2026 Award Criteria
2026 Edition of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Criteria
The 2026 Baldrige Award Criteria are organized around six Categories that both enable and reflect organizational performance, resilience, and long-term success. There are four to 12 Results and Process questions (also called Award Criteria) within each of the six Categories. Since these Criteria will be used to evaluate a wide variety of organizations, it is important for evaluators to understand and consider your organization’s (or community’s) unique environment, which begins with your responses to a series of questions in the Organization/Community Profile.
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Community Award Criteria will be released shortly.
Award Criteria Overview
The Baldrige Award Criteria includes an Organizational (or Community) Profile and six Categories.
The Profile includes 18 context questions that seek important information relevant to the evaluation of the remaining six Criteria Categories. Within the Profile are 12 Description questions and six Situation questions. The Organizational/Community Profile questions are not evaluated independently but are used to better understand the applicant’s processes and results in the six Categories.
The six Categories include:
- Leadership
- Strategy
- Customer
- Organizational Intelligence (formerly Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management)
- Workforce
- Operations
Within these Categories, there is a combination of questions that ask for performance results and descriptions of key processes. Please read the instructions and Criteria questions carefully and provide complete responses. Your process descriptions should be responsive to the Process Evaluation Rubric, demonstrating that the process is systematic, well-deployed, aligned and/or integrated with what’s important to the applicant and to other processes, and has been improved based on evaluation. Your results should be responsive to the Results Evaluation Rubric and show three to five years of trended data and include your performance against relevant comparisons. Because we are seeking to identify national role models, relevant comparisons are best-in-class or top decile/top quartile and competitors, where available. An organization does not need to demonstrate role-model performance in all areas to become a Baldrige Award recipient, but Baldrige recipients usually demonstrate strength across many areas.
If you are unable to respond completely to a results or process question, you should explain why in the field provided. Missing information that is not explained is likely to impact your evaluation.
Full applications are due by July 1 at 8:00pm ET; applications will be submitted via online portal like with the 2025 cycle (the portal will be available on or around April 15, but applicants can begin to compile responses to questions now!).
There are space limitations for each question:
| Character Limit | Chart/Image Limit | |
| Organization/Community Profile Questions | Up to 3000 | Up to 3 |
| Results Questions | Up to 4000 | Up to 4 |
| Process Questions | Up to 3000 | Up to 3 |
Evaluation Rubrics
Baldrige Award examiners will use two Scoring Rubrics, one to evaluate Results and one to evaluate Processes.
Results Evaluation Rubric
For results responses containing charts, graphs, and tables: 1) data must be across years, not quarters, and 2) axis scale values must be provided (otherwise data will be disregarded).
Process Evaluation Rubric
Changes for 2026
In response to feedback from participants in the 2024-25 Baldrige Award process, we have made several significant changes related to the Award Criteria and application for 2026, including:
- Further streamlined and aligned the Award Criteria, now with six Categories that match the main Baldrige Framework.
- Eliminated most compound questions (questions that ask for multiple things within the same question) by parsing those into separate questions and/or eliminating some questions. This had the effect of reducing the amount of overall required information to be submitted in 2026.
- Moved organization- or community-specific “context questions” to the Organizational/Community Profile, making it easier for the applicant to answer them one time and only in one place.
- Further improved Scoring Rubrics, which will not only increase evaluation consistency, but serve as a thoughtful maturity pathway for all organizations and communities.
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