AICP Awards 2026: Work for Apple, Gushers and L’Oréal Paris Receive Top Honours

​AICP Week came to a close tonight with a celebration and screening of the year’s best advertising held at the Museum of Modern Art. An industry-wide celebration hosted at MoMA since 1992, the evening honours the winning work, which is annually archived in the museum’s Department of Film.

Winners for the 2026 AICP Show: The Art & Technique of the Commercial, the AICP Next Awards and the AICP Post Awards premiered earlier in the week. The top winners in each competition – the AICP Show’s Advertising Excellence and Advertising Excellence/Campaign categories, the Next Awards’ Most Next winner, and the Post Awards’ Best of Show honoree – were highlighted in the presentation at MoMA.

Judging for each of the three AICP Awards competitions were led by their respective chairpersons: Michelle Ross, founder/managing director of Superprime, and chairperson of the AICP Show; Jimmy Smith, chairman/CEO/chief creative officer of Amusement Park Entertainment and judging chair for the AICP Next Awards; and Gloria Pitagorsky, managing partner at Heard City and chairperson of the AICP Post Awards.

Michelle and Gloria, along with AICP CEO Matt Miller, headlined tonight’s gala and shared the winners with an assembled audience from a cross-section of the industry, including marketers, agency, production and post production leaders and artists.

The AICP Show’s Advertising Excellence winner went to Apple’s ‘I’m Not Remarkable’. Directed by Kim Gehrig through somesuch, the piece was also a winner in Cause, Performance and Direction.

The winner for Advertising Excellence/Campaign was ‘A Time and a Place’ for Claude, comprising the ads ‘Can I Get A Six Pack Quickly?’, ‘How Can I Communicate Better With My Mom?’, and ‘What Do You Think of My Business Idea?’. All three pieces were directed by Jeff Low of Biscuit Filmworks and created by Mother. ‘Can I Get A Six Pack Quickly?’ additionally won in Concept.

The most-awarded production company in the AICP Show was MJZ, with 11 honours, including a co-production with Business Club, followed by somesuch, with five wins; and Superprime with four wins.

The most honoured directors in the AICP Show for 2026 were: Kim Gehrig of somesuch with five wins; Spike Jonze of MJZ scored four honours, while Oscar Hudson of MJZ and Yorgos Lanthimos of Superprime each earned three wins.

Meanwhile Adrian Villagomez was named Best New Director. He was recognised for ‘Kyiv’ for Apashe and Alina Pash, which was produced by Fela.

The most honoured agency in the AICP Show was Mother, with four wins. HeimatTBWA\, Isle of Any, the in-house agency at Squarespace, and Wieden+Kennedy all received three wins. Meanwhile BBH USA and McCann picked up two honours each.

​Apple was the most honoured brand in the AICP Show, with six wins. This was followed by Coinbase, HORNBACH and Squarespace, who each earned three wins.

The AICP Next Award’s Best of Show winner went to Gushers’ ‘FruitHead’, directed by Mike Diva for Imagine Entertainment and produced by Lord Danger. The campaign is a horror-short that riffs on a ‘90s-era Gushers commercial titled ‘Fruithead’, it stars Bradley Whitford and Chester Collins and won for Branded Content & Entertainment: Standalone/Single Execution.

As the winner of the Most Next award, Imagine Entertainment directed a $10,000 grant from the AICP Foundation to the Kids in Need Foundation as the recipient for the $10,000 AICP grant.

The most honoured agencies at the Next Awards this year were: BarkleyOKRP and R/GA with three wins; and Imagine Entertainment, the in-house agency for Salesforce, and TBWA\Media Arts Lab with two honours each.

Leading the list of most honoured production or development companies at the Next Awards this year with two honours each were: Breakwater Studios, Caviar, and Lord Danger. Finally, the most honoured brands at the Next Awards were Frontier Airlines with three wins, and Gushers, L’Oréal Paris, and Salesforce with two honours each.

Bringing the awards to a close, the AICP Post Awards acknowledge the work of the individual post production artists behind the winning pieces.

The Best of Show winner this year went to editors Tim Johnson and Mónica Salazar for 'The Final Copy of Ilon Specht', commissioned by McCann for L’Oréal Paris, developed and produced by Breakwater Studios, and directed by Ben Proudfoot.  ‘The Final Copy of Ilon Specht’ also won for Editorial: Fashion/Beauty and Editorial: Docu-Style. Johnson and Mónica Salazar were the most honoured artists in the Post Awards on the strength of the piece.

The most honoured agency at the Post Awards was McCann with three honours, while the most honoured brand in the Post Awards was L’Oréal Paris, also with three wins.

The winning entries for 2026, as well as each year’s collection of winners, can be viewed exclusively at www.aicpawards.com, the AICP Awards Archive website.