Kentico today opened the Site of the Year 2026 competition with a refreshed awards structure, including a new Best Use of AI award
BEDFORD, NH, UNITED STATES, June 16, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Kentico today opened the Site of the Year 2026 competition with a refreshed awards structure built around the forces reshaping digital experience, including a new Best Use of AI award, the first-of-its-kind recognition from a major Digital Experience Platform vendor that formally celebrates partner work deploying agentic and generative AI in production.
The 2026 edition consolidates ten vertical categories into six and introduces five new bonus awards: Best Use of AI, Best SaaS Project, Best Multichannel Project, Best Upgrade Project, and Best Migration Project. Together, they map directly to where the digital experience industry is moving, and to the capabilities Kentico has been shipping across Xperience by Kentico, AIRA, and the Agentic Marketing Suite, now featuring four specialized agents that operate as a virtual marketing team.
A New Awards Structure That Mirrors the Industry
The Site of the Year contest honors partners and customers who design and deliver remarkable digital experiences built on Xperience by Kentico. The 2026 edition introduces three changes to reflect the realities of how leading digital teams are working today.
The vertical structure moves from ten categories to six, consolidating naturally clustered industries: Government, Associations & Education; Sport, Entertainment, Travel & Tourism; Financial Services; Healthcare; Industrial Manufacturing; and B2B & Consumer Brands. Commerce is no longer a standalone category and is evaluated within the industry each project naturally belongs to.
The five new bonus awards cut across every vertical and recognize the dimensions defining modern digital experience: agentic and generative AI integration, true SaaS implementations, multichannel and consolidation projects, in-place version upgrades, and migrations from competing platforms. Bonus awards are not exclusive: a single project can win both a vertical category and one or more bonus awards.
“Awards programs should be a mirror of where the industry is actually moving, not where it was two years ago,” said Petr Klouda, VP of Strategic Partnership at Kentico. “Agentic AI is no longer experimental; it is in production, shipping real outcomes for real customers. With Site of the Year 2026, we are putting that work on the leaderboard, alongside the SaaS, migration, and consolidation projects that are reshaping how organizations operate. The partners and customers building this future deserve to be recognized for it.”
Building on a Strong 2025 Edition
The 2026 edition follows a strong 2025 competition, which celebrated ten category winners and twenty honorable mentions across financial services, commerce, education, hospitality, healthcare, government, B2B, manufacturing, and nonprofit sectors. Submissions came from North America, EMEA, and APAC, with winners including LeShuttle Freight, Translink, MND Energie, ROC van Amsterdam & Flevoland, Bob W., Oppenheimer, Cleveland Metroparks, LivaNova, Pierret, and the American Society of Landscape Architects. The full list is available on the Kentico Awards page.
Projects Already Setting the Bar for 2026
The competition is already underway, and the early entries illustrate exactly why the new award categories exist. Every project that wins Site of the Month during 2026 automatically qualifies for SOTY consideration, and the early 2026 cohort includes work that would have been difficult to place in last year’s structure.
Integra LifeSciences, a global medical technology leader specializing in neurosurgery and surgical solutions, rebuilt their corporate presence on Xperience by Kentico delivered as SaaS. Facing a hard deadline from a CMS sunset, Integra worked with BizStream to migrate to a modern, cloud-based foundation that strengthened global stakeholder visibility and gave content teams a far more capable authoring experience. It is a model project for the new Best SaaS Project bonus award.
Tesco Mobile Ireland, the consumer mobile brand backed by one of Ireland’s most recognized retail names, replatformed from a custom ecommerce build onto Xperience by Kentico. Delivered by Granite, the new site features a native phone comparison tool, a bundling and add-on checkout flow, and prepaid top-up functionality, making it a conversion-focused D2C retail experience built at brand scale.
Looking Ahead
Site of the Year 2026 follows the Site of the Month–based qualification model introduced in 2025. The international Kentico judging committee will evaluate finalists in tournament-mode knockout rounds in January 2027, with winners announced the first week of February 2027.
Jonathan Henault
Kentico software, s.r.o.
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Kentico Site of the Year 2025 winners
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