NXT Digital Solutions has won Best Innovation with AI at the Umbraco Awards 2026, announced live at Codegarden in Copenhagen on Wednesday 10 June 2026 for our enterprise Umbraco rebuild of Exclusive Networks.
I'll be honest: it still hasn't quite sunk in. You'll find us in Umbraco's official winners announcement, and we were shortlisted back in April 2026, but taking the trophy home to Guildford is something else entirely, and it belongs to the whole team. For the strategic read on Codegarden's product announcements, see our next blog coming soon. This one is about the people and the work.
The Umbraco Awards celebrate the best work built on Umbraco the open-source .NET CMS trusted by hundreds of thousands of websites worldwide, with winners revealed live each year at Codegarden. The Best Innovation with AI category is a specific one: it rewards AI integrated into Umbraco in a meaningful way, across the back office, front end or content workflows, to deliver measurable outcomes, not AI bolted on as a gimmick. Submissions are judged by experts from the Umbraco community who look under the bonnet at how a solution is actually built, which is exactly why this one means so much.
"Industry experts reviewed how we built the platform and how we integrated AI, and validated the calls our team made. For a development team, there's no better recognition."
Peter Hinchliffe, Strategy Director at NXT.
Exclusive Networks are a global cybersecurity distribution specialist operating across more than 50 countries, with teams managing content in 28 languages. Their legacy WordPress platform had become a business liability, flagging serious risks across security, SEO and day-to-day operations at exactly the scale where those risks compound.
We delivered a complete enterprise transformation, migrating over 20,000 pages onto a purpose-built Umbraco platform, one of the most complex builds in NXT's history. Umbraco framed our work around three pillars:
Integrated AI translation — a direct integration that uses AI to handle complex, multi-language workflows seamlessly inside the Umbraco back office, so 28 languages become manageable rather than overwhelming.
Advanced content automation — intelligently automating translation and redirect management to support high-volume, global site operations.
Deep platform extension — extending Umbraco's native capabilities so internationalisation is faster and more scalable for genuine enterprise needs.
Around those sat the full programme: enterprise Umbraco CMS across 50 websites and 26 multilingual installations, hardened Azure infrastructure, HubSpot CRM and AI-driven Workday integrations, and the technical SEO and GEO foundations that keep content surfacing accurately across both traditional and AI-driven search. AI wasn't sprinkled on top, it was embedded in how the platform operates. Announcing the result, Umbraco's judges praised how the project embeds AI directly into the CMS and extends Umbraco's native multilingual features, calling it a clear leader in practical AI innovation, exactly the bar we set out to clear.
"This was AI doing real operational work across 28 languages, not AI as a talking point. Winning Best Innovation with AI tells us that approach holds up under expert scrutiny."
Scott Agass, Creative Director at NXT.
Codegarden is hard to describe to anyone outside the Umbraco world. The first one ran in Copenhagen in 2005 with 23 attendees; in 2026 it welcomed over 750+ guests from around the globe, and the energy is unlike any other tech conference. Part product launch, part masterclass, part community reunion/party (it’s not a cult – YKIYK). The "friendly CMS" tag isn't marketing; the warmth is real, even if it is stlightly strange for us brits high fiving everyone as you arrive.
A personal highlight was meeting Mats Persson, Umbraco's CEO, and sharing the moment with the person leading the company whose platform we build our business on. And a huge shout-out to Gemma Rickaby, our UK Umbraco account manager, who has championed NXT long before this week, connecting the right conversations and opening doors. Gemma threw herself into Codegarden dressed as Mario, had a presentation role at the awards, and was one of the first to celebrate the win with us.
Thank you, and what's next
Awards are a team sport, and this one is squarely a credit to our development team, for the planning, architecture and delivery behind a build complex enough to support a client operating at this scale. Thank you to Exclusive Networks for trusting us with a platform this critical, and to Umbraco HQ and the wider community for the recognition and celebrating this result. Well done to Chris, Amy and the wider NXT team for their extremely hard work on this project and the client lead at Exclusive Networks (Laura and Hannah) for their dedication to the project and transformation globally.
We've been delivering digital projects since 2002 and building on Umbraco for over 15 years. If you're wrestling with a complex, multi-language or multi-market platform, or you want to bring AI into your content operation in a way that's genuinely governed and genuinely useful we'd love to talk.
Who won Best Innovation with AI at the Umbraco Awards 2026?
NXT Digital Solutions, are a UK Umbraco partner agency in Surrey, winning Best Innovation with AI at the Umbraco Awards 2026 for its enterprise Umbraco rebuild of Exclusive Networks.
What was the winning project?
A complete digital transformation for Exclusive Networks, a global cybersecurity distributor — migrating 20,000+ pages onto Umbraco across 50 countries and 28 languages, powered by AI translation, content automation and deep platform extensions built by NXT Digital Solutions.
Where and when were the Umbraco Awards 2026 announced?
The winners were revealed live on stage at Codegarden, Umbraco's flagship conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, on Wednesday 10th June 2026.
Supporting links
Official Umbraco Awards 2026 winners announcement: https://umbraco.com/blog/umbraco-awards-winners-2026/
Official Umbraco Awards 2026 nominees announcement: https://umbraco.com/blog/announcing-the-2026-umbraco-awards-nominees/
Codegarden 2026: https://codegarden.umbraco.com/
NXT — Codegarden 2026 roadmap breakdown: Coming soon.
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