Accounting Cafe wins Innovation in Accountancy award

We are delighted that Accounting Cafe won the Innovation in Accountancy Award at the PQ Magazine Awards 2026 at the Bloomsbury Ballroom in London.

Of course it feels good to win and be recognised, but what matters more is that it represents a particular kind of innovation that is easily overlooked.

When people hear the word “innovation,” they tend to think artificial intelligence, new software, something that runs on a screen. And yet some of the most significant advances in any profession have little to do with technology. They are original ideas that, when put into practice, result in meaningful change. This is what the Accounting Cafe community has always been about.

Accounting Cafe was founded in 2021 around a simple question: where can accounting educators meet, share ideas, learn from each other, and have a greater say in the wider profession? The answer, at the time, was nowhere obvious. Educators are spread across universities, colleges, and private training providers, each operating within its own culture, its own pressures, its own competing priorities. Some were full-time academics balancing research alongside teaching. Others were working to tight pass-rate targets under relentless commercial pressure.

What each educator has is knowledge of how students think, where they struggle, what genuinely engages them. Most of it stayed within the walls of individual institutions, which seemed a waste.

In the five years since, the community has grown to more than 2,000 members worldwide. Over 400 educators have participated in our courses. Our financial education programme for 16–19 year olds, delivered by Accounting Cafe accredited teachers, is now running in 30 schools and colleges. The website carries more than 100 articles written by members, for members.

Our day-long Pop-up events combine lightning presentations with open workshops and, crucially, what we think of as white space: time set aside for people to simply talk with each other, discover shared concerns, and find colleagues across the country who are asking the same questions. At our most recent event in February, those conversations ranged from AI in the classroom to flipped learning, sustainable management accounting to how diversity can enrich the way we teach.

The team behind all of this is small: Toby York on community and development, Paul Jennings on education and practice, and Stuart Pedley-Smith on strategy and partnerships. The awards evening brought a particular pleasure: Stuart was also inducted into the PQ Hall of Fame on the same night. It is hard to think of a more fitting double, and no one who knows Stuart’s contribution to accounting education would argue with his recognition.

We run on what we cheerfully describe as a “not-for-loss” basis — no grants, no advertising, no sponsorship. We don’t believe there is an equivalent community elsewhere in education or the profession.

It’s a bit cheesy to say that the award belongs to everyone who has shown up, but it’s true. Our community only functions because it has active members who attend our events, contribute articles, share ideas, and give their time to make the community what it is. The innovation is the collective decision of hundreds of educators to take their knowledge beyond their institution’s walls and share it with the rest of us.

In the end, Accounting Cafe is a new kind of infrastructure for a profession that needed one, and we are hugely grateful to PQ Magazine for recognising it.

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How to cite this article: York, T. (2026) ‘Accounting Cafe wins Innovation in Accountancy award’, Accounting Cafe, 7 May. Available at: https://accountingcafe.org/2026/05/07/innovation-in-accountancy-award/ (Accessed: [insert date])