Indigenous digital skills programs, virtual reality medical training and an AI assistant developed with frontline care workers are among the winners of the 2026 TechDiversity Awards.
The winners were announced at the Sofitel Sydney Wentworth before more than 400 guests, in the first year the awards have been held in Sydney. Now in their eleventh year, the awards recognise organisations and initiatives using diversity, equity and inclusion to improve technology and strengthen the technology workforce.
The 2026 winners are:
Business Category: Fire and Wattle: Cultural Competency that Closes the Digital Divide. Fire and Wattle, with The EdTech Group and Deadly Coders, an AI-powered eLearning platform building culturally safe workplaces and stronger cyber awareness, founded in partnership with The EdTech Group and reinvesting a share of its profits into Deadly Coders to put digital skills in the hands of young Indigenous Australians.
Government Category: My QuitBuddy: Free Digital Support for Quitting Smoking and Vaping Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, with Miroma Project Factory. A free, government-funded cessation app, rebuilt from the ground up with behavioural science and personalised quit pathways, that has supported more than a million Australians to quit smoking and vaping.
Education Category: Vantari VR: Virtual Reality Training for Health Care Vantari VR, a clinician-founded Australian health technology company whose “flight simulator for healthcare” lets doctors, nurses and students practise life-saving procedures in a safe, scalable virtual environment before they treat real patients.
Campaign of the Year: Uniting NSW.ACT: Buddy: From Burden to Belonging Uniting NSW.ACT. An AI assistant co-designed with frontline care workers that turns admin into voice-to-text case notes, giving carers back the hours that matter most: time with the people they support.
Tech for Good Category: Closing the Digital Divide: Deadly Coders Online Deadly Coders, with The EdTech Group. An Indigenous-owned and led not-for-profit delivering fully subsidised online coding, robotics and digital-skills programs to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students across the country.
Overall Champion: Fire and Wattle: Cultural Competency that Closes the Digital Divide Fire and Wattle, with The EdTech Group and Deadly Coders. Drawn from the category winners, the night’s top honour went to Fire and Wattle: a model where commercial training and community outcomes are built into the same product, and where success for the business means more Indigenous students learning to code.
TechDiversity Foundation executive director Luli Adeyemo said the winning initiatives demonstrated what could be achieved when technology was developed by diverse teams and with the involvement of the communities it was intended to serve.
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