Annual public-vote contests in Ireland
Annual online contests in Ireland with a public vote include the Irish Made Awards run by Irish Country Magazine, the Charity Excellence Awards People's Choice run by Charities Institute Ireland, the RTS Ireland Awards hosted by RTÉ, and the An Post Irish Book Awards. Each publishes its own voting window on its own page. The charity award opened voting on 15 September 2026. The RTS audience vote closed at 23:59 on 6 April 2026. The book awards launch their shortlist on 22 October and hold their winners ceremony on 1 December. Some of these contests weigh public votes alongside a judging panel, so the vote count alone does not settle the result.
Facts on this page last confirmed on 8 October 2026.
The contests and their calendars
Four named contests anchor this page, and each publishes its calendar on its own site. Irish Country Magazine presents the Irish Made Awards 2026, with a winners ceremony on 30 September at The Johnstown Estate. Charities Institute Ireland runs the Charity Excellence Awards, whose People's Choice Award opened voting on 15 September 2026. RTÉ hosts the RTS Ireland Awards, held on 16 April 2026.
The An Post Irish Book Awards publish a fixed set of key dates: submissions open on 1 July and close on 21 August, the shortlist launches on 22 October, and the winners ceremony falls on 1 December. That calendar appears on the awards' own page, dated for 2026, so readers can plan around it directly.
The voting windows differ sharply between these contests. The RTS audience choice vote closed at 23:59 on Monday 6 April 2026, weeks before the ceremony itself. The charity People's Choice vote opens later in the year. The book awards sit between the two, with the shortlist launch in late October marking the point where reader voting becomes the story.
Ceremony dates and voting dates are not the same thing, and confusing them is the most common planning error. A ceremony on 30 September tells you nothing about when the public vote ran. An April ceremony tells you the audience vote closed on 6 April. Read both dates off the organiser's page, and treat the earlier one as the deadline that matters.
None of these contests is a one-off event that vanishes after the ceremony. All four repeat on an annual cycle, which is why their pages carry dated schedules rather than single announcements. An organiser that publishes submissions, shortlist and ceremony dates together is telling entrants and voters the same thing: the cycle is predictable, and the dates are the contract.
- The Irish Made Awards 2026 ceremony takes place at The Johnstown Estate on 30 September, according to the organiser's page.
- Submissions for the An Post Irish Book Awards close on 21 August, before any shortlist exists for readers to vote on.
How the public vote works
Voting mechanics differ in one respect that decides everything: whether the public vote alone picks the winner. The charity People's Choice Award does work that way, because the shortlisted charity finalist with the most votes takes the award outright. The Irish Made Awards 2026 do not, since their winners emerge from a combination of public vote and an expert judging panel.
The RTS Ireland Awards apply a hard limit of one vote per person to their audience choice award. That single sentence, printed on the voting page, does more than any amount of monitoring: it tells every voter what counts as a valid ballot, and it gives the organiser a published basis for discounting anything beyond it.
A shortlist gates every one of these votes. Voters do not choose from an open field; they choose from a list the organiser has already fixed. The charity vote applies to shortlisted finalists only. The book awards launch a shortlist on 22 October before reader voting carries any weight. The shortlist is the organiser's first and largest editorial decision.
The practical consequence is that a public vote is never a blank ballot. It is a choice inside a frame the organiser built: a fixed shortlist, a fixed window, and a published rule on vote frequency. A voter who wants to take part responsibly reads those three things before clicking, because the organiser's page, not rumour, states each of them.
Online voting also runs on a platform the organiser picks, and the platform enforces what the rules state. The RTS audience vote ran on a polling service linked from the awards page, with the closing time printed beside it. Where the votes land, who can cast one and when the poll shuts are all decisions the organiser made in advance and published in advance.
- Winners of the Irish Made Awards are announced at the ceremony, not online in advance, per the organiser's wording.
- The most-voted shortlisted charity finalist receives the People's Choice Award under the published selection rule.
Who can enter and vote
Eligibility is set by the organiser, entry by entry, and the public page is where it is stated. A reader asking whether anyone in Ireland can enter a public-vote contest is really asking a different question: whether the contest's own terms admit them. Some contests are open to any qualifying entrant; others are closed competitions where only shortlisted or nominated entries face the vote.
The charity People's Choice Award illustrates the closed form. Members of the public vote on shortlisted charity finalists; they do not enter anything themselves. The entry stage belonged to the charities, and the vote stage belongs to everyone. Knowing which stage a contest has reached tells a person whether they are a potential entrant or simply a voter.
Voting eligibility is usually broader than entering, and the one-vote-per-person rule is the main published condition the RTS page attaches to it. Beyond that, an organiser may impose its own residency or age conditions in its terms. Those conditions live on the terms page, and they bind the voter just as they bind the entrant.
Disqualification, where it happens, happens under a published rule. An organiser that states a vote limit can act on it. An organiser that states eligibility conditions can withdraw an entry that breaks them. What no organiser publishes is a tolerance for votes cast outside its rules, so the safe reading of any terms page is that the stated limits are the actual limits.
The honest summary is short. Entry eligibility: decided by the organiser's terms, contest by contest. Voting eligibility: stated on the voting page, most commonly as one vote per person. Neither question has a universal answer across these four contests, which is why each one's own page is the only reliable source for its own conditions.
- Terms can change between cycles, so a rule read last year does not bind this year's contest.
- A shortlisted finalist list is published by the organiser before the vote, which narrows what the vote can decide.
Announcements, scams and limits
Winners are announced where the organiser says they will be announced, and the ceremony is the common stage. The Irish Made Awards announce their winners at The Johnstown Estate on 30 September. The book awards hold a winners ceremony on 1 December. An announcement that arrives from any other channel, before the published date, deserves suspicion rather than celebration.
That suspicion has a practical use, because fake contest messages circulate in every voting cycle. A genuine announcement comes from the organiser's own page or its own channels, names the published ceremony or results date, and never asks a voter for payment or account details. A message that does ask has answered its own question.
Legality, stated once and precisely: voting in and entering these promotional contests is lawful when the organiser's published terms are followed. The organiser decides eligibility, publishes the voting window and owns the result. A voter's obligations are the terms; a reader's protection is reading them. Nothing beyond the terms carries weight in any later dispute.
The limits of the vote itself deserve plain words. A People's Choice Award decided purely on votes can be swung by any organised campaign, and the organiser knows this as well as the public does. A combined format, where judges sit beside the public vote, exists precisely because organisers want a result that a vote count alone cannot produce.
What this page cannot do is verify anything beyond the organisers' own pages. Dates move, terms are rewritten, and a shortlist published in October belongs to that year alone. The check that never fails is the dull one: open the organiser's current page, read the dates and the rules as printed, and treat everything else as unconfirmed.
- A voting message requesting payment or account details does not match any organiser's published process.
- Combined vote-and-judging formats are published rules, not secret safeguards, and they change what a vote can achieve.
What the law and the rules say
Voting in a promotional contest is lawful when the voter follows the organiser's published terms, and the same terms govern who may enter and who may vote. An organiser can restrict eligibility by residency, age or category, can void votes it treats as invalid under its rules, and can change dates on its own page without notice elsewhere. Nothing on this page replaces an organiser's terms, and nothing here should be read as legal advice. Before entering or voting, read the current terms on the organiser's own site, because the terms, not any summary, decide the dispute.
What we will not do
This page does not sell, supply or coordinate votes for any contest, and it does not help anyone enter, nominate or campaign in one. It never predicts a winner, ranks contenders or estimates any entry's chances. It does not draft voting campaigns, manage groups of voters or advise on shareable campaign material. It does not interpret an organiser's terms on a reader's behalf, does not settle disputes about a result, and does not contact organisers for anyone. What it does is report, in plain sentences, what the organisers' own pages say about their voting windows, their formats and their announcements.
Quick answers
Four named examples cover the main forms. The Irish Made Awards 2026, presented by Irish Country Magazine, take a public vote alongside an expert judging panel. The Charity Excellence Awards, run by Charities Institute Ireland, include a People's Choice Award decided by public vote among shortlisted finalists. The RTS Ireland Awards, hosted by RTÉ, carry an audience choice vote. The An Post Irish Book Awards let readers vote for their favourite books each year. Each contest repeats annually and publishes its voting window on its own page, so the reliable answer to which contests run is always the current list on the organisers' own sites.
There is no shared opening date, because each organiser fixes its own window. Charities Institute Ireland opened voting for its 2026 People's Choice Award on 15 September 2026. The RTS audience choice vote closed at 23:59 on 6 April 2026, so its window ran earlier in the spring. The An Post Irish Book Awards launch their shortlist on 22 October, which is the point where reader voting starts to matter in their cycle. The practical rule: find the contest's own page, look for the printed date, and treat the printed date rather than any pattern across contests as the answer.
Named organisers, each with a media or industry base, run the contests on this page. Irish Country Magazine presents the Irish Made Awards. Charities Institute Ireland organises the Charity Excellence Awards and its People's Choice Award. RTÉ hosts the RTS Ireland Awards, and the Royal Television Society's Irish arm runs the shortlist behind them. The An Post Irish Book Awards operate as their own published awards programme with a title sponsor. In every case the organising body publishes the dates and the rules itself, which is why the organiser's page is the single source this page cites for each fact.
Entry depends entirely on the contest's own terms, and the four contests here split into two forms. In open-entry cycles, such as the book awards' submissions window that closes on 21 August, publishers and entrants put work forward before any vote exists. In closed forms, such as the People's Choice Award, the public never enters at all; shortlisted charity finalists are voted on by anyone who wishes to support them. So the honest answer is that entry is decided by the organiser, contest by contest, and a person should read the current terms page rather than assume openness from the existence of a public vote.
At a ceremony, on a date the organiser published in advance. The Irish Made Awards 2026 announce their winners at The Johnstown Estate on 30 September. The An Post Irish Book Awards hold their winners ceremony on 1 December. The RTS Ireland Awards took place on 16 April 2026, after the audience vote had closed on 6 April. What follows from the pattern is that the public vote is counted before the event, and the event is where the result becomes official. Any result announced outside the organiser's own channels, before the published date, should be treated as unverified.
Some are and some are not, and the organiser's published format states which. The People's Choice Award at the Charity Excellence Awards goes to the shortlisted finalist with the most votes, so the vote decides it outright. The Irish Made Awards 2026 work differently: their winners are chosen through a combination of public vote and an expert judging panel, which the organiser describes as ensuring fairness. The RTS audience choice award sits beside the society's own judging categories. The practical lesson for any voter is to check the selection rule first, because a vote that shares power with judges cannot deliver a result on its own.