EU Organic Awards 2026

The winners of the 5th EU Organic Awards were announced on 23 September 2026, during a ceremony in Brussels marking EU Organic Day.

This year’s winners offer two approaches to the organic transition: a region-wide network connecting thousands of organic businesses across Sardinia, and a small French municipality bringing food production directly into the heart of its community.

Best Organic Region/Bio-district: Distretto Sardegna Bio, Sardinia, Italy

Established in 2021, Distretto Sardegna Bio is Italy’s largest organic bio-district. Covering the whole Sardinia region, it brings together around 2,600 organic farms and businesses, 184,000 hectares of certified organic farmland and a population of around 1.57 million people.

The district's work reflects a broader idea: organic farming is not only about how food is produced, but about how territories organise themselves around food. Its approach is based on networking and cooperation, bringing producers, processors, public institutions and consumers together to strengthen local supply chains and create new opportunities for organic production. By connecting businesses, institutions and citizens across an entire region, Sardegna Bio is developing a model that places cooperation at the centre of the organic transition.

“We want to make an organic revolution in Sardinia.” - Andrea Campurra, President, Distretto Sardegna Bio

The district is also working on organic public procurement, rural energy communities, access to funding and opportunities to reach new markets. A central ambition is to bring more organic products into public and private canteens, connecting local production with everyday consumption.

Best Organic City: Mairie de Cussac-Fort-Médoc, Gironde, France

In Cussac-Fort-Médoc, a municipality of around 2,300 inhabitants in Gironde, France, the local authority has developed a municipal organic vegetable garden to supply its school canteen.

The project began on abandoned land in the centre of the town. And today, the farm supplies around 50% of the fresh vegetables needed for 230 daily school meals, contributing to menus that are more than 50% organic without additional cost.

And the impact goes even beyond. Located next to the school, the farm avoids transport and packaging for the vegetables it supplies. Surplus production is also distributed through local food aid initiatives and to restaurants and shops in the village. For the municipality, the project is also about reconnecting children with food production. School classes visit the farm, follow the crops from growing to harvesting and discover vegetables through tasting and cooking. The initiative creates opportunities for children to understand where food comes from while strengthening links between farmers, public services and the wider community.

The municipality sees this as part of a wider territorial approach to food sovereignty and local resilience: supporting local producers, developing sustainable public procurement and keeping food production within the community.

“This kind of small-scale local farms are starting to disappear. But where there is a will, there is a way. Start small, then improve and increase.” - David Ducasse, Municipal vegetable gardener, Cussac-Fort- Médoc

Conclusion

The two winner's approaches are different in scale, but share several principles: local cooperation, stronger connections between producers and consumers, a focus on the communities that run the food system, and a prioritization of local actors.

As EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Food Christophe Hansen highlighted during the ceremony, public procurement can play an important role in creating demand for organic food. He also stressed the importance of considering the longer-term costs of food-system dependencies when assessing the value of different approaches to agriculture and resilience.

The 2026 EU Organic Awards provide examples that other territories can adapt to their own circumstances, whether by building networks across an entire region or by starting with a small plot of land and a local school.