World Dairy Innovation Awards spotlight functional dairy and protein products
Dairy winners in Barcelona pointed to a sharper protein play: targeted nutrition, blood sugar benefits and life-stage formulas are moving to the front of the pack.
The loudest message from the World Dairy Innovation Awards was not about flavor or scale. It was function. When the winners were revealed live at the 19th Annual Global Dairy Congress in Barcelona, the products that stood out were the ones built to do a specific job, from targeted protein and blood sugar benefits to fortified nutrients and performance-driven formulations.
Francesca Hall, FoodBev Media’s events director, presented the awards and said, "The level of innovation on display this year is remarkable," adding that the winners were "reimagining dairy's role" by engineering function and purpose into products while keeping consumer needs central. FoodBev said the judging panel drew on experts from across the dairy value chain, including manufacturing, nutrition science, product innovation and growth insights, which helps explain why the winning set leaned so hard toward precision nutrition.
That shift showed up in the category structure as much as in the winners. The 2026 awards included more than 20 categories, among them Best Dairy Protein Product, Best Functional Dairy, Best Specialised Dairy Powder and Best Life-Stage Innovation. FoodBev set the entry fee at £250 with a May 1 deadline, and the broader awards program has been running for more than 20 years, so this was not a one-off experiment. It was a crowded, established field taking a clear turn toward products that solve a defined need.
The historical pattern backs that up. In 2021, the awards drew 222 entries from 25 countries across 20 categories. By 2024, FoodBev said 17 categories pulled in more than 40 dairy businesses. The arc points in the same direction each year: dairy brands are moving away from generic high-protein positioning and toward sharper claims tied to age, health status, convenience and performance.
Vinamilk gave the trend a very concrete face. The company said it won five awards from 17 finalist nominations, calling the result unprecedented in the awards’ 20-year history. Its winning products included Optimum A2 Pro+, Sure Prevent Gold medical nutrition food, Vinamilk Gelato Matcha, Vinamilk 100% multi-flavor fresh milk and Vinamilk Gelato. The mix matters because it spans children’s nutrition, age-defying nutrition, dessert and packaged milk, exactly the kind of portfolio breadth that shows how far functional dairy now reaches.
Collo also said it won the Manufacturing Innovation award, while Yili vice president Ignatius Szeto discussed functional ingredients, sensory innovation and ageing-friendly product development in a June 18 interview tied to the congress. Put together, the signal is clear: dairy protein is being treated less like a commodity and more like a precision nutrition platform, and the products getting rewarded are the ones that prove it.
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