Inspiring employees for innovation, excellence, and sustainability
Since 2003, the Heraeus Awards have recognized outstanding ideas and successful projects. The awards highlight Heraeus’ commitment to innovation, excellence and sustainable value creation. In 2026, this was once again showcased in a globally streamed award ceremony.
As a global technology group, Heraeus operates across diverse industries with the ambition to achieve market leadership in its four Business Areas.
Heraeus Awards 2026 – Celebrating global collaboration
For over two decades, the awards have also served as a platform for global exchange, bringing together employees from around the world to share knowledge, inspire one another and create synergies across Business Areas and regions.
In 2026, submissions from 14 countries – six more than last year – across the categories Innovation, Excellence & Digitalization, Customer Focus, People & Culture and Sustainability reflect what makes Heraeus special: excellence and progress emerge from a diversity of people and perspectives.
The award ceremony, broadcast worldwide via live stream, celebrated the finalists and highlighted the collective contribution to the continued success of the Heraeus Group. With around 4,000 votes, employees selected the best pitch presentations and most exciting projects.
The five award categories at a glance
Innovation Award
Turning ideas into reality: This is where everything revolves around projects that introduce new technologies or deliver substantial improvements to existing solutions. These innovations are of crucial importance for the future success of Heraeus and have a large market potential that offers promising growth opportunities.
Excellence & Digitalization
Optimizing the existing: This category rewards operational and commercial excellence projects, making processes more efficient, faster, or cost-effective, including through the integration of digital technologies. This award is dedicated to internal process optimization initiatives that have greatly enhanced operations.
Customer Focus Award
Recognizing needs: Projects that have significantly increased sales are in demand here – either through analysis and adaptation to changing market requirements or through collaborative product development together with customers. Projects in this category closely align their activities with customer needs, strengthen market leadership or a strong market position, and result in tangible economic benefits for Heraeus.
People & Culture
Fostering culture: Projects or initiatives in this category are characterized by holistic concepts for promoting a high-performing and inclusive corporate culture. We are looking for teams or individuals who have achieved outstanding results in the areas of Employee Engagement and Culture, Leadership and Talent Development, and Environment, Health and Safety (EHS).
Sustainability Award
Creating value: With the Sustainability Award, Heraeus honors projects, business models and products, but also strategic initiatives that create and maximize environmental and economic value for customers, partner companies and Heraeus itself. The aim is to improve our solutions, our sourcing, manufacturing, distribution and recycling activities.
