Awards, Whisky and the Power of Being in the Same Room

IBC 2026 reminded us what really keeps this industry moving

Highlights:

NEP/Bridge party brought together the industry’s best creative minds;

The Bridge Awards Show honoured our Partners live at IBC;

Best of Show Award for the VB330 TS Playout feature;

ProAV Best in Market Award received for our IPMX integration; an interesting reminder.

The Awards

The first full day of IBC is always intense – everybody running on a mixture of adrenaline, caffeine, and whatever leftover energy there is from the previous night’s traditional champagne and cigar session on the Apollo terrace. Actually, this year it was the hugely successful combined Bridge and NEP party. But we hear words that Apollo cigars and champagne were still enjoyed by those with serious first-night stamina.

So, to really push our team right to their limits, we thought ‘why not throw our annual Bridge awards show on the first full day?’: live, with DJ, full camera setup, mystic green lighting rig, and black-tie presenters (the now established trio of Philip, Tim and Gry nearly as iconic as the Three Musketeers, and only slightly less swashbuckling).

As the photo shows, the spectacle drew quite the crowd (the cocktails on offer at the bar probably helped). But for us, it wasn’t about impressing the masses. It was the ability to hand the awards directly to our recipient partners, the people at the heart of it. We’ve loved doing the show recorded live from our Oslo offices in previous years. And certainly, we can send an email, post a YouTube video, write a LinkedIn post, make a call. But there is something that happens when you are in the same room – an open, real conversation that no amount of polished production can replicate. That’s the thing about IBC that continues to bring us back every year, something that no technological advance has yet managed to replace: the personal connection. (Not to mention, our winners definitely needed a full show’s worth of dirty IBC socks and shirts to pack their winning whisky decanters in – there was no way we were trusting them to a courier!).

Another personal touch was being able to celebrate Øivind’s birthday. It’s a nice reminder that the industry is, at its heart, a collection of people who think embarrassing the birthday boy on stage with a full rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ is still what it’s really all about.

The Award

On the subject of recognition, we were delighted to receive a TVTech Best of Show Award for the TS playout feature on our VB330 and VB220 distribution probes. The continued evolution of our distribution probes matters just as much. They have moved far beyond simple monitoring. They now record, play out, generate test signals, and support a range of compliance and strategic functions that used to require entirely separate hardware. The TS playout award reflects that evolution, and we are grateful for it.

We also picked up a ProAV Best in Market Award for 2026, recognising the VB440’s IPMX integration. It is a particularly satisfying one, because it speaks of a shift we have been talking about for a while: the convergence of broadcast and ProAV. IPMX is the standard that makes that convergence practical, and the VB440’s ability to monitor and generate IPMX flows – alongside everything else it does – means it is equally at home in a control room, a stadium, or a corporate boardroom. As the lines between these worlds continue to blur, we are pleased to be building tools that work on both sides of them.

The People

No blog about IBC would be complete without acknowledging the people who actually make it happen. Deniz, Gry, and Jannicke put in serious hours on their feet behind the reception desk, as did the coffee bar team, who may have been the most popular people at the show. Tim coordinated with his usual calm efficiency (a right Cygnus atratus!). The engineers in the back beavered away to make things work – even when the IBC internet decided to test everyone’s resolve. And the team out front showed the best of what we have in the best way possible.

The Takeaway

Much of the IBC conversation this year focused on the production side – MXL, Grass Valley AMPP, NEP Platform, Blackmagic IP10, IPMX, and the ever-expanding capabilities of the VB440 – and quite rightly so. We appreciated the continued and genuine interest in our legacy products, the new VBC Live video mosaics and hosted OTT monitoring solutions, which shows that we’re finding the right balance and continuing to deliver what matters to our customers.

Our spot on the corner of Hall One remains a landmark for IBC visitors, and for good reason. It is not the biggest booth at the show (though it’s certainly growing) but it is the one people gravitate towards, and that is a credit to everyone who stands on it.

Ultimately, IBC is exhausting, chaotic, and occasionally infuriating. It is also, still, the best place in the world to remember why this industry is worth working in. Thank you to everyone who stopped by, to everyone who worked on the show, and to everyone who made it possible. See you next year.