Carol Vorderman was perhaps speaking to the Pride of Britain Awards when the ITV cameras arrived. She has presented the Pride of Britain Awards since their inception in 1999 and the channel since 2000. 25 years later, she’s still on stage – this time with Ashley Banjo.
The star-studded audience is undeniably part of the appeal, but the true stars are the winners: a firefighter, a teenage girl, a pensioner with a collection tin. The Pride of Britain Awards are in their 27th year for 2026. Regional winners are being revealed already – here’s how the night works, who’s already taken the prize, and how to watch.
Pride of Britain Awards: Quick Facts
| Information | Detail |
|---|---|
| Name | Daily Mirror Pride of Britain Awards |
| First held | 1999 |
| Organiser | The Daily Mirror |
| Hosts | Carol Vorderman MBE and Ashley Banjo MBE |
| Broadcaster | ITV1 (and STV in Scotland) |
| Venue | Grosvenor House in London, in the autumn |
| Partner | P&O Cruises |
| Known for | Honouring ordinary people nominated by the public for courage, kindness and service |
From a newspaper campaign to primetime television
The concept is straightforward. Readers nominate a deserving individual, and the eventual winners are then treated to a black-tie dinner where the famous go up and say hello to each one. The organisers have dubbed it the world’s biggest programme of its kind on British television, and claim that royals, politicians, musicians, sport stars and Hollywood icons have all been involved. The Prince of Wales was a guest in 2016, for instance, and awarded the Prince’s Trust Young Achiever award to Francesca Brown.
The hosting line-up has been varied. Banjo used to report at the event on the move and has co-presented with Vorderman since 2023. Vorderman has been the only consistent presenter.
How the winners are chosen
No one applies for a Pride of Britain award. Winners are nominated by others, adding the human element to the stories. The judging panel selects their winners from hundreds of thousands of members of the public who have nominated them. A lot of the people who are honoured say they would have done what anyone would have done, and that is true of the programme.
Then the regional ITV programmes provide their additional layer. Each local newsroom selects a charity fundraiser to represent their part of the UK and sends the nominees off to London. This year, ITV Meridian’s Sangeeta Bhabra and Matt Teale joined Dame Kelly Holmes for the judging, and the finalists from the Midlands were Hannah Roberts, who achieved the amount required to purchase a lodge at the Mercia Marina, which offers free holidays to teenage cancer patients and their families, and Dhiru Shah, who fundraises for the charity by holding Bollywood-themed events.
The award categories
The categories shift a little from year to year. The nomination page for the 2025 awards listed these:
- ITV Fundraiser of the Year, for charity fundraisers aged 18 and over
- Good Morning Britain Young Fundraiser of the Year, for under-18s
- This Morning Emergency Services Award
- Outstanding Bravery, for adults who risked their own safety to help others
- Child/Teenager of Courage
- Lifetime Achievement
- Special Recognition, for carers, campaigners, armed forces members and others who don’t fit elsewhere
- Emergency Services Award
Searching for 2026 information? You can visit the Pride of Britain’s official page for this. The cast of this may be a little different.
What happened in 2025
The 2025 event provides a decent indication of the format. It took place on Monday 20 October, was televised on Thursday 23 October at 8 pm and lasted a little more than two hours. The singer Westlife took part. Georgie Hyslop was Good Morning Britain Young Fundraiser. Another account names the Manchester personal trainer Javeno McLean, who’s been providing free sessions to disabled and older adults at his gym since 2016.
Treat that piece of info with a pinch of salt, as I could only locate it in a single secondary source. Worth noting the interval between the dinner and its transmission. It is televised, and winners’ names are usually held back until transmitted by ITV, save for regional disclosures.
Pride of Britain Awards 2026: what we know so far
This year’s nominations opened earlier in the year. The Daily Mirror’s editor-in-chief Chloe Hubbard told us it was an honour to take part in the awards for the first time in that role. There is no longer a deadline on the page, so it looks like nominations are now closed.
Regional victors are beginning to surface. A Bodmin firefighter and music lover who spent 20 years scheming to put on an annual music event in his spare time in celebration of his father, who died, was praised in the South West. The winners of the category and where and when the 2026 awards dinner takes place have yet to be revealed in the links I found. However, as in previous years, you may anticipate a dinner and broadcast in the fall.
Why the awards still land
An awards ceremony for unsung heroes could so easily be mawkish. This one succeeds because the stories are vivid, frequently unflinching. There are tales of pain, disease, life-threatening situations endured for months on end, and Dame Kelly Holmes, talking about the fundraising winners, added that ‘many of them took their grief and channelled it into helping other families’.
That also helps explain why the winners often make a bigger impact than the celebrities presenting the trophies. There is also a softer side. With a packed schedule of contests, this is one of those programmes where no one gets voted off.
How to watch and how to nominate
The ceremony will be televised on ITV1 and in Scotland by STV. Although the majority of viewers can normally watch online after the ceremony on ITV’s streaming platform, check again nearer the date for listings. If you want to nominate a person for Pride of Britain next year, you can do so via the official Pride of Britain page, which opens for nominations each spring and summer.
Final Thoughts on the Pride of Britain Awards
Only a handful of TV spectacles combine spectacle with heartfelt emotion, and the Pride of Britain Awards are always among the few that do: it’s not about celebrities administering awards but nominees. Ahead of this year’s 27th edition, the formula’s still the same: ordinary folks nominated by strangers and celebrated for their decades of silent toil or one moment of bravery.
If you’re tuning in for the stories, the celebrity guests, or even just the message that, all across this country, good things are happening every day, the Pride of Britain Awards are undoubtedly one of the most human nights of the British television year.
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