About

The International Cheese & Dairy Awards (ICDA) is the benchmark for excellence across the global cheese and dairy industry - a competition where the world's best products are judged side by side, from farmhouse territorials to large-scale international producers, and where a win carries genuine commercial weight with buyers, retailers and consumers.

With a heritage stretching back over a century, the ICDA brings together every corner of the category in one competition. Cheese classes span the classic British territorials - Cheddar, Cheshire, Lancashire, Stilton and more - alongside dedicated classes for artisan and specialist makers, organic cheese, and national sections covering entries from across Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Beyond cheese, the awards recognise the best in milk, butter, cream, yogurt, ice cream, quark and fromage frais, with further sections for health, wellbeing and nutrition products, plant-based entries, pairing products, and innovation in packaging and NPD.

Two features set the ICDA apart. First, its retail competition: the Retailer of the Year classes benchmark own-label and branded ranges across the UK and Ireland's grocers, judged blind, with fourteen category titles and two supreme retail trophies - The WIPAK Trophy for Supreme Cheese Retailer and The iff Trophy for Supreme Dairy Retailer. Second, its Foodservice Excellence Awards, which judge cheese and dairy the way professional kitchens use them - on functionality and performance as well as flavour, from cooking cheese to melt and stretch.

Every entry is assessed by an expert panel of graders, buyers and technologists, and the competition culminates in the trophy presentations - led by the Supreme Champion Cheese and Supreme Champion Dairy Product awards, the most coveted titles in the industry. In 2026, the Supreme Champion Cheese went to Lactalis-Mainland New Zealand, with Bourne's Cheshire Cheese named Reserve Supreme Champion and Champion UK, and The Wright Family Dairy taking Supreme Champion Dairy Product - results that illustrate the competition's genuinely international field and the enduring strength of traditional British cheesemaking.

The awards sit at the heart of the ICDA Awards & EXPO, a two-day trade event at Staffordshire County Showground, Stafford, UK. Alongside the judging and trophy presentations, the EXPO brings the industry together - producers, retailers, foodservice operators, technologists and suppliers - for exhibition, insight sessions and networking, connecting the category from bench to buyer in one room.