SAP isn’t just shaping global business; it’s helping real people and teams turn fresh ideas into solutions that matter. With ERP-centric, cloud-based, and AI-enabled tools, organizations can navigate fast-changing times, spot opportunities, and avoid risks with confidence. The most meaningful innovations go beyond one person’s success. They ripple outward, inspiring others and making a real difference in communities and industries around the world.
This brings us to the 2026 SAP Innovation Awards, the yearly celebration that honors customers using SAP technologies to innovate with purpose and achieve meaningful outcomes. The awards recognize industry innovators and honor the individuals and teams who make transformations happen, amplifying their stories to a global audience.
Submissions for the 2026 SAP Innovation Awards are now open. Organizations utilizing SAP technologies to tackle real-world challenges are encouraged to submit their innovation stories today, demonstrating how these innovations help solve economic, environmental, and social challenges.
New avenues for growth and innovation
In the past, the SAP Innovation Awards have been described as a tribute to “bold innovators in challenging times.” This is even more true today, given changing global landscapes and the increasing necessity to telegraph—and circumvent—obstacles in advance, combined with the acceleration of AI and other groundbreaking technologies.
The 2026 SAP Innovation Awards have 16 total categories for innovators, with participants encouraged to select one of the following 11 to best describe their submitted transformation:
- AI Excellence: For customers that are harnessing SAP Business AI to transform operations, elevate efficiency, and shape the future of work through intelligent automation and smarter processes.
- Cloud ERP Champion: For customers that embrace SAP Cloud ERP to transform, future-proof, and unlock new avenues for growth and innovation.
- Customer Experience Innovator: For customers that have transformed their businesses with cloud technologies, creating standout experiences that delight customers and fuel growth.
- Financial Futurist: For customers that are leveraging our finance solutions to revolutionize financial processes, deliver new business models, optimize working capital, increase efficiency, and reduce risk.
- People Experience Pioneer: For customers that are reimagining the employee journey through AI-enabled, cloud-powered transformation, crafting exceptional experiences that inspire and empower their workforce.
- Procurement Visionary: For customers that are leveraging our spend management solutions to automate procurement processes and actively manage indirect and direct spend for better control, greater value, more savings, and operational efficiencies.
- Services Superstar: For customers that have leveraged our services to accelerate their business goals by enabling organizational learning, increasing user adoption, enhancing productivity, and maximizing the overall value of their SAP solutions.
- Supply Chain Catalyst: For customers that are using our supply chain management solutions to build strong, well-orchestrated supply chains. With SAP’s supply chain management solutions, companies can realize increased visibility across their supply chains, improve efficiency and compliance with regulations, and ensure customer satisfaction.
- Sustainability Hero: For customers that are harnessing the SAP Sustainability portfolio and the power of connected apps, data, and AI for improved efficiency, streamlined compliance, and business growth for a sustainable and resilient future.
- Technology Pathfinder: For customers that have implemented SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) to solve a business problem or unlock an innovative use case that results in a positive, measurable impact on the community or society.
- Transformation Impact: For customers that are leveraging SAP Signavio solutions, SAP LeanIX solutions, and WalkMe solutions to generate business value and strengthen their transformation capabilities. These organizations are consistently advancing critical dimensions—such as processes, applications, people, and data—to ensure they remain resilient and well-prepared for the future.
It should be noted that, in 2026, the SAP Innovation Awards will no longer recognize the Partner Paragon category. Details surrounding partner recognition can be found here on the SAP Partner Portal site with more updates expected shortly.
Reshaping the planet
There are five remaining categories, and candidates are automatically entered based on their industry. The “Industry Leader” grouping is focused on customers that are reinventing business or industry models, streamlining operations, engaging customers or serving constituents in new ways, collaborating across ecosystems, and creating meaningful societal or environmental impact. This category is divided into the following areas:
- Consumer Industries
- Discrete Industries
- Energy & Natural Resources
- Public Services
- Service and Financial Services Industries
A call for submissions, a call to action
Transformative change has become a regular, rather than a sporadic, occurrence. And it is the people on the ground who are not only generating this reframing but using the vast assortment of available tools to make these innovations accessible.
In the tradition of SAP, the 2026 SAP Innovation Awards will highlight those positively shaping business, culture, and the planet. This is your chance to showcase yourself as you help your organization and the world move forward.
I truly hope you will submit your innovative solution to the 2026 awards for the world to see and celebrate.
Sophia Mendelsohn is chief sustainability and commercial officer at SAP.
