2026 Digital Preservation Awards Ceremony
Explore all the 2026 finalists:
ICA Award for Collaboration and Cooperation: |
NLB Singapore Award for Research and Innovation: |
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KB National Library of the Netherlands Award for Teaching and Communications: |
DPC Award for the Most Distinguished Student Work in Digital Preservation: |
RDA Award for Most Outstanding Digital Preservation Initiative in Commerce, Industry and the Third Sector: |
The National Archives (UK) Award for Safeguarding the Digital Legacy:
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APTrust Award for Resilience, Maintenance and Continuity: |
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About the Digital Preservation Awards
Created in 2004 to raise awareness about digital preservation, the Digital Preservation Awards provide a rare opportunity to engage in high-profile advocacy, articulating nuanced messages about how and why one might engage in digital preservation. They enable the DPC, acting on behalf of the global digital preservation community, to endorse and celebrate outstanding work which may go unrecognized by others, and which may be little known among the senior managers of the agencies sponsoring this work. Therefore, nominations which have received recognition through other schemes such as the NDSA Excellence Awards are unlikely to be recognized again by the Digital Preservation Awards.
In its early iterations (2004, 2005, 2007 and 2010) the DPC sponsored a single award under the auspices of the Conservation Awards. In 2012, to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the Coalition, the DPC organized the Digital Preservation Awards under its own mandate, offering 3 awards. In 2014, a further 2 awards were offered and, in 2016, the DPC Fellowship was introduced for the first time. And in 2020 a new category allowing for an explicit celebration of collaboration was added. In 2022, we marked the DPC’s 20th Anniversary with another award which celebrates a continuing, substantial and impactful contribution to the digital preservation community in any form, over the preceding 20 years. In 2026, we offered an exciting new category to recognize the vital work of maintaining the tools, services, and infrastructure that support digital preservation over time with the Award for Resilience, Maintenance and Continuity!
The exciting process culminated in a glittering awards ceremony at the NTTW conference on Thursday 15th October 2026, hosted by the National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute (FINA) in Warsaw!
We are very grateful to our sponsors and DPC Supporters for their generous contributions which enable the Digital Preservation Awards to take place:
If your organization would like to sponsor the 2028 Digital Preservation Awards please email angela.puggioni@dpconline.org.