Food and Farming Awards 2026 Nominations Now Open

Nominations are free and now open, offering a major opportunity to celebrate the farmers, growers, producers, cooks, makers, retailers, innovators and food champions shaping food and farming across the Great Britain and Northern Ireland. You can nominate yourself or others. 
 
For 2026, the BBC Radio Ulster Food Hero Award will also champion outstanding people and projects here in Northern Ireland, with Your Place and Mine and Your Farm and Mine helping to share those local stories.
 
Nominations close at 12 noon on Monday 15th June 2026.
 
To mark the launch, Food Stories from Here, a new audio strand from Napoleon’s Nose, recorded a lively conversation at the Balmoral Show with popular chef, writer and broadcaster Paula McIntyre and inspirational food journalist Sheila Dillon from BBC Radio 4’s The Food Programme.
They talk food, farming, pride, place, and why Northern Ireland’s producers deserve their moment in the national spotlight. They also explain what King Charles III, Stephen Fry, lobsters and prisons have to do with the BBC Food & Farming Awards.
 
Please nominate, listen and share with anyone connected to food, farming, hospitality, tourism, rural life or local enterprise in Northern Ireland.
 
Nominate for the BBC Food & Farming Awards:
bbc.co.uk/foodawards
 
Read the BBC press release:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2026/food-and-farming-awards-nominations-now-open
 
Listen to Food Stories from Here on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/033l9gDCTKI9ZAQ1WqIHZV?si=TKWkYPSFSHSURWqawd6cbQ