2026 IoT Use Case of the Year

Submission overview

The 2026 IoT Use Case of the Year recognizes an outstanding real-world implementation of connected technology. This category celebrates projects, deployments, and solutions that demonstrate how IoT can solve meaningful problems and produce measurable operational, financial, environmental, safety, or user-experience improvements.

Eligible entries may represent pilot programs, customer deployments, enterprise implementations, public-sector projects, or solutions operating at scale. The emphasis is on what the technology accomplished in practice, how successfully it was implemented, and what evidence supports the results.

Strong submissions will explain the original challenge, the technologies deployed, the implementation process, the outcomes achieved, and the potential for the use case to be replicated or expanded.

This award is a great fit if…

• Your organization has implemented an IoT solution that produced measurable results
• Your deployment improved efficiency, safety, sustainability, reliability, decision-making, customer experience, or operational performance
• Your project successfully moved from concept or pilot into a working implementation
• Your use case demonstrates how connected technology can solve a meaningful business, industry, community, or societal challenge
• Your implementation provides lessons or a model that could be applied across additional locations, organizations, industries, or markets

Entry schedule

• Entries Open: Tuesday, December 1, 2026
• Early Bird Deadline: Friday, January 15, 2027
• Final Entry Deadline: Friday, February 12, 2027
• Winners Announced: Tuesday, March 9, 2027

Entries must be completed and paid by the applicable deadline.

Entry fees

• Early Bird Entry: $395 through January 15, 2027
• Standard Entry: $495 through February 12, 2027

Each category submission is treated as a separate entry.

What to submit

Your submission should give judges a complete picture of the implementation, the challenge it addressed, and the results it produced.

• Use case summary: Describe the project, deployment environment, participating organizations, and connected technologies involved
• Challenge and objectives: Explain the operational, financial, environmental, safety, customer, or community need the implementation addressed
• Implementation: Describe how the solution was deployed, integrated, managed, and adopted by its intended users
• Evidence and results: Include KPIs, ROI, cost savings, efficiency gains, performance improvements, safety outcomes, sustainability results, or other measurable benefits
• Scalability and relevance: Explain whether the implementation can be expanded, replicated, or adapted for other environments, organizations, or industries
• Supporting materials: Provide relevant case studies, deployment data, customer references, testimonials, screenshots, diagrams, photographs, product links, or media coverage

Optional supporting materials may include a customer testimonial, demonstration video, implementation brief, technical overview, or project presentation.

Judging criteria

• Evidence and Measurable Impact, 40%: Strength of the documented outcomes, including ROI, operational improvements, efficiency gains, safety benefits, sustainability results, or user value
• Execution and Scalability, 25%: Quality of the implementation, reliability, adoption, integration, and potential for replication or expansion
• Innovation and Differentiation, 20%: Creativity and effectiveness of the approach used to solve the identified challenge
• Category Fit, 10%: Clarity and strength of the case that the entry represents an exceptional real-world IoT use case
• Leadership and Industry Contribution, 5%: Potential for the deployment to inform, influence, or encourage broader IoT adoption

Eligibility

• Open worldwide to companies, organizations, startups, teams, municipalities, public-sector entities, and individuals operating within the Internet of Things
• The use case must have been implemented, validated, expanded, or significantly advanced during the 2026 calendar year
• Pilot programs, customer deployments, enterprise implementations, public projects, and at-scale deployments may be entered
• Entries should identify the customer, client, deployment partner, or end-user organization when relevant
• Submissions must include credible evidence of implementation progress, measurable outcomes, or customer validation
• Organizations may enter multiple categories when each submission represents a legitimate fit

Confidential information may be summarized or redacted, provided the submission includes enough detail for judges to verify and evaluate the results.

Submission process

1. Select the IoT Use Case of the Year category in the 2026 Best of IoT Awards application.
2. Complete every required field and clearly explain the implementation and its results.
3. Upload or link to supporting evidence and relevant project materials.
4. Submit the application and pay the applicable entry fee before the deadline.

Multiple entries are permitted, although each use case or category submission requires a separate application and entry fee.