The Grocer’s New Product Awards 2026: celebrating excellence in NPD

Innovating through instability can be a minefield. Food and drink brands today face regulatory uncertainty, mounting costs and geopolitical volatility.

Shopper loyalty remains notoriously fickle, space on supermarket shelves is never guaranteed and discerning sustainable trends from social media fads has never been tougher.

Which makes the originality, creativity and diversity of product launches entered in The Grocer’s New Product Awards 2026  – which took place this Friday 16 October at The Hilton Park Lane in London – all the more impressive.

Hundreds of food and drink products were entered into this year’s competition, resulting in a shortlist of more than 200. Hosted by TV and radio broadcaster and podcast host Alex Zane, the 560-strong crowd celebrated every shortlisted product, whether they received a gold, silver or bronze award.

The full list of winners can be seen at the bottom of this page.

The quality of this year’s entries was higher than ever, making it a tough job for the panel of industry expert judges, who spent three intensive days tasting, discussing, and ultimately voting on the winners. 

Many of the award-winning entries in this year’s winning line-up are true leaps of faith, trialling unheard of ingredients or flavour combinations, shaking up established category norms or challenging the status quo. Think the UK’s first high-fibre, non-alcoholic beer; hybrid pastry-toasties; and regional Mexican street food reimagined as dips.

Opening the ceremony, Jacqui Parr, editor of thegrocer.co.uk, encouraged the crowd to “celebrate the creativity, ambition and sheer hard work” on display, describing the standard of entries “nothing short of exceptional”.

“There’s a lot of change in grocery right now, with inflation pushing food costs even higher, changing health priorities and the rise of weight-loss drugs leading to some pretty significant shifts in consumer behaviour,” she said.

”But there’s also a lot to be excited about.

“Today’s awards prove there’s still plenty of room for innovation, diversity, driving categories forward, and taking risks. We need NPD of all kinds for this sector to thrive.”

See the full list of The Grocer’s New Product Awards gold, silver and bronze winners below.