Industry Awards Gala – Nomination and Voting Process
Overview of the Process and Areas of Development Over the Years
The aim of the Gala’s nomination and winner selection process is to ensure a broad-based, open, and inclusive process that involves a wide range of industry stakeholders.
The process is developed annually in collaboration with industry professionals, organizations, jury members, and the public. The goal is to involve as wide a group of people as possible from across the industry in nominating candidates, creating the shortlists, and selecting the winners.
In recent years, the process has been developed significantly, particularly from the perspectives of openness, transparency, and inclusiveness. The development work has focused, among other things, on improving the quality of justifications and supporting materials, more actively involving industry stakeholders at different stages of the process, increasing opportunities for public participation, making the nomination process more open, and diversifying the composition of the juries.
In 2023, a comprehensive Gala survey was conducted to gather views from the industry on the significance, relevance, and areas for development of the Gala. The survey also invited direct feedback on how the Gala could better serve the industry in the future.
Questions and development proposals related to the process have been actively collected over the years through surveys, discussion events, industry events, and direct contact with industry stakeholders. At the beginning of 2026, feedback and development proposals were collected, among other things, regarding the wording of the nomination form questions, award categories, and jury compositions.
The Gala process consists of the following stages:
- Deciding on the categories for the respective year
- Forming and inviting the juries
- Opening the nomination forms to the public and supplementing the nominations
- Initial screening of the nominations by the jury and gathering additional information for the juries
- Jury deliberation and selection of the nominees
- Contacting the nominees, followed by the announcement of the nominees and the opening of the public and jury voting
- Review period
- Conflicts of interest
- Confirmation and announcement of the winners at the Gala
- Special Awards and Lifetime Achievement Awards
Below, you can read more about each stage of the process.
1. Preparation of Criteria and Categories
The Gala’s award categories, evaluation criteria, and processes are prepared annually before the nomination forms open. The criteria, processes, and categories are reviewed and refined each year based on feedback and experience. The work is led by the CEO and the Chief Operating Officer. The process involves the industry as a whole through targeted questions, as well as members of the Music x Media Board.
2. Inviting the juries
The juries are formed annually for each of the following main categories:
- Live
- Media
- Label & Publishing
- General
The aim is to invite as diverse a group of industry professionals as possible, representing different organizations, fields, roles, and perspectives. Music x Media acts as the facilitator of the process and is responsible for its practical implementation, while decision-making is based on broad participation from across the industry. The juries are composed to represent as wide a range as possible of organizations, professional backgrounds, and perspectives.
Potential jury members are identified through nomination forms, discussion events, open suggestions, industry networks, professional organizations, and feedback collected in previous years, among other sources.
During the process, external industry stakeholders have also been invited to suggest individuals who would be suitable for jury roles. The work of the juries is led by a Head Judge appointed annually. The Head Judge may change from year to year.
Huom. Raadit vuodelle 2026 julkaistaan myöhemmin! Vielä voit ehdottaa raatilaisia Lotta Savolaiselle sähköpostiin lotta.savolainen@musicmedia.fi
3. Opening the Nomination Forms to the Public and Supplementing Nominations
Submitting nominations is open to everyone. The nomination forms are published on the Music x Media website in late spring each year. The nomination forms close at the beginning of August.
Anyone can nominate individuals, companies, achievements, events, or other industry stakeholders for the Gala’s categories. The Gala actively encourages nominations through its communications. A person can nominate themselves, or nominate a colleague or business partner.
In addition, the Gala production team contacts industry companies, organizations, and other stakeholders each year and encourages them to submit nominations, ensuring that as many relevant parties as possible have the opportunity to participate and do not miss the nomination period.
The nomination form typically asks for:
- the nominated person, company, achievement, event, or other stakeholder
- comprehensive justification for the nomination
- contact details for additional information
The aim of the process is to ensure that the juries have as comprehensive and original a view as possible of the nominations and the reasoning behind them.
One to two days before the nomination forms close, all nominations received up to that point are made available to the juries. This gives jury members an opportunity to add their own nominations if suitable candidates are not already included in the material. Once the nomination period has closed, no new nominations are added, including during jury meetings.
4. Initial Screening of Nominations (Longlists) and Gathering Additional Information for the Juries
After the nomination period closes, all original nomination material is made available to the juries in its original form. During the initial screening, the juries select their top 15 nominations from the submitted material, where there are enough nominations to do so. Categories with fewer than 15 nominations proceed directly to the longlist.
The longlist voting stage was introduced before the jury meetings in order to keep the number of nominations reviewed during the meetings at a manageable level and to ensure that the juries have sufficiently detailed justifications for each nomination before the meetings.
After the longlists have been selected, the Gala production team requests and collects additional justifications for the nominees to support the jury process, particularly where the original information is incomplete. Depending on the category, the additional information is requested either from the nominees themselves or from their colleagues. In addition, the Gala production team supplements the nominees’ background information using publicly available sources where this helps ensure that the juries have as balanced and comprehensive a set of background information as possible.
The quality and comparability of the justifications have been developed over the years.
- In 2025, additional information was requested for all nominations.
- In 2024, additional information was requested for most of the nominations.
- In previous years, additional information was mainly requested when the original justifications were very limited or completely missing.
5. Jury Deliberation and Final Nominee Lists (Shortlists)
After the longlist stage, the juries meet for the main jury meetings according to the four main categories: Media, Live, Label & Publishing, and General. Each meeting is allocated 2.5 hours.
Before the jury meetings, jury members also provide preliminary scores for the longlists. These scores are used as a basis for the discussions during the jury meetings, but they do not constitute the final selections.
In previous years, all juries have scored the nominations in their own area as well as the nominations in the General categories, as they have automatically also participated in the General jury. In 2026, the General category will have its own dedicated jury, meaning that preliminary scoring will only be conducted for each jury member’s own category.
During the jury meetings, jury members discuss the nominees, compare the justifications, evaluate the nominees against the criteria of the category, and form the final shortlists of up to five nominees. The juries also select reserve nominees in case a shortlisted nominee does not wish to accept the nomination or another reason arises during the process that prevents the nominee from participating. The meeting is chaired by the Chair of the Jury.
The purpose of the jury discussions is to combine the material gathered through the open nomination process, preliminary scoring, expert industry knowledge, and perspectives that emerge during the discussions.
During the jury meetings, the Gala production team facilitates the smooth running of the meetings, provides information on previous years’ winners and nominees, assists with questions relating to category rules and criteria where necessary, and ensures that the schedule is maintained.
The Gala production team, CEO, or the Music x Media Board participates in jury meetings solely in a facilitating and supporting role. They do not intervene in the actual jury discussions or decision-making.
Huom. Raadit vuodelle 2026 julkaistaan myöhemmin! Vielä voit ehdottaa raatilaisia Lotta Savolaiselle sähköpostiin lotta.savolainen@musicmedia.fi
6. Evaluation Criteria
The primary basis for nominations is the nominee’s work, achievements, and impact during the review period. Achievements during the review period are always the most important starting point for the selection process.
At the same time, the process aims to ensure that the shortlists represent as diverse a range as possible of industry professionals, perspectives, and backgrounds. The goal is to avoid situations where the same individuals, companies, or stakeholders appear year after year without a justified reason.
Diversity is considered from, among others, the following perspectives:
- gender representation
- geographical representation
- different music genres
- company and organizational backgrounds
- bringing new industry stakeholders into the spotlight
- other aspects of diversity
The aim in each category is for nominees to represent more than one gender, as well as as broad a range of genres and areas of the industry as possible.
The goal is to ensure that different genres are represented as broadly as possible.
In individual categories, the aim is also to avoid several nominees from the same company being prominently represented within the same category. As a general principle, there is one nominee per company in each category. However, in exceptional circumstances, multiple nominees from the same company may be included — for example, if the jury considers representatives of that company to be clearly the strongest candidates.
In individual categories, the following are also taken into consideration:
- when the person was last nominated (the same person may be nominated in consecutive years if the juries consider this justified)
- when the person last won (a person cannot be nominated if they won the previous year).
- ensuring that the same person is not nominated in multiple individual categories in the same year
The aim is to ensure that the shortlists are renewed and that a wide range of industry professionals receive visibility.
In company categories, recurring nominations are possible if the company’s activities during the review period justify the nomination.
The standard shortlist length is five nominees per category. In some categories, the shortlist may be shorter, for example due to the number of nominations received.
7. Review Period
Ehdokkaiden arviointi perustuu ennalta määriteltyyn tarkastelujaksoon. Vuoden 2026 gaalassa tarkastelujakso on 1.8.2025–31.7.2026. Mikäli kokonaisuus on alkanut tarkastelujakson aikana mutta päättynyt sen jälkeen, se on huomioitu kokonaisuutena ja sijoitettu sille tarkastelujaksolle, jonka aikana se on alkanut.
The evaluation primarily focuses on activities, achievements, and impact during this period. The review period ends at the end of July so that the extensive selection process can begin and sufficient time remains for selecting the nominees. Excluding the entire month of August is considered a better approach than, for example, splitting August in half.
8. Conflicts of Interest
Each jury member is responsible for identifying and declaring any potential conflicts of interest during the jury process.
A jury member is considered to have a conflict of interest when the nominee under consideration is connected, for example, to:
- their own business or organization
- a close colleague
- an immediate family member
- other close personal relationships
A jury member with a conflict of interest may participate in the discussion and provide relevant background information, but does not participate in the vote concerning that nominee.
9. Contacting Nominees, Public Voting and Selection of Winners
After the nominees have been selected, they are contacted to confirm that they accept the nomination. Public voting opens when the nominees are announced.
Voting rights are granted to participants registered with Music x Media who attend the seminars and/or the Gala, as well as to jury members. Voters may vote in all categories except for potential Special Awards and Lifetime Achievement Awards, which are selected by the Music x Media Board.
The winners are selected by combining public and jury votes according to the weighting applied for the year. The juries conduct their final vote using a separate voting form at the same time as the public vote. In the event of a tie, a new jury vote is held between the nominees who received the same number of votes.
The weighting of the votes has been developed over the years.
- In 2026, a 30/70 model is used, with jury votes carrying greater weight than public votes.
- In 2025, a 50/50 model was used
- In 2024, a 50/50 model was used.
- In 2023, a 30/70 model was used, with jury votes carrying greater weight than public votes.
- In 2021–2022, only public voting was used.
Once the winners have been determined, the Gala production team has two weeks to handle tasks such as ordering and engraving the awards, curating the Gala playlists, preparing host scripts, and completing other production-related work.
10. Special Awards and Lifetime Achievement Awards
The Special Awards and Lifetime Achievement Awards are decided by the event’s Board.
In its decision-making, the Board may draw on nominations submitted through the nomination forms, industry discussions, observations from previous years, and other background material.
The Board does not decide the shortlists or winners in the other categories. In those categories, decisions are made through the jury process and public voting as described above.
Development of the Processes from 2022 to 2026
The process has been developed annually to make it more open and inclusive. The development work has included, for example:
- diversifying the juries
- the role of the juries in voting
- making the nomination process more open
- involving professional organizations
- establishing more detailed evaluation criteria
- conducting feedback surveys
- organizing discussion events
- providing open opportunities for comments and feedback
- more actively collecting additional information about nominees
- making the handling of nomination materials more transparent
- changing the name of the main category from Label to Label & Publishing
- making the nomination process more accessible
The aim has been to build a process in which industry professionals and the event’s audience have multiple opportunities to influence the outcome at different stages of the process.
The process continues to be developed annually based on feedback, industry discussions, and practical experience. Going forward, the goal is to make the Gala as open, inclusive, and representative of the entire industry as possible.
Feedback, development ideas, and thoughts on the process are always welcome throughout the year. The work continues!
Lotta Savolainen
lotta.savolainen@musicmedia.fi / + 358 50 4130094