Awwwards is a web design award platform: designers, developers and studios submit the sites they have built, an international jury scores them, and entries climb a ladder of distinctions — Honorable Mention, Site of the Day (SOTD), Site of the Month, and finally Site of the Year. For people who only want inspiration, its other side matters just as much: a jury-filtered gallery of winning websites which, as of 2026-09-18, lists 10,336 awarded sites and can be filtered by category, technology stack, country and even color palette. The platform is operated by the Spanish company Awwwards Online SL and has been running since 2009 (source: Wikipedia).

Awwwards homepage: the current Site of the Day with its jury score

The screenshot above shows the Awwwards homepage (captured 2026-09-18). The hero area is a full-width showcase of the current Site of the Day — here the winner of September 17, 2026, labeled with its jury score (7.37 / 10) and its author, with a "Visit Sotd." link straight to the live site. The homepage also lists nominees still in their voting window ("Vote Now"); signed-in users can score them directly.

At a glance

  • URL: https://www.awwwards.com/
  • Type: Web design award platform + winners gallery (plus satellite sections for courses, a professional directory, jobs and a digital-goods market)
  • Cost: Browsing the gallery and reading content is free; submitting a site for evaluation is paid (details below); a Pro directory subscription for professionals comes in three tiers
  • Registration: Not required for browsing; needed to submit, vote and collect
  • Interface language: English only (checked 2026-09-18; no localized versions)
  • Operator: Awwwards Online SL (Madrid, Spain)

Background

Awwwards is run by Awwwards Online SL, a company registered in Madrid (source: Terms and Conditions), and the platform has operated since 2009 (source: Wikipedia). The team describes it as "a meeting point" where digital design professionals find inspiration, share knowledge and exchange constructive critique (source: About Us). Beyond the online awards, Awwwards runs offline conferences (Digital Thinkers Conferences, held in cities such as San Francisco, New York, Tokyo, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam and London), publishes the annual book Hot Right Now plus a series of e-books, and holds a yearly ceremony with trophies including Site of the Year, Developer Site of the Year, Agency of the Year, Ecommerce Site of the Year and User's Choice (source: Awards / Certificates / Books).

How judging works, and what the awards mean

Awwwards publishes its judging criteria and process on the Evaluation System page. The core rules:

Awwwards' Evaluation System page

  • Scoring criteria: four weighted dimensions — Design 40%, Usability 30%, Creativity 20%, Content 10%.
  • Jury voting: sites that pass a manual pre-check go to at least 18 jury members, and the system automatically discards the 3 scores furthest from the average. The jury is made up of designers, developers and agencies worldwide and is re-selected every year; the 2026 jury spans more than 40 countries (source: Jury 2026).
  • User votes: only votes from validated professional users (Chief and Pro tiers) count, which is meant to stop throwaway accounts from gaming the results.
  • Voting window: normally 5 days; a site can win SOTD early if the jury scores it highly and at least 10 PRO users vote for it. Each site remains eligible for SOTD for 3 months after approval.

The awards stack by score:

  1. Honorable Mention (HM): a jury score of 6.5 or higher (the user score must also reach 6.5, per the FAQs).
  2. Site of the Day: the highest-scoring entry each day — only 365 slots a year. Awwwards explicitly notes that only SOTD winners ever see their jury score.
  3. Developer Award: SOTD winners are re-evaluated by a developer jury against the Developer Guidelines; a score above 7 earns this separate recognition of the code itself.
  4. Site of the Month: the eight highest-scoring sites each month are nominated and reviewed by the jury a second time, with user votes carrying extra weight in the final decision.
  5. Site of the Year: all SOTM winners are automatically shortlisted, plus a few Awwwards picks; the winner is announced in February of the following year.

Winners receive official certificates downloadable from their profiles, and in earlier years the best daily sites were collected in a printed annual (sources: Awards / Certificates / Books, Wikipedia).

The winners gallery: inspiration without submitting

The Awwwards winners gallery and its filters

The screenshot above shows the Winning websites gallery. Alongside awarded sites, the platform maintains the list of Nominees still being voted on. The gallery filters by award, category (27 of them, from e-commerce and architecture to fashion and experimental), tags, technology (WordPress, Shopify, WebGL, React, Framer, Webflow and more), country, font and color. Reverse-searching real sites by stack or palette is what sets it apart from a plain screenshot gallery. Each entry shows its author and badges (SOTD, DEV, etc.), and opens a detail page with a link to the live site.

Submission and pricing

Submitting a site is paid. The Terms list two formats: a Standard Submission (one site) and a Discount Package (up to five sites at a reduced rate); the flow is URL → sign up → payment (source: Standard Submission). The price of a single submission is only shown inside checkout and is not published openly; subscribers get submission discounts (10% on Basic, 30% on Professional, 50% on International), and the Professional plan includes one free submission per year (as of 2026-09-18, source: Submit).

After submission, staff manually check the entry against the minimum requirements, which the site warns can take up to a week; once a site enters review it can no longer be edited. On content policy, Awwwards rejects sites containing nudity, sexual, violent or illegal material, and it does not accept websites built from pre-made templates — although demo sites showcasing a template for sale are accepted if the submitter designed and developed the template entirely themselves (sources: FAQs, Terms). Note that submission fees are non-refundable.

Account tiers and joining the jury

Awwwards documents a public status system. Regular users (Tribe) can vote, collect and build inspiration boards, but their votes do not count toward awards. Earning 1 SOTD, 3 HMs or 5,000 community points promotes an account to Chief, whose votes start counting toward SOTD and HM. Paying subscribers are Pro. The jury itself is selected annually by the Awwwards team and decides the final results of SOTD, SOTM, HM and SOTY; the top 5 users by points each year are invited onto the following year's jury.

There are two doors into the judging side for practitioners: applying for the main jury requires at least one SOTD win, while designers aged 25 or younger can apply to the Young Jury with an up-to-date portfolio — applications open at the end of the year, and every 1,800 sites voted on earns a free submission.

Beyond the awards

  • Academy: an online course platform where courses can be bought individually or via a subscription (Creative Pass, advertised at $12/month as of 2026-09-18).
  • Directory: a country-by-country listing of freelancers, studios and agencies; the practical point of a Pro subscription is being listed and promoted there (as of 2026-09-18: Basic 6.7/month,Professional6.7/month, Professional13.8/month, International $324/month when billed annually, monthly billing also available).
  • Jobs: a job board for design and development roles.
  • Market: a digital-goods marketplace where designers sell templates, assets and similar products.

Copyright and content policy

Awwwards is a curated UGC platform at its core: featured websites remain the intellectual property of their creators, but submitting a site means agreeing to its publication on Awwwards and in Awwwards' own publications. If a winning site is later redesigned in a way that no longer meets the platform's standards, it can be removed from the database. Awwwards' own content (articles, collections and so on) belongs to Awwwards and may not be used commercially without authorization (source: Terms).

Who it's for

  • Web designers and front-end developers looking up real, jury-vetted sites by category, stack or color scheme;
  • Studios and freelancers entering their work to build credentials through awards and certificates, and picking up client leads through the Directory;
  • Non-specialists who simply want to follow current web design trends (interaction, motion, 3D, typography) — the daily SOTD and annual collections are enough on their own.

Limitations

  • The interface is English-only, with no localized versions.
  • The curation leans heavily toward avant-garde, experimental visual and interaction design; it is less useful as a reference for conventional, "just works" corporate sites. Some winning sites trade loading performance for effect, so copying them wholesale takes judgment.
  • Entering costs money and is non-refundable, and competition is stiff — Awwwards itself points out that with only one SOTD per day, "not everyone who deserves a SOTD will win one."
  • The single-submission price is not shown before checkout, so pricing transparency is limited.

References