India’s premier body for advertising, marketing and media, The Advertising Club (TAC), has announced the introduction of new categories for Creative Abby 2026, further strengthening the awards’ commitment to global relevance and creative excellence. The updated Entry Form, reflecting all category refinements, is now live on The Ad Club website. The awards continue their partnership with The One Club | The One Show.
The last date for submission is April 06, 2026, and work eligible to participate has to be released between April 1, 2025 and March 31, 2026. The results will be declared and presented at the Goafest 2026.
The Abby Awards Governing Council went a step ahead, this year. It invited a group of most awarded creative honchos of the Indian industry, who are also India’s best jury talent at global festivals, to give their suggestions on making the Abby Award more global and world aspirational. The group had rich discussions and from there emerged this year’s Abby Award Categories and the Judging process.
The new categories being introduced are:
1. Social Content and Influencer Marketing
This covers the growing world of digital creation, content collaboration and community building of influencers.
2. Creative Commerce, Use of Data and B2B
This covers the new innovative world of online and offline commerce and payment solutions, data driven innovation in channels, creative B2B and brand experience.
Both new categories are designed to reward craft and quality of impact rather than pure effectiveness or numbers as is the case with entries in Creative Abby.
Rationalization of some Digital Sub-categories
Seven sub-categories in the Digital Category have been removed as they had become irrelevant in this dynamic forever evolving vertical.
Merging of categories
Sustainability and Inclusion
Three existing categories which are the social good verticals have been merged into one Category. Green Abby, Red Abby and Diversity Equality, Inclusivity (DEI) have been merged into one Category called Sustainability and Inclusion.
Mobile Category has been discontinued
This vertical has now become less relevant as Digital has all mobile related sub-categories. Besides Social Content and Influencer Marketing the new vertical takes care of most mobile originated digital content.
Further, recognizing the role played by clients whose brands have set creativity benchmarks and made their agencies famous, a category devoted to the client whose brands wins the maximum number of points called Client of the Year has been introduced.
There is further refinement in the computation of Creative Agency of the Year. Until now, this award earlier used to go to the agency with the maximum points in the 8 traditional creative categories viz Print(2), Film(2), OOH, Integrated, Audio, Digital. This has now been changed to award the agency with the maximum points in all 18 creative categories other than Video Craft (for film producers) and Young Maverick Abby.
Highlighting the evolution of Goafest and the ABBY Awards Powered by One Club, Dheeraj Sinha, President, The Advertising Club, and CEO McCann India, mentioned, “Goafest has always been synonymous with creativity, collaboration, and industry excellence. The ABBY Awards Powered by One Club continue to push boundaries, setting new creative benchmarks year after year. Abby Awards being in its 57th year, continue to raise the bar, and this year’s edition will be even more inspiring, bringing together the brightest minds in the industry.”
“We have introduced two new categories and merged, rationalized and deleted some categories. For the very first time we have partnered and co-created with creative luminaries of the industry for categories. We are truly grateful to the continued support of One Club and One Show towards conducting our judging process for the last 5 years. Our thanks to the widespread participation of both agencies and client companies year after year,” said Ajay Kakar, Chairperson, ABBY Awards 2026.
The 2026 Entry Form which has incorporated all the changes has now been uploaded on the website – https://theadvertisingclub.net/
The Advertising Club looks forward to the maximum participation of agencies and companies in the Creative Abby 2026 this year!
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About The Advertising Club
The Advertising Club, incorporated in the year 1954, is arguably the biggest Advertising Club of its kind in the world. And according to many also the busiest. It has over 1700 members drawn from media organizations, marketing companies, advertising agencies and allied professional bodies.
The Advertising Club’s charter is to help raise the professional standards of the Indian Advertising Industry. The Club attempts to do this through awards, seminars, training workshops and meetings. Some of the major awards of Advertising Club include: Creative & Media Abby at Goafest, EMVIEs, EFFIEs, MARQUEES and Young Achievers’ Awards besides having other popular programmes such as D:CODE – Digital Review, Ad Review, Media Review, M.Ad Quiz, Vice & Versa on its annual roller coaster. It publishes a Club magazine SOLUS and hosts a comprehensive website, www.theadvertisingclub.net.
