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2026 Voting Open

Global COO Excellence Awards (2026)

This awards highlight COOs who are making significant strides in their organisations, setting new benchmarks for efficiency, leadership, and industry influence.

Award background image - Global COO Excellence Awards
About the Global COO Excellence Awards

Behind every high-performing organisation is someone making sure great ideas become great results.

CEO Monthly is delighted to announce the return of the Global COO Excellence Awards 2026, celebrating the exceptional Chief Operating Officers who are transforming strategy into action and helping organisations around the world perform at their very best.

Now entering its second year, the programme places the spotlight firmly on one of the most influential positions in modern business. COOs sit at the heart of their organisations, connecting people, processes, technology, and strategy while tackling the operational challenges that can determine whether a business simply functions or truly flourishes.

Today’s Chief Operating Officer is also taking on an increasingly dynamic role. From navigating rapid growth and improving efficiency to adopting new technologies, strengthening company culture, managing transformation, and building more resilient operations, the modern COO is expected to make change happen while keeping the organisation moving forward.

The Global COO Excellence Awards 2026 celebrates those who do it brilliantly.

We are looking for operational leaders from businesses of every size and sector who have demonstrated outstanding leadership, delivered meaningful improvements, and made a lasting contribution to their organisation’s success.

What Makes an Outstanding COO?

  • Operational Excellence: Creating smarter, stronger, and more efficient ways of working
  • Business Performance: Turning strategic ambitions into measurable results
  • Innovation & Transformation: Embracing technology, AI, automation, and new ideas to improve operations
  • People Leadership: Building high-performing teams and creating environments where people can succeed
  • Resilience & Adaptability: Helping organisations respond confidently to change, disruption, and new opportunities
  • Strategic Impact: Working alongside executive teams to shape the direction and future of the business

Why Take Part?

Recognition in the Global COO Excellence Awards is an opportunity to put your operational achievements centre stage. It can help celebrate the teams behind your success, strengthen your professional profile, showcase your organisation’s progress, and demonstrate the value outstanding operational leadership can create.

For our 2026 programme, CEO Monthly welcomes nominations from COOs across the globe, as well as colleagues, businesses, clients, and other third parties wishing to put an exceptional operational leader forward.

Whether you have transformed an established organisation, successfully scaled a growing company, introduced smarter processes, navigated a period of major change, or simply raised the standard of operational leadership, we want to hear your story.

The Global COO Excellence Awards are back for 2026. Could this be your year?

Enter or nominate today and join CEO Monthly in celebrating the operational leaders turning ambitious business strategies into extraordinary results.

Entries Opened:

Monday 14th September 2026

Entries Closing:

Friday 30th October 2026

Winners Announcement:

January 2027

Need help with your nomination? We can point you in the right direction.

The Nomination Team can assist with answering any queries that you have regarding a nomination, or the process involved in taking part in one of our award programmes. Please get in touch with us via email or over the phone if you have any questions - we are happy to help!

Meet The Team
Our team - CEO Monthly
What our clients say
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Jono Leaf-Wright DP World Lions Cricket
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The response time and support from your staff was superb. You were very professional from start to finish. I really enjoyed working with your team. Thank you for your support.

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Dan Hostetler Above and Beyond Family Recovery Center
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It was seamless working with your teams. Everyone knew what everyone else was doing and I did not encounter any of the normal "crossed wires" in trying to figure out what was going on. You've got a "dream team" behind you! The process was very simple and easy as pie to follow.

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David Preston Realise.me.uk
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First, thank you for the wonderful recognition. We're making the most of the award and when I published it on LinkedIn - our key communications channel - we got a huge amount of comments and engagement.

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Lushani Kodituwakku CEO
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Thank you for this accolade and recognition. The award has significantly boosted mine and Luminii Consulting’s visibility, as evidenced by the numerous clients who have reached out to congratulate me on this achievement. Winning the award has also captured the attention of prospective clients and has been a catalyst for generating increased interest in our services. Moreover, it has provided the platform to rekindle relationships with existing clients, opening exciting possibilities for further collaboration.

How does it work?
Research

The CEO Monthly team work ardently to identify great business leaders, driving many of the nominations themselves. We also encourage external nominations via the subscribers of the magazine, online visitors, social media followers, clients and wider circulation. Nominating parties are invited to put forward either CEOs of third-party businesses whom they hold in high regard, or the CEO of the business which they are a part of.

Award methodology image #1 - Global COO Excellence Awards | CEO Monthly
Shortlisting

All nominees are formally requested to accept their nomination. Should any firm or individual rather decline at this point, they are simply taken out of the running. Those formally accepting are given the opportunity to submit additional materials in support of their nomination. Although there is no obligation to complete and supply material, we have found that many nominees value this stage, in the process, as much as our research team do.

Award methodology image #2 - Global COO Excellence Awards | CEO Monthly
Judging & Evaluating

Our dedicated research team will assess all information presented to them. The team gather information independently from a variety of publicly accessible sources, which are assessed alongside any material supplied by a nominating party or the nominee themselves. The research team casts their final judgment, based on various criteria such as: business performance whilst the CEO has been in the position, any dramatic or positive change within the business since the CEO took the helm, feedback from any stakeholders during this time and any new innovations within the timeframe.

Award methodology image #3 - Global COO Excellence Awards | CEO Monthly
Reaching Out

Once winners are selected, they are personally notified before any public announcement is made, allowing time for any communications throughout the wider business and the coordination of marketing strategies. Unfortunately, not everyone can be a winner; however, all who take part are encouraged to come back next year. Once the press embargo is lifted, details of our award winners will be made public via the website, award winners’ magazine and subscriber newsletter.

Award methodology image #4 - Global COO Excellence Awards | CEO Monthly
Your Win

We are prepared to offer a range of promotional packages and items to winners in the Global CEO Excellence Awards, which vary from inclusion in the free-of-charge winners’ directory, to trophies, content in our magazine and on our website.

We encourage all winners to publicly announce their win independently in order to gain maximum exposure for them personally and for their business. Announcements via company websites, social media, via publicly released press releases, and through local and national press are all great ways of maximising the exposure which can be gained from such a great achievement. If you have need of further advice, on how to publicise your win, please feel free to get in touch. We are happy to assist our clients with their needs.

Award methodology image #5 - Global COO Excellence Awards | CEO Monthly
Frequently Asked Questions
How long has CEO Monthly been in circulation for?

CEO Monthly launched in 2017, but it is already well on its way to cementing a place amongst the highly respected sources for information within its sector. This is shown by an ever-expanding subscriber base. Our publication aims to offer the very latest insight, interviews and profiles of Chief Executive Officers from across the corporate landscape. We achieve this through our dedicated editorial team who work diligently to provide the latest news and updates, drawing on their network of contacts from across the globe who span every major industry and sector, providing comment and insight which is invaluable. CEO Monthly is one of the many publications by AI Global Media, a UK based publisher which has published over 200 worldwide publications to its name since 2010.

Where did the nomination come from?

As mentioned in the methodology, we frequently nominate candidates ourselves. In terms of voting, in the interest of maintaining high response rates, we do not ask nominees to reveal their personal identity, if you didn’t cast a vote by self-submission it is likely to have been cast via a colleague or client who has received one of our direct invitations. The main ethos of our awards system is that your ability to succeed is not linked to the number of votes received, with the most pertinent belief behind this being that all awards will be received purely on merit. As a means of identifying spam votes and countering cyber-threats, we are constantly monitoring the site for unusual behaviour.

What happens if I agree to be on the shortlist?

As we look to keep maximum focus on relevant candidates, we ask all nominees to accept their position on the shortlist. This also gives people complete control in their decision on whether they would like to move forward with the award. There is no cost for you to be added onto the shortlist or for any of our winners. Nominees who accept will then proceed to our rigorous internal vetting procedure. They are given an opportunity to present their own data which gets considered alongside the information collated by our research team. It can take up to 8 weeks for research to be completed.

Who makes the final decision?

We employ an entirely impartial panel of 5 individuals to conduct all of the research to our high standards. At the helm of the panel we have a veteran academic leader with international academic and training experience. They are well versed in research, fact-checking and mediation. We believe this method is the most efficient in determining which individuals and companies are most deserving in winning an award and has brought us much success and commendation throughout its use. Our continued use of this panel plays a key part in enforcing CEO Monthly’s stance that winners are not determined by popularity of votes, but by their contributions to the sector.

Is there a winner’s ceremony/award dinner and if so, when does it take place?

We do not focus our efforts on a celebratory event. Despite being an enjoyable occasion, it doesn’t support our group’s philosophy of cost-effective marketing. As well as the lack of cost efficiency, CEO Monthly is an establishment which runs awards worldwide and we believe it would be logistically difficult for some of our winners to attend an awards ceremony. We follow the belief that any of the optional costs involved with the award would be more beneficial in a year’s worth of online marketing for a winner, rather than spending it all on a ceremonial evening. All of our press announcements are made digitally, online and across our network to enforce our position as digital publishers. We aim to arm you with the tools (both digital and physical) to generate real-world value.

What happens if I am deemed successful?

There is a short press embargo in place where we ask you not to make the news public, giving us the chance to prepare the different means of coverage we offer for companies. This means that during this period the program manager will liaise with you to agree on the most appropriate coverage for you. Our main feature takes the form of a digital celebratory magazine, but we also offer physical trophies, wall mounted and digital certificates, web-based advertisements and press releases which are bespoke to you or your company. These options are aimed to make the awards tailor made to each individual firm, regardless of which option you decide to go for.

Are there any costs involved?

As previously mentioned, there are no compulsory costs in accepting a nomination or winning an award with CEO Monthly. We do offer a variety of paid additional benefits for our winners, but these are completely optional and merely supplementary to your award rather than essential. To demonstrate our commitment to no mandatory fees, all of our winners are offered a free of charge promotional package. Our company policy will always remain: regardless of budget, our clients should always be able to garner the full value of the award and our seal of approval.

Why does your email domain differ from your website domain?

Because we send a large volume of emails, we separate our campaign email sends from our transactional ones. This structure helps to ensure a prompt and thorough response from one of our diligent team members. The sending email address will always be recognisable but please contact us via the address on this page if you have any concerns.

Hall of Fame

Explore our Hall of Fame to view and celebrate the achievements of our past and current award winners.

HINT Select a year, then hit 'Go' to proceed.
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