Finalists announced for IBC2025 Innovation Awards

The IBC Innovation Awards span five categories – Content Creation, Content Distribution, Content Everywhere, Social Impact, and Environment & Sustainability – honouring innovators in technical excellence and social progress together in one unified celebration of global industry advances.

“We are very grateful indeed to our panel of judges for their wisdom and insight in choosing our shortlists as the standard of entries, from all around the globe, was so consistently high this year,” said Fergal Ringrose, Chair of the 2025 Innovation Awards Jury. “Innovation never sleeps, and this year we can clearly see an evolution away from technology lurches enforced by the COVID-19 pandemic period towards greater refinement of innovation across the electronic media content creation, distribution and consumption ecosystem, often driven by advancing AI, hybrid and cloud-enhanced workflows.”

The winners of the IBC2025 Innovation Awards will be presented on Sunday 14 September at 18.00 CEST on the main stage of the IBC Conference in the RAI Amsterdam.

The 2025 Finalists

For Content Creation:

• MBC, Pixtree and SK Telecom for AI-assisted remastering – Commercialisation of a generalised AI-based video remastering system for Korean terrestrial broadcaster MBC, working with partners Pixtree and SK Telecom.
• IP-based multiviewer editorial workflow for Paris 2024 – For NBC Olympics' gymnastics coverage at Paris 2024. Over 60 live sources captured the action with a mosaic-based editorial workflow. In collaboration with Avid, EVS and NEP.
• Deep Ocean: Kingdom of the Coelacanth – Produced by NHK Japan, in co-production with ZDF/ARTE and OceanX, in collaboration with CMMAI, captured in 8K and 22.2 sound the world’s first-ever video footage of a group of coelacanths. Technical support was provided by GOTO Aquatics, SGO and Restar.

For Content Distribution:

• Crunchyroll Anime Awards localisation and distribution – Tokyo event went live to the global anime community combining dubbing studios and scalable live streaming. In partnership with Amagi, AWS, Bridge Digital and Pixelogic.
• Sky's MediaMesh, a transformation of large-scale, software-defined, broadcast operations – Sky Group integrated with the systems and workflows of broadcasters across Europe to deliver an API-driven, cloud-native, modular platform. With AWS, SDVI, Telestream, and TMT Insights.
• OBS hybrid streaming delivery for Paris 2024 – Olympic Broadcasting Services, with Alibaba Cloud, transformed live sports streaming by combining a traditional pipeline with a direct, cloud-based path from venue to viewer.

For Content Everywhere:

• Claro tv+ and Omni Devices unify football passion – With a remote control featuring a button with the user’s favourite team crest, taking them directly to a live game across any channel or app. Technical support: Gracenote and Teleidea Middleware.
• SVT-AV1: Alliance for Open Media, Intel and Meta – Made video streaming viable on low-end mobile devices and low-bandwidth networks, via development of decoding-aware mode of the SVT-AV1 software encoder.
• Pilipinas Live Shorts’ vertical infinite-scroll featuring UGC – Created by OTT streaming platform Cignal and powered by Quickplay Shorts along with Twelve Labs, it uses AI to identify, clip and reformat VOD and Live-to-VOD content while also incorporating UGC into the shorts’ feed.

For Social Impact:

• Neurodiversity mentoring programme – Media Talent Manifesto is leading a pioneering global initiative supporting neurodivergent professionals in the media and broadcast sector. Supporters include Deluxe, Molinare and Vizrt.
• Amplifying riverside voices in the Amazon – SOUV from SNEWS enables newsrooms to receive real-time content from underserved regions through mobile contribution. In partnership with Rede Amazônica.
• Empowering citizen advocacy and social justice through technology – The Mobile Justice app, developed with the American Civil Liberties Union, enables citizens to document law enforcement encounters in real-time and upload evidence for review. Technical partners are Jotto, Quadrant2 and Wowza.
• France Télévisions pioneers transparency and trust in journalism – In partnership with Dalet, the broadcaster is the first in the industry to implement a C2PA-enabled content authentication in its daily workflow for the Journal de 20h newsroom.

For Environment & Sustainability:

• Evoke 5000B – For film and TV lighting by Nanlux. Delivers a similar output to a 20,000W tungsten light from a 5,000W LED draw. It reduces energy use by approximately 75%, with battery support. Sustainability is also at the core of the production process.
• World First Greening Live Broadcasts: Energy-Efficient UHD Upscaling with NPU Acceleration for Sustainable IPTV Service – Korea’s SK Telecom, with Pixtree, developed an NPU-based live UHD upscaler and integrated it into SK Broadband’s IPTV service (Btv) live channels, serving 6.7 million subscribers while achieving 80% energy reduction and preventing 3,728 tons CO₂eq emissions annually.
• Green Film Shooting – An independent initiative in Germany for the film and media industry to spread the word via its platforms about innovative solutions that help to increase energy efficiency, save resources and cut carbon emissions.

The IBC2025 Awards ceremony will also feature the presentation of the IBC International Honour for Excellence, which recognises outstanding contribution to the industry, and the Best Technical Paper, drawn from the peer-reviewed papers presented at the IBC Conference from 12–14 September 2025.