New categories announced for CRN Channel Awards Asia 2026

There are five new categories for vendors and partners to consider this year.

The CRN Channel Awards Asia 2026 is back with more categories this year to recognize and celebrate the success of the channel ecosystem in the Asian region. Taking place in Singapore, this year’s awards will have 30 categories for vendors and partners to participate in.

The prestigious awards recognize and reward the outstanding achievements of the individuals and teams responsible for driving the Asian IT channel forward. From vendors and distributors to marketplaces and resellers, the awards honour the people powering successful channel businesses across the region.

Among the most popular categories in 2025 included categories for cybersecurity vendors, channel managers, AI innovation as well as women leaders from both the vendor and partner ecosystem.

With a fully independent and rigorous judging process, the CRN Channel Awards Asia continue to stand among the most respected and sought-after honors in the global IT industry, firmly established as the Oscars of the IT channel.

“The inaugural awards was a huge success with vendors and partners not only celebrating their wins but also taking the opportunity to network with their peers in the industry,” Aaron Raj, CRN Asia Editor said.

Raj also stated that being recognized as a finalist in the CRN Channel Awards Asia is already considered an accomplishment as they are selected from the many entries submitted for the awards.

Five new categories

There will be five new categories for vendors and partners this year. For vendors, there is now a category for Most Sustainable Data Center Vendor of the Year. The category is open to all vendors active in the data center industry. This includes hyperscalers, colocation, cloud and enterprise data center vendors as well as racks, servers and cooling system vendors, and other components or peripherals relevant to the data center market.

For the distributors, there are two new distributor categories that recognize the success of the local players and markets. This includes the ASEAN Distributor of the Year, which focuses on distributors that are based in ASEAN, as well as the Indian Distributor of the Year, which focuses on distributors in India.

For all IT companies, there are also two new categories. First, there is the Best in House AI Use Case Developed. This category is open to customers like banks, telcos and such that have developed and deployed a successful AI use case to improve their productivity in 2025. The use cases can also have been co-developed with vendors or partners and should signify a strong and productive impact on the organization.

Next, there is the Best Marketing Campaign for AI Adoption. This category is opened to vendors and partners (VAD, VAR, MSPs, SIs) that ran a successful AI adoption campaign. It recognizes the collaboration between channel marketing teams from vendors and partners to run and execute a successful AI campaign on AI adoption.

More details on all the categories are available here.

The deadline for submission is 22^nd May 2026. The CRN Channel Awards Asia 2026 takes place on September 10^th at the Pan Pacific Orchard in Singapore.