Women to Watch Awards celebrates the masters of print

The Women to Watch Awards, hosted by PrintWeek, celebrate outstanding women who lead, inspire, and motivate greatness in the printing and packaging community. 

The 2026 edition of the awards will review achievements from 1 January 2025 to 31 December 2025.

The submission deadline is 15 April, 2026. The winners will be announced on 5 June.

The Awards will be handed out in 8 different categories. These are Education and Training Excellence Award; Factory Team of the Year; R&D Team of the Year; Finance and Strategy Team of the Year; All Women Team of the Year; Best Workplace of the Year; Safety and Wellbeing Excellence Award and DEI Innovation Award.

The Award recognises the women who, over the last 12 months, have shown outstanding leadership and fostered groundbreaking innovation in the printing, packaging, research, and development, as well as the future leaders of tomorrow. 

When PrintWeek and WhatPackaging? launched the Women to Watch Awards in 2023, the brief was deliberately straightforward: find the women doing the actual work and put them on the record, no token representation. Seventy entries came in across 48 participants for that first edition. By 2024, the count had crossed 50 entries across 13 categories, with participation the organisers described as a "significant surge." The 2025 edition, announced in September, extended the geography and scope further still.

In 2024, a PrintWeek survey found that 42% of women in the print and packaging industry reported working in challenging conditions, 23% identified a shortage of women in leadership roles, and 15% named a visible gender gap. These are industry-sourced figures, not assumptions.

By 2025, the tone had shifted. Women in print and packaging are now shaping processes, driving innovation, and holding leadership positions across the board. The entries themselves back that claim.

Every edition of the Awards has featured sustainability prominently, but the character of the conversation has changed. In 2023, it appeared mainly as regulatory compliance and brand positioning. By 2024, it was appearing in R&D awards for genuine material innovation. By 2025, it had become inseparable from technology.

The record shows women running factories, developing patented materials, building global platforms, managing hundred-crore production budgets, designing packaging for global FMCG companies, and training the next generation of industry professionals.

It also shows where the gaps remain. The factory floor is still where acceptance is most unevenly distributed. Mentorship is still informal in most companies. The data on representation at the leadership level is still unflattering. Infrastructure — safe travel, sanitation, and shift accommodation — is still a prerequisite that gets listed as an achievement when it is provided.

For submission details, please visit https://www.printweekw2w.com/