The 2026 Marketing Diamond Awards have been presented

Marketing and event manager Adrienn Ress received the Trade magazin 3x Marketing Diamond award at this year’s awards ceremony

We are very proud that this year Trade magazin was also enriched with 3 diamonds. Our Business Days conference brought 2 diamonds, and our Innovations Day conference brought 1 diamond.

The Hungarian Marketing Association (MMSZ) has once again announced the Marketing Diamond Awards, which recognizes marketing activities implemented with a smaller budget, and has now grown into the professional award that attracts the most applications. Ferenc Hinora, president of the Hungarian Marketing Association and the award’s professional jury, emphasized: “The Marketing Diamond Awards is a professional award created specifically with the aim of creating an opportunity for high-quality professional achievements realized with a smaller budget to be introduced. Behind these works, professional performance of at least the same level as behind marketing activations realized with larger funds is often hidden.” The applications were evaluated by a jury of 75 people, consisting of recognized personalities in the marketing profession, in which the most successful marketing and communication managers from both the agency side and the client side were represented. The special feature of the award is that, thanks to the pre-specified evaluation criteria, the submitted applications do not compete with each other, but the jury qualified the entries based on their compliance with the pre-specified criteria.

The application period, which ended at the end of January 2026, yielded results that exceeded previous years and all expectations. The exceptionally high number of 575 entries also shows that there is a significant demand from both colleagues working on the agency side and marketing professionals working on the client side for recognition of high-quality marketing solutions. This year, applications were open in a total of twenty-one categories with activities implemented between January 1 and December 31, 2025. The most popular category was by far “Image, Branding”, with 91 entries, but many entries were also received in the “Small Budget Business Campaigns”, “Events and Event-Based Activations”, “Social Campaigns” and “Content Marketing” categories.

The jury awarded 450 works with diamond recognition from the submitted applications. In addition to this year’s winners of the award’s known main prize categories, the members of the Diamond List, which is based on the award, were also called to the stage during the evening. This list summarizes the agencies and client-side companies that have had the most successful applications over the past 3 years. The Agency Top List in the 2026 Diamond List is topped by Pentacom (81x), Kreatív Vonalak (46x), Effectivo Communications (33x), Marketing Consulting (33x), and Outsourced Marketing (25x); while the Client Top List was topped by Billingo Technologies (46x), Mapei (27x), Szerencsejáték Zrt. (19x), Móricz Zsigmond Színház in Nyíregyháza (16x) and DKV Debreceni Közlekedési Zrt. (12x).

“Year after year, the Marketing Diamond Awards prove that it is not the size of the budget, but the strategic and creative focus that determines the success of a campaign or marketing activity. Small-budget yet effective solutions also carry a particularly important message for brand owners: conscious planning and measurable results are more valuable today than ever. Professional awards play a real value-creating role when they serve as a compass for the market – as organizers, we see this as one of the most important missions of Marketing Diamond”

– highlighted by Ferenc Hinora.

The Marketing Diamond Awards ceremony was held on March 4th this year at the spectacular DIGITAL FORUM awards evening held at ETELE Cinema. The Awards Evening was held in partnership with Attention CRM Consulting. More than 1,600 people were present at the digital marketing event of the year. The fundamental mission of the Digital Forum is to support and develop the digital marketing maturity and business growth of companies and organizations operating in Hungary. The focus of this year’s event was the balance of data-driven operations, artificial intelligence and human thinking – emphasized the first leader of the professional association organizing the award.