CBC/Radio-Canada has been named Broadcaster of the Year by the New York Festivals Radio Awards for a second consecutive year.
Celebrating the achievements of global creators in radio and podcasting, the public broadcaster was recognized “for consistently compelling and thought-provoking storytelling across its networks.”
Multiple top honours secured by CBC/Radio-Canada included several Gold Towers and one of the competition’s prestigious 2026 Grand Awards for the critically-acclaimed Sea of Lies, telling the true story of Albert Walker, a Canadian con artist whose trail of destruction stretches from rural Canada to the far corners of coastal England.
CBC productions claiming Gold included investigative podcast docuseries, Understood, for its four-part series Understood: Who Broke the Internet, in which journalist and author Cory Doctorow explores the concept of “enshittification,” tracing the internet’s decline from the optimism of 1990s tech utopianism to today’s fragmented digital landscape.
CBC Radio One’s Mainstreet PEI: Kindergarten to Grade 12 – Lessons in Life earned a Gold Tower for its docuseries, led by CBC reporter Sarah Keaveny Vos, which followed a group of students from their first day of kindergarten in 2013, through their high school graduation in June 2025.
Additional Gold Tower winners included Season 2 of The Outlaw Ocean Podcast from The Outlaw Ocean Project and CBC Podcasts, while Silver Tower awards were claimed by The Current / Audio Doc Unit – Seven Months with Makayla, Pure Hell: How Cocaine Exploded in Fentanyl’s Shadow, Judd Apatow – Q with Tom Power and See You in Court. Radio-Canada also took home a Silver Tower for Céline Dion: l’amour à D’eux.
CBC additionally earned 12 Finalist Awards, alongside six secured by Radio-Canada.
“To be named Broadcaster of the Year once again by the prestigious New York Festivals Radio Awards is an immense honour and a great source of pride for everyone at CBC/Radio-Canada,” said Natacha Mercure, General Manager, Audio and Radio, Radio-Canada, in an announcement. “As Canada’s national public broadcaster, we’re committed to sharing the authentic stories of communities from across the country on all of our platforms.”
“The wide range of our honoured audio productions, in both English and French, is a testament to our ability to speak to diverse audiences and to address a wide variety of subjects – from Céline Dion’s unifying music to complex and engaging stories like those explored in our podcasts Sea of Lies and The Outlaw Ocean,” she continued. “This distinction, along with all the individual award winners and finalists in different categories, also reflects the vitality and excellence of our audio and radio productions. Congratulations to all our teams whose exceptional talent is celebrated in this way.”
Other Canadian winners
TVO also claimed two awards, Silver for technology podcast, Me & Viv, which follows social scientist Alexandra Samuel as she creates a custom AI to help her navigate life, and a Bronze Tower for Arachnid: Hunting the Web’s Darkest Secrets. Season 4 of Cited Media environmental education podcast, Green Dreams, also captured a Bronze Tower. Find the full list of winners here.
