Automotive News PACE Awards is a annual media recognizing excellence in Manufacturing. Organized by Automotive News, it covers the Global region. Established in 1995.
The Automotive News PACE Awards have honored innovation by automotive suppliers since 1995, when the trade publication launched the program with Ernst & Young. Open to suppliers worldwide, the award recognizes products, processes, materials, capital equipment, software and services that are genuinely new to the automotive industry and already in commercial use. An independent panel of judges drawn from industry, finance, research and academia reviews applications, conducts site visits and pitch sessions, and selects winners independently of the program's sponsors.
There are two tracks: the PACE Award for commercialized innovations already sold to OEM or industry customers, and the PACE Pilot for pre-commercial innovations that have passed a working-pilot stage. Winners are announced at the annual PACE ceremony and featured across Automotive News print and online coverage — for a supplier, a PACE trophy is a widely understood proof point of R&D capability when pitching OEMs, and outside analyses note the winner list skews toward suppliers with the deepest R&D track records and longest histories of commercializing innovation.
For the 2026 cycle, applications opened 13 October 2025 and closed 9 February 2026, with site visits and judge pitch sessions from April to June, finalists named in late July and winners announced in November; published fees were $2,900 per PACE Award application and $1,050 per PACE Pilot application, with a $500 late-extension fee. Strong entries make the commercial case concrete: name the production vehicle or customer application, quantify the performance or cost advantage over the prior state of the art, and be ready to demonstrate the innovation to judges on site.