Apple just revealed its 2026 Design Award winners

the lineup is a fun mix of tiny indie passion projects and full blown blockbusters

Hayden Cole·Jun 2, 2026·4 min read

One week out from WWDC, Apple has named the 12 winners of the 2026 Apple Design Awards, and the lineup is a fun mix of tiny indie passion projects and full blown blockbusters. Cyberpunk 2077 and Blue Prince sharing a stage with a moon phase tracker and a guitar tutor is exactly the kind of range I love seeing here.

Apple picked the winners from a pool of 36 global finalists, landing on six apps and six games spread across six categories. The awards always arrive in the week before the keynote, and they remain one of my favorite traditions on the calendar precisely because they are not about Apple's own software. They are about what developers built on top of it.

The winners, category by category

Here is the full list, with the app winner and game winner in each of the six categories.

Delight and Fun:

grug (the app) and Is This Seat Taken? (the game). This category is all about experiences that are memorable and satisfying, and Poti Poti Studio's puzzle game has been charming people for a while now.

Inclusivity:

Guitar Wiz takes the app prize, and Pine Hearts wins for games. Apple frames this category around reflecting a variety of backgrounds, abilities, and languages, and a beginner friendly guitar app fits that brief perfectly.

Innovation:

NBA: Live Games & Scores wins on the app side, and Blue Prince takes the game award. Blue Prince was one of last year's most talked about games, so seeing it recognized for novel use of Apple technologies is no surprise.

Interaction:

Moonlitt: Moon Phase Tracker wins for apps, and Sago Mini Jinja's Garden wins for games. This one rewards interfaces and controls that feel tailored to the platform.

Social Impact:

Primary: News in Depth takes the app award, and Consume Me wins for games. Apple reserves this category for work that improves lives in a meaningful way and shines a light on crucial issues.

Visuals and Graphics:

Tide Guide: Charts & Tables wins for apps, and Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition wins for games. CD Projekt's port has been a showcase title for Apple silicon, so a visuals award tracks.

A familiar set of categories

It is worth noting that these are the same six categories Apple used in 2025. The Spatial Computing category that showed up for a single year in 2024 still has not returned, which tells you something about where Apple's developer attention is concentrated right now. With WWDC and a rumored big year for iOS 27 just days away, I would not read too much into that omission yet, but I am keeping an eye on it.

What excites me most is the spread of developers. You have NBA Media Ventures and CD Projekt on one end, and solo and small studios like the team behind Consume Me on the other.

The Apple Design Awards have always been at their best when they put a Cyberpunk next to a Pine Hearts and treat both as serious craft.

Susan Prescott, Apple's vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations, summed up the throughline in the company's announcement:

"This year's Apple Design Award winners are a remarkable reflection of how developers are creating exceptional experiences. Whether delivering intuitive features or exciting gameplay, these apps and games represent the very best of what our platform makes possible."

Why this lands well ahead of WWDC

The Design Awards are a quiet flex. A week before Apple shows off its own new features, it spends a day pointing at everyone else's work.

That framing matters, especially in a year when so much of the conversation is about Apple Intelligence and what Apple itself is shipping.

The winners are a reminder that the platform is only as good as what people make for it.

I have spent time with a few of these already, and the list sent me off to download a couple more. If you want to see what good design looks like on iPhone, iPad, and Mac right now, this is a good shopping list.

Have you tried any of this year's winners? I'm curious which ones land for you, because a couple of these surprised me.

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