The Cambridge Independent Business Awards began in 2024 as a celebration of the city’s independent firms and have quickly become a fixture in the Cambridge business calendar. Two ceremonies have now been held at King’s College, and the third, the 2026 final, takes place in the college’s Great Hall on Thursday 24 September 2026. Here is how the awards started, who has won so far, and who is in the running this year.
How the awards started
The inaugural 2024 awards brought Cambridge’s business community together at King’s College to recognise local firms across 14 categories. The evening opened with a tribute to the late entrepreneur Mike Lynch before moving on to the awards themselves.
Alison Wright, co-owner of Fitzbillies, received the Lifetime Achievement Award for reviving the iconic Cambridge bakery after it faced bankruptcy. Other winners on the night included well:o, named Start-up of the Year; TR Global Events, Small Business of the Year; IQGeo, Medium Business of the Year; Costello Medical, Large Business of the Year; and Peter Burrows of The Cambridge Building Society, Business Person of the Year. Innovation of the Year and The Green Award also recognised businesses driving change in the region.
The night included a drinks reception, a magician and a performance from Encore Entertainment, alongside a silent auction that raised money for the new Cambridge Cancer Research Hospital. Editor Paul Brackley, who hosted the ceremony, thanked sponsors and entrants for the high calibre of entries, and organisers said they expected strong interest in the following year’s awards.
The 2025 winners
That interest materialised. The second awards were held in King’s College’s Great Hall on 26 September 2025, again hosted by Paul Brackley, and the Cambridge Independent’s report on the 2025 winners shows how broad the field had become. Philip Woolner of the property firm Cheffins took the Lifetime Achievement Award, and Cheffins also collected the Green Award.
The 2025 category winners were:
- Start-up of the Year: AnthroTek
- Business of the Year (Small): Elle-Events Management
- Business of the Year (Medium): Velocity Commerce
- Business of the Year (Large): Bango
- Innovation of the Year: Upfront Diagnostics, for its rapid blood test for strokes
- Retailer of the Year: Campkins Cameras
- Hospitality Business of the Year: The Gonville Hotel
- Mayor’s Scale-up of the Year: Monavate
- Award for Collaboration: Stagecoach East, for Buses and Businesses Against Abuse
- Employer of the Year: Papworth Trust
- Social Enterprise of the Year: Fitness Rush Community CIC
- Business Person of the Year: Richard Finn of Hilton Cambridge City Centre
What stands out across the two years is the range. A camera shop, a hotel, a bus operator, a fintech and a medical diagnostics start-up all won on the same night, which is a fair reflection of how varied the business services in Cambridge actually are once you look past the science park headlines.
The 2026 final on 24 September
The finalists for the 2026 awards were announced in August, again across 14 categories including a Lifetime Achievement Award, with the black-tie gala dinner booked for King’s College on Thursday 24 September 2026. Several familiar names are back: Campkins Cameras is shortlisted again for Retailer of the Year alongside Plumbs’ Dairy, Barrington Store and Townhouse Nail Care, and 2025’s small-business winner Elle-Events Management appears in both the Start-up and Business Person categories, the latter through Eleanor Roberts-Nissen.
The Business Person of the Year shortlist also includes Alex Tunbridge, chief executive of Cambridge United, and James Tweed of Coracle. Marshall Aerospace, HutanBio, Project-A and CardiaTec are up for Innovation of the Year, while Stagecoach East, Aveva, Frontier Developments and Gearset contest Business of the Year (Large). We will update this article once the winners are announced.
Why the awards matter for smaller firms
For a city so associated with big-name technology and life sciences, the awards have made a point of putting a bakery, a dairy and a nail salon on the same stage as a global aerospace business. That visibility is worth having: a shortlisting is a credible, independent endorsement a small firm can put in its window and on its website. If you run a business in the city, the wider Cambridge business directory is a good place to see who else is trading locally, and if you are not yet listed, adding a free listing takes a couple of minutes. Firms elsewhere in the country can compare business services across the UK for the same kind of local benchmarking.
