Three Chinese companies have won the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Global Awards this year, marking the highest number of Chinese winners since the award's inception.
The 2026 WIPO Global Awards were presented to 11 enterprises at a ceremony in Geneva on Friday, selected from over 1,300 applicants across 126 countries and regions. The awards span six categories- environmental protection, information and communication technology, food and agriculture, health care, creative industries and sports - and recognize small and medium-sized enterprises and startups that successfully combine innovation with intellectual property strategies to drive growth and development.
"In the last five years, the program has been growing in the number of participants, in the diversity of the economic clusters where the companies are coming from, and in the geographic diversity or inclusion. So what we can indicate here as a feature is that, for example, we have identified AI technologies in most of the companies that they have won, even though they are coming from different clusters, like for example, health or agriculture or even from creative industries," said Marcelo Di Pietro, director of the WIPO Global Awards Program.
This year, three Chinese companies, from the healthcare and environmental protection sectors, won the award.
"Those awards show that there is a very huge presence of Chinese enterprises, small enterprises, and even startups in those very, very innovative fields and very useful as well," said Sylvie Forbin, Deputy Director General of WIPO.
For the winning companies, the honor is not only a recognition of their innovation and IP strategies, but also opens new doors for international cooperation.
"I think the award carries three layers of meaning. First and foremost, it is WIPO's recognition of our company's innovation. Secondly, it validates the value of the technology and products we offer. And thirdly, through the training and workshops WIPO has organized for us over the past few days, we have gained valuable insights into better organizing our IP strategy, which will be extremely helpful for our international expansion," said Xiang Jianping, founder and CEO of Hangzhou Mailiu Technology Co., Ltd., and one of the Chinese awardees.
Unlike traditional innovation awards, the WIPO Global Awards provide ongoing support to winners through IP strategy guidance, expert mentoring, international networking and global promotion, helping them refine business strategies, accelerate commercialization and bring their innovations to market more effectively.
From the lab to the market, and from local to global, intellectual property is becoming a vital pillar of innovation. As more Chinese companies actively integrate into the global innovation network, Chinese innovations are reaching the world stage at an accelerating pace through international platforms.
Three Chinese firms win WIPO Global Awards, setting new record
