Congress Award Graz

The City of Graz annually honors outstanding event formats with the Congress Award, endowed with €10,000, which is awarded to exceptional conference organizers of the previous year. Recognized are full-day conferences or specialist events with at least 50 participants, focusing on knowledge transfer, knowledge expansion, and exchange of experience. Evaluation criteria include innovation content, professional diversity from science, business, education, international cooperation, and future development, as well as the sustainable significance for the Graz location. A professional jury, consisting of representatives from university and non-university research and educational institutions as well as the Joanneum Research research organization, determines the nominees and award recipients based on submitted event details and additional recommendations from individual jury members.

Nominations are to be submitted informally no later than one month before the jury meeting and refer to the evaluation period from January 1 to December 31 of the previous year. Eligible for funding are private individuals, companies, associations, and non-profit organizations from all over Austria who have led an outstanding conference during the respective period. The award aims not only to highlight exceptional congress formats but also to strengthen knowledge and research transfer and to sustainably promote congress activities in Graz. The prize sets impulses for innovative event formats and honors international exchange at the highest level.