Who won at the 2026 Houston ADDYs?

February 26 was the 2026 Houston ADDYs.

Last year, I noticed that not that many agencies participated in the awards show.

But this year may have been even less. Take a look at the Winner’s List (PDF):

• Audiobob: 1 Gold 🥇

• Beef and Pie: 1 Gold 🥇 2 Silver 🥈🥈 2 COE (Certificate of Excellence) 📃📃

• Carlberg: 1 COE 📃

• Deutser: 2 Silver 🥈🥈

• Ell Creative: 3 COE 📃📃📃

• Hierarchy Advertising: 1 Silver 🥈

• Houston Rockets: 2 Gold 🥇🥇 2 Silver 🥈🥈 1 COE 📃

• LIMB: 2 Gold 🥇🥇 1 Silver 🥈 1 COE 📃

• Lopez Negrete: 16 Gold 🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇 10 Silver 🥈🥈🥈🥈🥈🥈🥈🥈🥈🥈 3 COE 📃📃📃

• Love Advertising: 2 Gold 🥇🥇 7 Silver 🥈🥈🥈🥈🥈🥈🥈 1 COE 📃

• PlatinumBlack: 1 Silver 🥈

And here are the special awards:

• Mosaic Award for Diversity: Lopez Negrete 🏆

• Dwight Douthit Award for Excellence in Design: Love Advertising 🏆

• Brett Elliott Award for Excellence in Copywriting: Kevin Eisenbaum / Love Advertising 🏆

• Best of Show (Broadcast): Lopez Negrete 🏆

• Best of Show (Print): Lopez Negrete 🏆

• Best of Show (Interactive): LIMB 🏆

• Jay Hagins Agency of the Year: Carlberg

Also, there was a lot of talk about how this year’s judges were absolutely stacked (Source):

• ROBYN STERN - Creative Director, Saatchi & Saatchi - Los Angeles, CA

• SEAN MCLAUGHLIN - Group Creative Director, Wieden + Kennedy - New York, NY

• WES PHELAN - Creative Director, Ogilvy - New York, NY

• HANNA WITTMARK - Creative Director, Goodby Silverstein & Partners - San Francisco, CA

• ANDREA VEGA - Creative Director, David&Goliath - Los Angeles, CA

It’s rare that a panel of judges is this accomplished. To some, that means the awards given out this year are a little bit extra special.

Some observations

• Last year, 17 organizations were represented. This year? Only 11.

• Lopez Negrete is a big agency, and they always show up big at the ADDYs. But last year, they only won a total of 7 awards. This year? 29.

• Some notable agencies that were represented last year, but appear to have opted out this year: Adcetera, BrandExtract, Langrand, and Norton

• LIMB indeed has a very nice website. They say they’ve been around for 40 years, but I haven’t heard much about them. Perhaps they have stayed low key over the years. Perhaps they are trying to change that.

Fun fact

The agency I currently work at, Love Advertising, did the creative/theme for this year’s show. I didn’t come up with the concept, but I helped do some of the executions. Check it out:

Closing thoughts

Yes, participation in the Houston ADDYs seems to be waning. Are awards shows dying? They’ve always been a big social/networking event, but if agencies are not showing up, then that value will dwindle as well. Curious to see what happens next year!