Blog article: Toronto Open Data Awards 2025 

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Purpose

Recognizing projects and people that push open data forward in Toronto. From impactful community tools to smart visualizations, this is your chance to showcase how open data made a difference. 

Key Dates 

Nominations Open: June 2025 
Deadline to Submit: November 30, 2025 @ 5:00 p.m. (EST) 
Winners Announced: January 2026 
Award Ceremony: February/March 2026 

Where

Winners and select submissions will be featured on the City of Toronto Open Data Portal and showcased in the Open Data Gallery. Awards will be presented at a ceremony in early 2026, with possible citywide representation & delegates. Winners will also be highlighted across our social media channels. 

How to Apply

You can apply using the form here. Submissions and nominations will be open for five months. Feel free to nominate others or share the form with anyone working on something noteworthy. 

Criteria for Submission

To help us fairly evaluate submissions, please structure your nomination to answer the following questions. Note: All projects will be judged using a rubric aligned to these questions.

Criteria 1: Impact 

1. What problem does this project aim to solve? Provide background and a clear problem statement. 
    

2. What potential impact has the project made? Include any known measurable outcomes, estimated cost/time savings, downloads, improvements in quality of life or any other metrics. 

Criteria 2: User-centricity 

3. Who is the user or audience? Briefly describe the target users the project was built for. Include equity considerations if applicable. 
    

4. What kind of user engagement or feedback was part of the work? Describe the nature and level of collaboration with users or partners. 

Criteria 3: Innovation 

5. What resources and timeline were involved? Share context about the effort required, collaborators, and how the project came together. If appropriate, tell us about the technology used to execute the project. 

6. What makes this project stand out? Highlight the ‘X-factor’ that differentiates it from others. How does it make use of open data in a new or novel way?  

Award Categories

The top awards will be given to the three highest scoring projects, and honorable mentions will be given to the projects that score highest in each of the three criteria (e.g. the most impactful project, the most user-centred project and the most innovative project).  

We will also award an honorable mention to the top-scoring project submitted by a post-secondary student. 

Eligibility

• Open to everyone. Any individuals, students, developers, researchers, civic groups, public servants, companies, & start-ups. 
• Projects must use at least one Toronto open dataset from open.toronto.ca. 
• Submissions can be self-nominated or nominated by others. 
• Projects from the last 3 years to present are eligible. Repeat entries welcome from past years 
• Active project submissions from past years are eligible to enter, past winners are not eligible to submit the same project.

Need Help

We’re happy to answer questions. Email us at opendata@toronto.ca 
Submit by November 30, 2025 @ 5:00 p.m. (EST)