The Distribution Jury selects the nominees for the upcoming Perfume Academy Awards 2026. The cultural foundation of the Perfume Academy seeks to bring perfume closer to society and for society to understand everything that is hidden behind perfume science and each fragrance and the work of perfumers.
Visibility is thus given to the wide range of perfume options, recognizing from the most accessible fragrances to the most sophisticated and exclusive ones: “Perfume Lifestyle”, “Perfume of the Year”, “Iconic Perfume”, “Niche Perfume”, “Collection Perfume”, “Home Perfume”, as well as “Design” and “Communication Campaign”.
The Perfume Academy will also award a prize to an initiative related to Innovation and Sustainability. The Madrid Perfume Academy headquarters has hosted this meeting, with a wide exhibition of the participating perfumes facilitating a thorough evaluation of each candidacy. The proposals that involve olfactory tasting are analyzed with a triple criterion: from their smell as the main attribute, to the innovation they represent and the coherence of each proposal as a whole. This first professional jury has the mission of selecting the perfumes that pass to the next voting phase, a difficult task considering the high participation that has once again reached 200 candidacies. It is composed of a selection of twelve expert professionals from the main perfumery brands in our country.
The trend of recent years is reaffirmed: a conscious innovation, committed to sustainability and to the creation of new proposals capable of enriching the universe of perfume. This innovation is not limited to the launch of completely new fragrances, but also finds its strength in new creations within existing pillars, providing new formulas, techniques, processes, and olfactory combinations that expand their limits and open new creative paths. Furthermore, design is once again consolidated as one of the territories where creativity is expressed with greater intensity, with nearly 50 proposals that highlight aesthetic and conceptual innovation. Likewise, the growth of the Niche Perfume category stands out, more complex and exclusive fragrances that reflect a growing market sophistication, coexisting with other more accessible modalities that expand and diversify the offer.
Given the high participation and complexity of some categories, some improvements have been implemented in the voting process, aimed at favoring their detailed evaluation, favoring that the most complex categories will be voted mainly by professional in-person juries. In the case of categories with more than 30 candidacies, the number of nominees will be 16 instead of 12, as is the case for Female Perfume of the Year. There have also been 16 nominees in Male Perfume of the Year due to identical scores at the cut-off line and 14 in Collection Perfume, for the same reason of ties.
The brands and experts that make up the distribution jury are: Aromas (Ana Cervantes), Avenida (Alicia Recio), De la Uz (Carmen de la Uz), Douglas (Andrés Muñoz), El Corte Inglés (Natalia Barrera), Fund Grube (Beatriz Matas), Isolée (Rodrigo Menéndez), Júlia (Neus Cupons), Le Secret du Marais (Marta Tamayo), Nadia Perfumería (Alicia Fernández), Sephora (Yolanda Teijido) and Persé (Julián Díaz) –who in turn represents a large group of perfumeries– , as jury president Val Díez (CEO of Stanpa and Vice President of the Perfume Academy) and accompanied by Cristina de Catalina, Development Director of the Perfume Academy.
The online voting will open to the public on March 12
The Perfume Academy will also award a prize to an initiative related to Innovation and Sustainability.
The headquarters of the Perfume Academy of Madrid has hosted this meeting, with a wide exhibition of the participating perfumes facilitating a thorough evaluation of each candidacy. The proposals that involve olfactory tasting are analyzed with a triple criterion: from their smell as the main attribute, to the innovation it represents and the coherence of each proposal as a whole. This first professional jury has the mission of selecting the perfumes that advance to the next voting phase, a difficult task considering the high participation that has once again reached 200 candidacies. It is composed of a selection of twelve expert professionals from the main perfumery brands in our country.
The trend of recent years is reaffirmed: a conscious innovation, committed to sustainability and to the creation of new proposals capable of enriching the universe of perfume. This innovation is not limited to the launch of completely unprecedented fragrances, but also finds its strength in new creations within existing pillars, contributing new formulas, techniques, processes, and olfactory combinations that expand their limits and open new creative paths. Furthermore, design is once again consolidated as one of the territories where creativity is expressed with greater intensity, with nearly 50 proposals that highlight aesthetic and conceptual innovation. Likewise, the growth of the Niche Perfume category stands out, more complex and exclusive fragrances that reflect a growing market sophistication, coexisting with other more accessible modalities that expand and diversify the offer.
Given the high participation and complexity of some categories, some improvements have been implemented in the voting process, aimed at favoring their detailed evaluation, favoring that the most complex categories will be voted mainly by professional in-person juries. In the case of categories with more than 30 candidacies, the number of nominees will be 16 instead of 12, as is the case for Female Perfume of the Year. There have also been 16 nominees in Male Perfume of the Year due to identical scores at the cut-off line and 14 in Collection Perfume, for the same reason of ties.
The brands and experts that make up the distribution jury are: Aromas (Ana Cervantes), Avenida (Alicia Recio), De la Uz (Carmen de la Uz), Douglas (Andrés Muñoz), El Corte Inglés (Natalia Barrera), Fund Grube (Beatriz Matas), Isolée (Rodrigo Menéndez), Júlia (Neus Cupons), Le Secret du Marais (Marta Tamayo), Nadia Perfumería (Alicia Fernández), Sephora (Yolanda Teijido) and Persé (Julián Díaz) –who in turn represents a large group of perfumeries– , as jury president Val Díez (CEO of Stanpa and Vice President of the Perfume Academy) and accompanied by Cristina de Catalina, Development Director of the Perfume Academy.
The online voting will open to the public on March 12.
The “nominees”, selected in this vote move on to the online vote that will take place between March 12 and April 12.
The microsite will be accessible on the portal www.academiadelperfume.com. The Perfume Academy encourages all perfume professionals and enthusiasts to contribute with their votes in the selection of the best perfumes of the year. Among the participants in the online voting a double invitation to attend the awards gala will be raffled.
Subsequently, the Jury of Academics will be responsible for choosing the winners of “Iconic Perfumes”, while the Press Jury will evaluate the other categories in April, selecting the “top” finalists who will go through a final vote, the Art and Culture Jury.
The winners will be unveiled at the awards ceremony scheduled for October, a great special gala that will commemorate the 20th anniversary of the constitution of the Perfume Academy. All news and information for each phase will be published promptly on the Academy's social media and website.