FWA (Favourite Website Awards, branded on its own site as The FWA) is a UK-based award for websites and digital creative work: designers, developers and agencies pay to submit projects, and an international jury votes daily to pick one "FWA of the Day" (FOTD), which then feeds monthly, yearly and public-vote awards. For readers who never submit anything, its core value is an archive of cutting-edge web design that has grown one winner per day since 2000: every winning project comes with screenshots, a jury score, credits and a direct link to the live site, making it a practical way to track how interaction design, motion and new technology land in real commercial projects.
The screenshot above shows the FWA homepage (captured 2026-09-21), dominated by the day's FWA of the Day — here The Design Society, winner of 21 September 2026, with its jury score (82 points), time in judging (14 days) and credits, plus a "Launch Project" link to the live site.
At a glance
- URL: https://thefwa.com/
- Type: website and digital creativity award + winners archive (plus editorial content, a job board and other side sections)
- Cost: free to browse; submitting a project for consideration is paid (see "Submissions and fees")
- Account: not required for browsing; required to submit, judge or post a job
- Language: English only
- Operator: Robert Ford, d.b.a. Favourite Website Awards, registered in the UK (source: Terms & Conditions)
- Founded: May 2000, England (source: About FWA)
Background
FWA was established in May 2000 in England as Favourite Website Awards, making it one of the longest-running website design awards (source: About FWA). Early winners were dominated by Flash sites; today the accepted submission types include desktop and mobile websites, web or mobile apps, physical installations, VR and AR projects, and "any creative work that pushes the boundaries" — non-web projects can enter with a case-study URL including video (source: same page). The on-site archive can be browsed month by month back to June 2000, and the footer reads "© 2000—2026 The FWA" (checked 2026-09-21).
According to the terms, the site is "owned and operated by Robert Ford, d.b.a. Favourite Website Awards", with a registered office in Rippingale, UK (source: Terms & Conditions). Founder Rob Ford is also the author of the Taschen book Web Design: The Evolution of the Digital World (source: The Kesey Signal page on the official site). On its advertising page, FWA describes itself as "still unfunded and independent, no different to when we launched back in 2000", and claims to be the first online award programme to have received over 200 million site visitors (no date given for that figure; source: Advertise).
Awards and judging
FWA lists four awards (source: About FWA):
- FOTD (FWA of the Day) — the jury picks the best project every day;
- FOTM (FWA of the Month) — the jury picks the best project every month;
- PCA (People's Choice Award) — an annual public vote;
- FOTY (FWA of the Year) — the jury's annual pick.
The official 2025 announcement shows how the yearly awards work in practice: 365 FOTD winners feed 12 FOTM finalists, from which the jury selects a single FOTY, while the PCA is decided by an international public vote; both the 2025 FOTY and PCA went to Bruno's Portfolio, announced on 15 January 2026 (source: official announcement).
FWA describes its jury as more than 500 judges — over 200 men and over 200 women — from more than 35 countries, voting on submissions daily (source: About FWA). A public jury directory lists each judge's name, location and start date; as of 2026-09-21 it lists 217 named jurors (source: Jury).
In June 2016 FWA introduced a new judging system, and anyone can watch judging in real time on the Live Judging page: it shows the current leader, a countdown to the next FOTD announcement, and each entry's points, days in judging and number of judges who have voted.
Two further honours recognise sustained success: the Hall of Fame is open to companies and individuals with at least 3 Of-The-Year awards, 6 Of-The-Month awards or 45 Of-The-Day awards, and FWA Club 100 commissions a physical trophy for companies that reach 100 FWA wins — B-Reel was first in November 2012, followed by UNIT9, MediaMonks, Google Creative Lab, Jam3, Active Theory and others.
Submissions and fees
Submitting requires an account, starting from the "Submit your project" entry at thefwa.com/submit/project/. Entries are paid per project: the submission flow on the current site lists the fee as £70.50 per project (as of 2026-09-21; the price only appears in the submission step after signing in, and there is no public pricing page — check the live site before submitting). Posting a job vacancy is likewise listed at £70.50 for 90 days on the board.
On refunds, the terms state that a submitted project enters live judging as soon as submission completes, so the service is considered fulfilled at that point; if you withdraw within 7 days of submitting, you receive a voucher code for a free re-submission rather than cash (source: Terms & Conditions). FWA also awards sites at a specific point in time — winners whose sites later change beyond the current standards can be removed from the winners list (source: same page).
The screenshot above shows a winner case page — the FOTD of 21 September 2026, The Design Society — with the award date, points and days in judging, a project description, credits and the "Launch Project" link.
Beyond the awards
- Editorial: interviews with winning agencies (Agency Spotlights), project write-ups (Articles / Insights), conversations with industry veterans (Digital Pioneers, FWA Legends), jury profiles, a mental-health interview series, and Classic FWA, which revisits historic winners year by year (source: About FWA).
- FWA WIRE: a chronological news feed open only to FWA winners — "one post a day each, newest first, no algorithm", with no follower counts (sources: The Wire is live, WIRE).
- Jobs: a design-and-development job board with paid postings (see above).
- Profiles: public pages for agencies and practitioners, linked to their awarded projects.
Copyright and content policy
FWA is a curated platform: its terms state that "submitted work remains the intellectual property and copyright of its respective owners/creators", while the site's own material (text, graphics and so on) is the copyright of FWA and may not be used commercially without authorisation (source: Terms & Conditions).
Anyone who believes their work has been published on FWA without permission can file a takedown notice to teamfwa@thefwa.com, including contact details, a description of the infringed work with links, and the two statutory "good faith" and "penalty of perjury" statements (source: Copyright Infringement).
On privacy, FWA uses Google Analytics to process usage data (including IP address and browser type), and account data consists of name and email address; the privacy statement lists access, rectification, erasure and other data rights, with retention of up to eight years (source: Privacy Statement).
What it's good for
- Web designers and front-end developers checking one jury-filtered, cutting-edge project a day to keep up with interaction design and new web technology;
- Studios and agencies entering work to use FWA wins as industry credentials — the contact page even documents how to source award confirmations for visa applications (source: Contact);
- Design researchers browsing the archive from 2000 onwards to study how web design evolved, particularly the Flash era and the transition to modern web technology;
- Recruiters posting roles in a design-and-development channel.
Limitations
- Paid submissions, no public price list: £70.50 per project, visible only in the signed-in submission step (as of 2026-09-21); browsing is unaffected if you never submit.
- English only: editorial content, submission guidance and legal texts have no other language versions.
- The archive points to external sites: FWA awards sites at a point in time, and winners may later be redesigned, go offline or diverge from their screenshots; FWA itself removes winners that no longer meet its standards, so dead links are common in older entries.
- Judging criteria are not published: there are no public scoring dimensions or thresholds; Live Judging shows only totals, vote counts and rankings.
- Take official figures as claims: the "500+ judges" line does not map exactly onto the 217 jurors named in the public directory, and the 200-million-visitors figure has no stated date.
Similar sites
Awwwards is the platform FWA is most often compared with: it also picks a winning website daily (Site of the Day) with paid submissions, but publishes its four scoring criteria (design, usability, creativity, content) and offers richer filtering in its winners gallery. CSS Design Awards (cssdesignawards.com) is another daily website award; the three complement each other.
