98 entries. Five categories. Voting runs 8–22 September. The floor is yours.
Public voting for the 2026 MIDI Innovation Awards runs from Tuesday 8 September through Tuesday 22 September.
This year’s field is 98 entries — hardware and software, shipping products and one-off prototypes, from independent builders and from companies you already have installed. They came from all over the world, and a striking number of them are the work of one or two people.
Vote here → https://voting.broadjam.com/vote/midi.php
What you’re voting on
Entries are split across five categories:
| Category | Entries |
|---|---|
| Software Prototypes / Non-Commercial Products | 30 |
| Commercial Software Products | 26 |
| Hardware Prototypes / Non-Commercial Products | 21 |
| Commercial Hardware Products | 16 |
| Artistic / Visual Project or Installation | 5 |
There is also a MIDI 2.0 category, which 21 of this year’s entries appear in. That category is additive — an entry listed there is still competing in its main category too, so you can vote for it in both. If you care about MIDI 2.0 adoption, that category is the clearest picture anyone has of what is actually being built on it right now, and it comes with its own three picks.
What your vote decides
Public voting picks the three finalists in each category. A judging panel then awards first, second and third place from those three.
So the public vote is the gate. It decides which projects the judges see at all — which is why the three picks are worth using, and why a vote for a one-person project genuinely moves it.
How to vote
Voting is organised by category, and you get three picks in each one. You don’t have to choose between projects you like — back all three. A vote in one category costs you nothing in any of the others, so work through every category you care about.
You’ll need to enter an email address to vote.
Each entry on the voting page links back to its full entry on MIDI.org, with the entrant’s own description, images and demo video — worth a look before you decide. Voting closes at the end of 22 September.
Why it matters
The awards exist because the interesting work in MIDI has never been concentrated in big companies. It shows up in a prototype somebody soldered on a kitchen table, in a plug-in written to scratch one person’s itch, in an installation built for a single room. Voting is the part where that work gets in front of the judges. Two minutes of your time is worth a great deal to a two-person team.
Browse the entries: https://midi.org/innovation-awards , then vote!
Vote: https://voting.broadjam.com/vote/midi.php