The IIF Forecasting Practice Competition aims to recognize and showcase businesses or institutions that achieve significant impact by applying forecasting, while contributing to the forecasting community. The first-place winner will receive the IIF Award for the Impact of Forecasting in Practice, plus a $10,000 prize. The finalists from the competition will contribute summaries of their work for publication in Foresight: the International Journal of Applied Forecasting. See the papers from the 2025 competition here (link accessible to Foresight members only).

Award Amount

$10,000 will be awarded to the first-place winning team.  A non-cash recognition may be issued to the second-place runner-up, at the committee’s discretion. 

Application Timeline 

  • Call for submissions – Application submission window is open now! 
  • Initial application deadline November 1, 2026 
  • Finalists announced by December 18, 2026 
  • Finalist application deadline January 31, 2027 
  • Conference and presentations at the Foresight Practitioner Conference on March 4-6, 2027

Requirements

  1. Entrants are companies or institutions, not individuals.
  2. Each entrant may be represented by a team of up to 5 contributors.
  3. Finalist teams must attend the Foresight Practitioner Conference in person to participate in the Final Round.
  4. To enter the competition, you must agree that if you become a finalist your team must submit the details of your methodology and impact for publication in a Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting special issue, according to the timeline requested by the editors.  
  5. Impact statement must be in writing from an executive (typically a VP or above) of the business or institution.

Evaluation Criteria

Applications will be evaluated in five key areas:

  • Impact to the business or institution: Quantifiable achieved value-add to the business or institution (should be large in terms of both overall impact as well as relative to the size of the business). Carefully denote any costs the organization incurred and elaborate on which gains are realized versus unrealized. 
  • Impact on the forecasting community through advancing a technology, sharing best practices, publications, etc.
  • Challenge: What was the original situation? How did you overcome challenges? How did the stakeholders react to the solution? Is the solution scalable to other business lines or industries?
  • Attribution: Why is your implementation related to forecasting, and what portion of the value-add is attributable to forecasting? What portion of the value-add was attributed to the entrant’s efforts? 
  • Quality: Quality of the application and presentation.

Initial Application (due at 11:59pm ET on November 1, 2026) 

Entrants should submit a summary (maximum 5000 characters) including the following details:

  • The name and description of the entrant (company or institution). Contributors’ names and affiliations. 
  • Short description of the forecasting application and its current implementation status. 
  • Rough estimate of the impact of the work (financial or otherwise) 
  • Rationale for why the application should be considered for the award. 
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Final Application (due at 11:59pm ET on January 31, 2027) 

The final application will consist of a maximum of 1,500 to 2,000 words, including specifics (methodological details, application details, description of the business process, calculation details of the value-add, and impact statement from an executive) of their implementation.  Finalists are expected to receive legal authorization for disclosure in advance to be considered for the award. 

Finalists will be selected primarily on the realized value-add of their application, attributable to the entrant’s forecasting efforts, as well as the other evaluation criteria listed above. 

Competition Final Round (at Foresight Practitioner Conference, March 4, 2027) 

To be considered, invited finalists must present their work at the Foresight Practitioner’s Conference (presentations will be recorded), and must agree to have their submission considered for publication in a future issue of Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting. 

Competition Committee

The Competition Committee is responsible for organizing and administering the competition. Committee members may also serve as judges for the competition.

Committee members:

Lauren Davis (Co-Chair)
Chris Fry, Google (Co-Chair)
Mike Gilliland
Matthew Schneider

Past events

2026 Finalists: Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA); Futseka Group; Optiwiser A.I. Solutions GmbH; Unilever

2026 Winner: Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA)

2026 Second Place Runner-Up: Unilever

Read the competition winner announcement here.  The recording of PATA’s reprisal presentation is available on the IIF YouTube Channel @IIForecasters.

2025 Finalists: HP; Ipiranga; Wayfair; OpenGrid Europe; Maersk

2025 Winner: Wayfair

Read Press Release here.  The recording of Wayfair’s reprisal presentation is available on the IIF YouTube Channel @IIForecasters.