Radical Innovation Announces 2026 Finalists as It Celebrates 20 Years of Shaping the Future of Hospitality

Radical Innovation today announced the finalists for its 20th Anniversary Awards and opened public voting, inviting the hospitality community to help recognize the bold ideas shaping the future of the industry.

For two decades, Radical Innovation has provided a platform for forward-thinking ideas across hospitality, bringing together designers, architects, students, entrepreneurs, and industry leaders from around the world. Since its founding in 2006, Radical Innovation has received more than 1,200 submissions from over 55 countries and brought together more than 5,000 attendees and 300 sponsors and partners.

Marking its 20th year, Radical Innovation introduced a Technology category for the first time in 2026, expanding the competition beyond Project and Product to recognize the growing role technology plays in shaping the hospitality experience and the way the industry operates. The new category invited emerging and established companies to present technology-driven solutions with the potential to advance the future of hospitality.

“Twenty years ago, we could not have predicted where Radical Innovation would lead us or the ideas we would see along the way,” said John Hardy, Founder of Radical Innovation. “What has been remarkable is watching ideas that were once presented to us as visions of the future later become realities within the industry. For 20 years, Radical has had a front-row seat to what is next in hospitality, and we continue to provide a platform for the ideas and people fueling its future.”

This year's finalists were selected across three categories: Project, Product, and Technology. They will present their concepts at the 20th Anniversary Award Ceremony & Dinner on October 22 in New York City, where the winners will be announced.

2026 Finalists

Professional Project

• AFTER LIGHT | Luxury Frontiers | Jarred Potgieter, Nadia Ayres, Angelique Sloan, Oreeditse Gill, Silindile Kunene, Graeme Labe | South Africa

• POLARITY | Unison Group Inc. | Sabine Grimes, Kateryna Spruzhevnik, Mariela Tiburcio, Ran Tian | Canada

Student Project

• DIVING HOTEL | Tiarch Studio / Kazan State University of Architecture and Engineering | Ekaterina Buyanova, Anastasia Sergeeva | Russian Federation

• SALT CONSTELLATION | Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey Campus Toluca | Theilard Siddhartha Arias Barraza, Ixchel Angélica Frontana Gómez, Mar Lizeth Álvarez Sánchez | Mexico

Professional Product

• FOLDED POETRY | Folded Poetry | Eliza Redmann | USA

• QUADRIS | Folded Poetry and Trashy | Laura Olson, Eliza Redmann | USA

Student Product

• AERO-FURL | Guyana International Academy | Hanaan McDoom, Simrah McDoom | Guyana

• MYCOFORM | Kealakehe High School | Victor King | USA

Professional Technology

• AEES | Prime Renovation | Elena Kotelnikova | United Kingdom

• AUTONOMOUS ITINERARY | Otonoma, Inc | Jim Harding, Bryce Clemmer, Paul Steckler, Scott Thibault | USA

Student Technology

• BLUE SENSE LAB | National Taipei University of Education | Liu Chia-Yi | Taiwan

How to Vote

Public voting is now open at radicalinnovation.io. The hospitality community is invited to review this year's finalists and cast their votes ahead of the Radical Innovation 20th Anniversary Award Ceremony & Dinner on October 22.

2026 Jurors

This year's finalists were selected by a multidisciplinary jury representing hospitality, architecture, design, investment, academia, technology, and innovation.

Project Jury: Claude Amar, Managing Director, The Hardy Group International; T. Jack Bagby IV, Principal, Cooper Carry; Mark Friesen, Principal, Beyer Brown & Associates; John Hardy, Chairman and Founder, The Hardy Group; Rika Lisslo, Vice President, Lifestyle & Residential Development U.S. & Canada, Hilton; Glenn Nowak, Associate Professor, UNLV School of Architecture, Founder of Post-Arch, and Co-Founder of AERO AI; Staci Patton, Senior Director, Global Full Service Brand Design, Hilton; Stacy Shoemaker Rauen, Co-Founder, Stay & Gather; and Christina Zimmer, Senior VP of Design and Development, Newbond Holdings.

Product Jury: Amy Devers, Co-Founder, Executive Producer and Host, Clever with Amy Devers; Dan Dobin, Chairman, Valley Forge Fabrics; John Edelman, President, North & South America, Haworth Lifestyle and Creative Director, Heller Furniture; Isaac Kubryk, CEO, Global Allies; Josh Owen, Vignelli Distinguished Professor and Director, Vignelli Center for Design Studies at RIT and President, Josh Owen LLC.

Technology Jury: Jessica Brams-Miller, Design Systems Lead, RAMSA; John Duffield, Innovation & Futures, Signal Two; Robert Gilbreath, Executive, RIVUR; Henri Roelings, Founder & CEO, Hospitality Net.

2026 Professional Project Finalists

AFTER LIGHT | Luxury Frontiers | South Africa

After Light transforms historic observatories into immersive dark-sky destinations, creating a scalable model that combines adaptive reuse, reversible design, and astronomy.

Located at the historic Sunspot Observatory in New Mexico, the pilot reimagines existing infrastructure for dining, learning, and astronomical observation, while introducing lightweight guest accommodations designed for minimal long-term impact. Guided by a journey from Last Light to First Light, After Light creates a shared guest experience that can be replicated across observatories around the world while responding to each site's unique landscape, legacy, and celestial phenomena.

POLARITY | Unison Group Inc. | Canada

The Polarity Hotel is a multi-faceted hospitality and cultural hub rooted in adaptive reuse, balancing quiet, dark spaces designed for deep restoration with bright, light-filled environments built for social connection and community interaction.

Spanning an entire post-industrial urban block, the concept connects existing structures through an elevated add-on superstructure, creating seamless urban flow between previously disconnected spaces. Contrasting interiors, green roof networks, an elevated infinity pool, and accessible civic spaces transform underused built environments into a self-sustaining mixed-use cultural destination that reconnects surrounding neighborhoods.

2026 Student Project Finalists

SALT CONSTELLATION | Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey Campus Toluca | Mexico

Salt Constellation is a low-impact, slow-travel hospitality experience across Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni, connecting Kusku, nine Moasis, and Abyssus in a constellation of destinations.

Rather than imposing intrusive volumes onto a fragile landscape, Salt Constellation dissolves into the environment. Buried beneath the salt crust, the self-sustaining Moasis preserve the uninterrupted visual axis of the vast white plain while providing high thermal mass and complete climate protection. The circuit transforms fast-paced tourism into an introspective, multi-day journey where architecture becomes a subtle framework for contemplation, star-gazing, and deep connection with the landscape.

DIVING HOTEL | Tiarch Studio / Kazan State University of Architecture and Engineering | Russia

The Diving Hotel reimagines hospitality in the U.S. Virgin Islands, transforming the growing popularity of diving into an experience that benefits both guests and the marine environment.

Through the cultivation of fish and sea urchins and the use of Biorock technology, the hotel’s seabed structures are designed to foster an underwater coral forest and thriving marine ecosystem. Above-water and submerged guest rooms provide direct access to diverse dive routes, transforming diving from observation into a journey through a living sculpture park while supporting coastal protection and marine restoration.

2026 Professional Product Finalists

FOLDED POETRY | Folded Poetry | USA

Folded Poetry is a portfolio of sculptural acoustic artworks that reimagines sound absorption as an integral part of architectural expression and elevated placemaking. Rather than treating acoustic performance as a concealed technical layer, each work integrates noise-reduction into contemporary sculpture, transforming functional surfaces into celebrated immersive design features.

QUADRIS | Trashy and Folded Poetry | USA

Quadris is a modular architectural cladding system made from high-performance, low-carbon concrete that incorporates up to 85% landfill-bound materials. Designed for hospitality interiors, it transforms walls and ceilings into sculptural, light-responsive surfaces while giving a difficult waste stream a durable, premium application.

2026 Student Product Finalists

MYCOFORM | Kealakehe High School | Hawaii

MYCOFORM is a modular wall-tile system designed specifically for hotels and other hospitality environments, combining a sculptural mycelium surface with acoustic absorption, passive humidity regulation, accessible customization, and a replaceable compressed-rice-husk backing structure.

Its purpose is to turn one of the largest and most underused surfaces in a hotel—the wall—into an active part of the guest experience while reducing the number of separate products that must be installed, maintained, and eventually discarded.

AERO-FURL | Guyana International Academy (GIA) | Guyana

AERO-FURL is a universal retrofit bedding interface that transforms one of hospitality's most physically demanding daily tasks into a faster, safer, and more consistent process. Installed between the mattress and bed base, it uses an integrated soft-clamp channel to securely grip bed linens, eliminating the need for housekeeping staff to repeatedly lift heavy mattresses.

2026 Professional Technology Finalists

AEES | Prime Renovation | United Kingdom

AEES (Adaptive Emotional Environment System) is the world's first operating system for programmable architecture in hospitality, transforming the hotel room from a static physical space into an adaptive environment that responds to each guest's needs.

The platform synchronizes lighting, Adaptive Sky Ceiling, Adaptive Projection Wall, sound, climate, scent, multimedia, and transformable furniture into programmable spatial scenarios called Modes. Guests select an outcome such as Sleep, Recovery, Focus, or Joy, and AEES synchronizes every environmental element to achieve that result.

AUTONOMOUS ITINERARY | Otonoma, Inc. | USA

Autonomous Itinerary is an intelligent network that lets independent systems negotiate and execute tasks with one another directly, connecting systems by capability rather than point-to-point integration.

The Paranet compiles workflows into deterministic goal trees that execute in milliseconds with near-zero token cost while adapting to real-world change. By connecting disparate systems and services, the network enables guests to interact, book, and receive dynamic recommendations without manually navigating across different tools, apps, or devices, creating a truly connected trip.

2026 Student Technology Winner

BLUE SENSE LAB | National Taipei University of Education | Taiwan

Blue Sense Lab is an interactive ocean conservation platform that merges an Augmented Reality mobile application with a tactile Underwater Check Card to transform recreational diving and eco-tourism into data-driven marine restoration.

The system gamifies environmental action for divers and coastal resort guests. Divers use the waterproof Underwater Check Card to log marine debris, benthic indicators, and key species using raised physical grid markers. Upon surfacing, the AR app verifies the data, quantifies environmental impact, and converts efforts into hotel-specific eco-achievement points, discounts, or recycled rewards. The cloud platform aggregates crowdsourced data and applies AI algorithms to map marine trash distribution and predict future debris accumulation hotspots.

About Radical Innovation

Founded in 2006, Radical Innovation is a nonprofit that identifies, elevates, and accelerates transformative ideas for the future of hospitality and travel. Through an annual, global awards competition open to professionals and students across design, architecture, and product development, Radical Innovation recognizes excellence and connects creators with developers, sponsors, investors, and industry leaders to move viable concepts from vision to reality.

Finalists present on the Radical Innovation platform and at the Annual Award Ceremony and Dinner before a jury of hotel insiders and advisors. Since inception, the program has maintained a year-round community that surfaces emerging trends and advances the built environment. Learn more at radicalinnovation.io.

Media Contact

Leah S. Blank

Director [email protected] +1 470.363.4329