The Better Choice Awards are jointly organized by the National Innovation Center (NIC - Ministry of Finance ), the Innovation Department of the Ministry of Science and Technology, and VCCorp Joint Stock Company.
This is a national-scale annual award, held since 2022, aiming to build a value system that encourages innovation with a people-centered approach, where products, services, technologies, and business models that create practical value are recognized and disseminated.
This is also a key activity in response to the National Innovation Day 2026, with the participation of nearly 1,000 delegates, businesses, and guests. Entering its fourth season, the award, themed "Innovation Beyond Borders," honors innovative values that have blurred the lines between nations, between industries, and between familiar product forms.
Attending the awards ceremony were former Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Chi Dung, along with many leaders from state management agencies, members of the judging panel, leaders of press agencies, and representatives of businesses participating in the award.
In his opening remarks at the Awards, Mr. Vo Xuan Hoai, Deputy Director of the National Innovation Center (NIC), emphasized that Resolution 57-NQ/TW of the Politburo has created a new strategic direction, strongly promoting the integration of science, technology, and innovation into a direct productive force, contributing to enhancing the competitiveness and endogenous strength of the economy.
According to WIPO's Global Innovation Index 2026, Vietnam ranks 43rd out of 139 countries and economies . This is a commendable achievement, but more important than a ranking is the ability to transform knowledge, technology, and innovation into products, businesses, productivity, and concrete values for the economy and social life.
Innovation must be validated by the market and transformed into value. A technology is only truly meaningful when it is applied; a research result only truly creates an impact when it is transferred. Over the past period, the Vietnamese business community, research institutes, and universities have made commendable efforts in researching and applying technology, developing new products, and improving service quality.
More and more businesses are investing in R&D, mastering technology, and improving products and processes; many research results are being put into practice; and many innovative products and solutions have created practical value for people and society.
These are crucial foundations for developing the innovative capacity of the economy and creating new growth drivers for Vietnam.
According to Mr. Vo Xuan Hoai, with a market of over 100 million people, Vietnam has an important foundation for nurturing innovative businesses with international competitiveness. As businesses continuously innovate, consumers increasingly choose higher-quality, higher-value products, and research and technology resources are more effectively connected, a positive cycle will be formed, creating new growth drivers for the country.
In this cycle, businesses are at the center, the State creates the environment and policies, and organizations within the ecosystem play a connecting role, promoting and bringing innovative resources closer to businesses and the market.
This is also a way for innovation to gradually become an endogenous capacity of the economy, making a practical contribution to the goal of rapid and sustainable growth and enhancing Vietnam's position in the global value chain.
"The Better Choice Awards is one of the platforms where these efforts are recognized and spread. Every better choice, if replicated, can create a bigger change for the economy," Mr. Vo Xuan Hoai noted.
Commenting on this year's awards, Mr. Pham Xuan Ha, Senior Event Director of VCCorp and Head of the Organizing Committee of the Better Choice Awards 2026, said: "The Better Choice Awards seek out choices that make life better every day, rather than just a single best answer that is only true on paper. In its fourth year, the Organizing Committee has added the Nation Builders Awards to honor businesses that have made outstanding contributions to the country's development, because Vietnam's innovation has gone beyond the scope of a single product to become a capability of both businesses and the economy."
The organizers are most pleased to see that this year's list of winners includes many Vietnamese businesses alongside global brands, from Vietnamese-language artificial intelligence models and electric motorcycles to smart charging stations. This journey will continue at TECHFEST Vietnam 2026 this November."
At the event, the organizers honored 45 categories across four award pillars of the Better Choice Awards 2026, ranging from artificial intelligence (AI) solutions developed by Vietnamese people, businesses creating national platforms, to technology products and car models that change consumers' lives.
The four award categories include: Innovative Choice Awards - for innovative solutions, artificial intelligence, and startups; Smart Choice Awards - for officially distributed consumer technology products in Vietnam; Car Choice Awards - for car models, events, and content channels in the automotive industry; and Nation Builder Awards - for businesses that build national platforms and Vietnamese brands recognized by the community.
Among these, the Nation Builders Awards is a new award category, honoring businesses that are building the nation, those that are developing infrastructure, energy, and technological capabilities for the entire economy. The honored businesses are all associated with real-world projects completed during the year.
For example, Viettel Group will begin construction of Vietnam's first semiconductor chip manufacturing plant in Hoa Lac High-Tech Park in January 2026; and the Hoa Lac 2 Data Center will begin construction in June 2026, becoming the first digital infrastructure in Asia-Pacific to integrate the NVIDIA H200 supercomputer. Petrovietnam 's Nhon Trach 3 and 4 power plants, the country's first LNG power plant project, will officially begin commercial operation in January 2026…
In addition, another category honors FDI enterprises that have integrated Vietnam's manufacturing and research capabilities into the global value chain, including Samsung, LG, Intel, and Qualcomm.
In addition, the community voted for 4 titles for 20 brands, including VinFast, Green SM and Sun Group, Hoa Phat, TH Group (with its dairy factory in the Russian Federation)...
In addition to the 45 main categories, the Gala announced the Better List 2026 ranking, which was directly scored and voted on by the tech-savvy user community.
Notably, the Gala awarded the "Innovative Application Worth Installing" certificate to the iHanoi Digital Citizen application. At the same time, Hanoi continued to lead the 2026 Local Innovation Index (PII), announced by the Ministry of Science and Technology within the framework of the National Innovation Festival, with 63.80 points and leading in 18 out of 52 component indicators.
According to the organizers, the highlight of this year's awards is that artificial intelligence developed by Vietnamese people takes center stage in the Innovative Choice Awards. FPT was honored in both the "Make in Vietnam" AI product category and the AI solution category.
Samsung Vietnam's Galaxy AI has been recognized for integrating Vietnamese into everyday user features such as filtering out unknown calls and editing photos using voice commands.
Electric vehicles dominated the Car Choice Awards, with 7 out of 13 awards going to hybrid or all-electric models. Two startups, Dat Bike and Volterra, also won awards, demonstrating that young companies can absolutely compete with large domestic and international corporations.
Source: https://baovanhoa.vn/nhip-song-so/better-choice-awards-2026-vinh-danh-nhung-doi-moi-sang-tao-san-pham-cong-nghe-viet-271500.html
