Newspaper, radio and magazine readers' polls in Ireland
Readers choice polls in Ireland are run by named publishers on their own websites. Hot Press published the shortlists for its 2026 Readers' Poll, the Hotties, on 3 April 2026 and invites readers to vote through an online form. Irish Country Magazine's Irish Made Awards printed a hard deadline on its 2026 voting page: voting closes September 8th at midnight, and votes after this time will not be counted. On radio, 98FM's Best of Dublin Awards 2025 collected more than 118,000 votes across 14 categories, all cast by listeners. Each publisher sets its own dates, limits and counting rules on the page that carries the form.
Facts on this page last confirmed on 8 October 2026.
Publishers that run the polls
The clearest way to map readers choice polls in Ireland is by the publisher that owns each one. Hot Press, the music magazine, runs the Hot Press Readers' Poll, known as the Hotties, and announced the 2026 shortlists on 3 April 2026 with a direct invitation to readers: vote for your favourites through the form on its site. The poll is a reader award in the full sense, because the shortlist exists so that the audience, not the editorial desk, picks the winners.
Magazines on the lifestyle side run a parallel structure. Irish Country Magazine presents the Irish Made Awards, and its 2026 voting page carries the form along with the deadline in the same place, so a reader sees the closing date before casting anything. The award celebrates Irish-made products and businesses, and the public vote is the mechanism that decides the outcome.
Radio stations join in through listener awards tied to a city or region. 98FM ran the Best of Dublin Awards in 2025 and reported more than 118,000 votes across 14 categories, stating that the winners were voted for by its own listeners. That framing matters: the station treats the vote count as the result, and reports the volume of participation as part of the story.
The pattern across all three is the same shape with different owners. A publisher builds an audience, opens a poll that flatters its relationship with that audience, publishes the shortlist and the form, and then counts what arrives. Readers who want to take part should start from the publisher's own site rather than a copied version, because deadlines and conditions live there.
Two of these three polls sit inside an annual cycle that repeats, so the fastest check for a new year is the publisher's news or vote section, where the announcement appears before anything else.
- Hot Press dated its 2026 announcement 03 Apr 26, which is how precisely these pages record their own timeline.
- A poll without a named publisher behind it is not one of these awards, and the safest response is to close the tab.
When voting opens and closes
Deadlines on these polls are printed, dated and enforced to the minute. Irish Country Magazine's 2026 Irish Made Awards voting page states the rule in one sentence: voting closes September 8th at midnight, votes after this time will not be counted. That is the exact wording a reader needs, and it removes any argument about a form that still looked open. A form that accepts a vote is not the same as a vote that gets counted.
Opening dates work differently, because a poll opens when the publisher decides to publish the shortlist. Hot Press opened the 2026 Hotties voting when it revealed the shortlists in early April, which is the normal sequence: shortlist first, form second, deadline last. A reader who wants to vote early in the window watches for the shortlist announcement rather than a calendar date announced in advance.
The practical advice follows from how these pages work. Check the voting page itself for the closing date, because publishers put the deadline next to the form on purpose. Do not rely on a social post, a screenshot or a message forwarded from someone else, since none of those carries the publisher's authority. If the page shows a date, that date is the rule.
Last-minute voting is the riskiest timing of all. A form submitted minutes before midnight assumes that the clock, the connection and the publisher's counter all agree, and none of that is in the reader's control. Votes after the stated cut-off are excluded by the organiser's own printed words, so the only safe margin is one the reader builds in personally.
- The Irish Made Awards sentence about midnight is quoted on the organiser's own voting page, which is why it can be relied on.
- Each publisher sets its own calendar, so dates from one poll say nothing about another.
How the votes get counted
Counting at these publishers is a two-step business: the form collects the votes, and the conditions printed with the form decide which of them survive. Irish Country Magazine says outright that late votes will not be counted, which tells you the counter works against a deadline, not against whatever the form happens to accept. A publisher that prints that sentence has told you that acceptance and counting are separate events.
Volume is part of how a radio poll presents itself. 98FM reported over 118,000 votes across 14 categories for the 2025 Best of Dublin Awards, a figure that only makes sense if the station's system tallies each submitted vote into a total per category. The winners were then named as the ones voted for by listeners, which puts the arithmetic, not an editor's pick, at the centre of the result.
What a reader cannot see is the internal machinery: deduplication, timing checks and any moderation the publisher applies before announcing. That is normal, and it is also why the conditions matter more than guesses about the backend. A publisher that limits one vote per person will say so in its conditions; one that allows repeat voting on a schedule will say that instead. The printed rule is the visible part of the count.
Announcement of results closes the loop. The publisher publishes winners under its own name, and at that point the count is final, because the organiser's stated mechanism was the vote itself and the deadline has passed. Challenges do not reopen a readers' poll in the way a complaint might reopen a judged award.
- The counter, the deadline and the printed conditions together are what the publisher actually relies on.
- Nothing on these pages suggests the totals are estimates; publishers report them as counted submissions.
What the vote does not decide
A readers' poll measures participation, and it is worth saying plainly what that means. In the 98FM Best of Dublin Awards, the result was the vote: listeners cast 118,000-plus ballots across 14 categories and the winners followed from those ballots. In the Hotties, the shortlist came from the magazine and the ranking came from the readers, so the editorial contribution sits at the nomination stage rather than the final count.
That division of labour is the honest answer to who decides. Publishers choose the categories, publish the shortlists, write the conditions and run the counter. Readers choose, within that frame, which entry wins. Neither side swaps roles: the magazine does not vote for you, and the reader does not extend the deadline.
A vote cast in one of these polls is an expression of preference inside a promotional competition, nothing more. It carries no payment, no prize to the voter unless the publisher's conditions say so, and no obligation. The reader's protection is the published conditions page, and the reader's leverage is simply casting a valid vote inside the window.
The wider point for anyone following these awards across a year is to separate the two kinds of best-of list that circulate. Some are voted, like the ones above. Others are editorial selections where no public ballot exists at all. The publisher's own page says which is which, usually in the first paragraph of the announcement, and that one sentence settles the question.
- If an announcement never mentions a form or a vote, the list is editorial and voting is not part of it.
- A reader's honest option when a shortlist disappoints is to skip that category, not to work around the rules.
What the law and the rules say
A readers' poll is a promotional competition run under conditions the publisher writes and publishes. Those conditions decide who is eligible, how many votes one person may cast and what happens to votes the publisher judges invalid. Because the publisher is both organiser and judge, the enforceable text is the one on its own voting or terms page, not a summary on another site. Reading those conditions before voting is the whole of the legal work a reader needs to do. If a third party offers votes for payment, the contract sits with that third party, not with the publisher, and the publisher's rules decide whether the votes stand.
What we will not do
This page does not sell votes and does not arrange votes for any poll named here. We do not contact publishers on a reader's behalf, we do not submit forms for anyone, and we never claim to influence a result. We do not state who won a category beyond what a publisher has printed itself, we do not quote a rule we have not read on the organiser's own page, and we do not give advice on how to get round a one-vote limit or any other condition a publisher has set. What this page does is describe the mechanics in plain words.
Quick answers
Three named publishers anchor the picture. Hot Press runs the Hot Press Readers' Poll, the Hotties, and revealed the 2026 shortlists on 3 April 2026 with an online form for readers. Irish Country Magazine runs the Irish Made Awards, where the public votes for Irish-made businesses and products. On radio, 98FM runs the Best of Dublin Awards, which in 2025 drew over 118,000 votes across 14 categories from listeners. Each poll lives on the publisher's own site, and each publisher sets its own categories, dates and conditions, so the reliable source for any of them is the voting page that publisher maintains.
Opening follows the shortlist and closing follows a printed deadline. Hot Press opened 2026 Hotties voting when it revealed the shortlists in early April, which is the usual sequence for these polls. Irish Country Magazine put the closing rule directly on the 2026 Irish Made Awards voting page: voting closes September 8th at midnight, and votes after this time will not be counted. That wording is the reader's guarantee in both directions, because it fixes the end of the window and states the consequence of missing it. There is no shared calendar across publishers, so check each voting page individually rather than assuming one poll's dates match another's.
The visible mechanism is a form, a deadline and a counter. Irish Country Magazine's voting page for the Irish Made Awards pairs the form with the closing sentence about midnight on September 8th, and states plainly that votes arriving after that point will not be counted. That tells you counting works against the deadline, not against what the form happens to accept. Hot Press collects Hotties votes through an online form against its published shortlists. What stays invisible is any internal check the publisher applies before announcing winners, which is exactly why the printed conditions, not guesses about the system, are the part a reader can rely on.
The mechanism differs by list, and the publisher's own page says which one applies. In 98FM's Best of Dublin Awards 2025, the winners were the entries voted for by listeners across 14 categories, with more than 118,000 votes cast, so the arithmetic decided it. In the Hotties, Hot Press supplies the shortlist and readers supply the ranking, meaning editors shape the field and the audience picks the winners. Editorial best-of lists also exist, where no public vote runs at all, and those are announced without a form. The first paragraph of any announcement normally names the mechanism, and that single sentence settles the question.
Whatever the limit is, the publisher prints it. Irish Country Magazine's Irish Made Awards page fixes one boundary in print, the midnight deadline after which votes will not be counted, and any per-person limit sits in the same conditions alongside it. 98FM's Best of Dublin Awards counted 118,000-plus submissions in 2025 and reported them as listener votes, with the station as the judge of what stands. The honest reading is that the conditions page governs: it states eligibility, vote frequency and what happens to invalid submissions. A vote outside those conditions risks exclusion, and the publisher's decision on that is final because the organiser wrote the rule.
Publishers check votes against their own published conditions and their own systems. The deadline is the clearest visible check: Irish Country Magazine states on the Irish Made Awards voting page that votes after midnight on September 8th will not be counted, so the timestamp is judged against a printed rule. Volume reporting, like 98FM's figure of over 118,000 votes across 14 categories, shows that every accepted submission feeds a tally per category. Any further checks, such as limits on repeat submissions, live in the conditions the publisher writes. What a reader sees is the form, the deadline and the announcement; the counter and its rules belong to the publisher.