Nominations are now open for the 2026 PyTorch Foundation Contributor Awards!
These awards recognize outstanding individuals whose contributions help strengthen PyTorch Foundation-hosted projects, including PyTorch, vLLM, DeepSpeed, Ray, Helion, and Safetensors, as well as the broader community. From technical innovation and documentation to mentorship, advocacy, and community leadership, contributors play a vital role in advancing our mission.
Whether through code, documentation, mentoring, or community leadership, contributors are at the heart of what makes our community thrive. Now is your chance to help us celebrate their achievements.
The nomination period opens on June 17, 2026 and closes on July 17, 2026 at 11:59 PM Pacific Time (PT).
Awards Ceremony
Winners will receive a complimentary ticket to PyTorch Conference in San Jose, October 20-21, 2026. There will be an Awards Ceremony where winners will be honored.
Who Should You Nominate?
Anyone making a meaningful impact across PyTorch Foundation projects and the community! We welcome and encourage self-nominations, as well as nominations for contributors across all backgrounds, geographies, and roles, including:
- Open source developers
- Documentation writers
- Educators and content creators
- Community advocates
- Project contributors and maintainers
- Bug reporters and fixers
- Longtime contributors and rising newcomers
Award Categories
Here is the list of categories you can nominate someone for:
- Outstanding Ambassador — Excellence in community growth and bringing new users into the ecosystem
- Superhero — Excellence across all aspects of community contribution
- Ecosystem Champion — Excellence in strengthening and growing the broader project ecosystem
- Knowledge Enhancer — Excellence in documentation, tutorials, and knowledge sharing
- Bug Buster — Excellence in uncovering, reporting, and resolving bugs
- Newcomer — Excellence in New Contributions
- Review Powerhouse — Excellence in Code Review
- Innovator — Excellence in innovative features, approaches, and core architectural contributions
- Catalyst — Excellence in improving developer workflows, automation, devinfra, and AI-assisted development
How to Submit a Strong Nomination
Help the review committee understand why your nominee deserves recognition by providing clear examples of their contributions and impact.
Be Specific
Describe what the nominee contributed and how they made a difference. Avoid general statements and focus on concrete examples.
Highlight the Impact
Consider questions such as:
- How did their contribution improve a PyTorch Foundation project or community initiative?
- Did their work help users, contributors, maintainers, or developers?
- Did they improve documentation, tooling, performance, reliability, or accessibility?
- Did they support community growth through mentorship, advocacy, education, or events?
Provide Supporting Evidence
Include links to:
- GitHub or GitLab pull requests, issues, or repositories
- Documentation, tutorials, or educational content
- Blog posts, talks, workshops, or presentations
- Community programs, events, or mentorship initiatives
Sample Strong Nomination Statements:
- “Led a documentation sprint that improved more than 150 tutorials, making it easier for new contributors and users to get started.”
- “Resolved critical bugs affecting production deployments and improved project stability for downstream users.”
- “Organized community workshops and training sessions that introduced PyTorch Foundation projects to new audiences.”
- “Mentored first-time contributors through successful pull requests and onboarding, helping grow the contributor community.”
Celebrating All Forms of Contribution
We welcome nominations from all parts of the community, across genders, geographies, institutions, and contribution types. Contributions may include advocacy, education, bug hunting, outreach, translation, and more.
Questions? Reach out to us at: contributor-award@pytorch.org
Nominate now by visiting the PyTorch Foundation Contributor Awards page.
Let’s recognize the people making PyTorch Foundation better for everyone!