The Stadium Events & Hospitality Awards 2026 – Meet The Judges

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Meet The Independent Award Judges For 2026

2026 will mark the 19^th annual Stadium Events & Hospitality Awards, organised by Stadium Experience. This year’s awards programme will feature 15 categories which are all judged completely independently by industry experts with many years of experience.

Here’s a little more on how the winners for each category are selected…

The Judging Panel:

The majority of categories are judged by an independent panel who each submit their first, second and third placed votes in six different categories – Chosen using strict criteria developed by the Stadium Experience Leadership Team. These votes convert to scores, with the highest scoring venues winning the top awards. This team judges the following six categories;

The judging panel for 2026 includes:

Louisa Watson, Past Chair at Beam
Amy Manton, Commercial Manager at The Delegate Wranglers

Andrew Perolls, Chief Executive Officer at Greengage Solutions
Sam McGrath, Director at Heard About Sam
Shonali Devereux CEO at MIA (NEW)
Simon Ramsbottom, Projects Manager at tobook
Shirley Wynne-Jones, Event Director at SWJ Events
Sam Cowdrill, Stadium Account Manager at venuedirectory.com
Kerrin MacPhie, Board Advisor ICC Wales

Matchday Hospitality Judges:

The Matchday Hospitality Awards make up 4 different categories of the awards (Small, Medium, Large & Overall). These are judged separately by a team, led by Head Judge, Rod Bowker. As Head Judge, Rod creates an expert team of chef judges, each with over 20 years’ experience in the chef and hospitality industries, and part of chef industry associations such as The British Culinary Federation, Craft Guild of Chefs and more.

Each judge completes a comprehensive report pack, which has been developed jointly by the Head Judge and the Stadium Experience Leadership Team. Each full report is then validated by the Head Judge and Stadium Experience to ensure consistency across the board. The full reports are made available to each venue after the awards event to aid the venues future learning and training.

The 2026 Matchday Hospitality Award judging team includes:

British Culinary Federation:

The British Culinary Federation (BCF) fully co-ordinates and judges the prestigious live-kitchen Chef Team of the Year Award. The BCF is a National Member of World Chefs and the home of England’s National Culinary Team. BCF President Peter Griffiths MBE (and previously the Head Judge for the Matchday Hospitality Awards) is the Chair of Judges for the competition. The judging team will represent a number of chefs from across industry, and each judge will focus on one course.

The 12 chef teams will have 90 minutes to prepare, cook and present a four-course menu suitable for their Club Chairman to entertain Head of the FA, RFU or the Cricket ECB to a business luncheon. Judges will be marking on Presentation, Portion Size, Flavours, Textures, Temperature, Timing, Working Practices and Methods. Dishes are displayed anonymously next to a competitor number.

Sandown Effective Sales Solutions Ltd:

Sandown Effective Sales Solutions Ltd return as the official judge for the Non-Matchday Mystery Shopper Award. The Sandown team are specialists in mystery shopping, sales training and support.

The category will be judged based on a mystery shopper corporate/business event sales enquiry call and follow up communications, which will be made during Spring 2026. The judging criteria has been developed to ensure those venues offering the top levels of service achieve the maximum scores and recognition. View the summary criteria and full criteria being used for this award judging. Following the awards, venues will receive a full call recording, comprehensive report and the newly added benefit of recommendations and suggestions on how to improve for future.

Club Directors:

The Visiting Football & Visiting Rugby Directors Awards are voted for by club directors across the UK. They are specifically asked to consider the welcome, service and catering when casting their votes. These votes convert to scores, with the highest scoring venues winning the top awards.

Event Agents:

The Event Agents Choice Award is back for 2026, and is voted for by event agents to choose their top stadium venue they have recently enquired with (one vote per person/per event). They are asked to consider the whole booking journey including enquiry, event planning, and service received by the venue when casting their vote. The most votes win the top awards.

Key Awards Dates:

The majority of awards categories will close for entry on Friday 27th March 2026.

The results will be announced at the prestigious awards evening on Thursday 2nd July 2026 hosted at Hill Dickinson Stadium, the new home of Everton Football Club. The event, kindly sponsored by Global Payments Inc, will welcome over 500 guests from stadium venues across the UK. Guests will be hosted in The Yard overlooking the city of Liverpool. The celebrations will continue until 3am upstairs in Kendall’s. Tickets are on sale, starting from just £130 per person – Book Now

Debbie Rigney, Marketing & PR Manager for Stadium Experience and awards organiser, commented: “This year’s awards will mark the 19th annual awards organised by Stadium Experience. All of our awards are judged completely independently by specialists in their field with many years of experience. We would like to wish a warm welcome to the new judges joining the teams for 2026, and thank them for their support – Without which the awards simply couldn’t run. Their skills and expertise have been invaluable in developing the judging criteria each year and ultimately recognising the very best in stadium events and hospitality.”

Find out more about The Stadium Events & Hospitality Awards 2026. Follow the latest news with #SEHA2026

Stadium Experience is also keen to explore awards sponsorship opportunities with companies who would like to get involved.