Effie Awards Ukraine 2025 offers broad opportunities for participants – this year’s competition program includes 93 categories. This wide selection allows participants to submit their strongest cases in the areas that best reflect their business goals and demonstrate effectiveness.

The program is divided into Industry and Specialty Categories.

The Industry Categories group includes 40 product/service categories. Each category description contains an indicative list of products and services that may be submitted under it, though the list is not exhaustive.

The Specialty Categories – a total of 53 – highlight effective solutions for specific business tasks or challenges. These include working with audiences, brand content and experience, solving business problems, shopper and commerce marketing, digital, healthcare, media, marketing innovation, social good, and topical campaigns.

This year, the competition categories have been updated. In particular, category descriptions have been clarified, and some from last year have been divided into narrower, more structured subcategories with updated titles.

Among the Industry Categories, new nominations have been introduced, including “New Product or Service – Introduction” and “New Product or Service – Line Extension”. Entirely new products or those introduced to the market in a new category should be submitted in “New Product or Service – Introduction”, rather than in an industry-specific category. On the other hand, new variations of an existing product may be submitted either in “New Product or Service – Line Extension” or in a relevant industry category, but only one of these may be selected.

Within the Specialty Categories, names and descriptions have also been updated, and a new category has been added: “Health & Wellness: Disease Awareness & Education”, which recognizes effective marketing efforts in the field of healthcare.

Participants may submit the same campaign to a maximum of four categories, adhering to the following rules:

• Only one category may be from the Industry Categories block
• No more than two from the Commerce & Shopper block
• Only one from the Topical & Annual Events block

At the same time, there is no requirement to submit a case to an industry category – participants may select any four categories from the specialty groups instead.

Entering multiple categories offers a project additional exposure, but it requires careful preparation. Each entry must be tailored to the specific category – aligned with its description and objectives. Judges evaluate submissions within the context of the selected category, and misalignment may result in lower scores.

The submission process takes place via the Acclaim online portal, where participants can select categories, add them to their entry, and pay separately for each. In other words, once you’ve created a base version of your entry, you can register it in multiple categories and then edit individual sections and descriptions to reflect each category’s context.

If you're uncertain about category selection, organizers recommend reviewing past winning cases (available on the Effie Awards Ukraine website or the Effie Worldwide Case Library) or reaching out for guidance: Kateryna, festival@vrk.org.ua, Olha, project@vrk.org.ua.

Effie is more than just a competition. It’s proof that effectiveness matters.