Here's what brokers need to know before the August 14 nomination deadline
Mortgage professionals across Canada have until August 14 at 11:59 p.m. ET to submit a nomination for the 2026 Canadian Mortgage Awards (CMA), the industry's benchmark recognition programme now entering its 20th year. This year's edition spans 26 categories across broker, brokerage, lender, and industry segments, with winners revealed at a gala on November 25 at Rebel Toronto.
The window opened June 8 and is open to anyone working in the Canadian mortgage industry, including brokers, brokerages, lenders, business development managers, underwriters, agents, and service providers. There's no fee to enter, and self-nomination is permitted alongside nominations submitted by colleagues, clients, or employers.
Step 1: Submit the nomination
Nominations go in at canadianmortgageawards.com/nominate, where a nominator provides the candidate's contact details and a short case for why they belong in consideration. The clearest submissions tend to point to something concrete: volume growth in a difficult rate environment, a renewal handled well under pressure, or a client outcome that wouldn't have happened without the broker's involvement.
That specificity matters more this year than most. CMHC has projected that 1.15 million mortgages will come up for renewal across Canada in 2026, the largest single-year cohort on record, a wave that's reshaping which broker behaviours are worth recognising. Newcomers to Canada are also the fastest-growing borrower segment, a trend detailed in CMP's feature on the renewal wave reshaping the industry, which nominators in that space may want to reference directly.
Step 2: Further research begins
Once nominations close, the CMA research team doesn't rely solely on what's submitted. It draws on its own reporting through Canadian Mortgage Professional magazine to identify high performers who weren't put forward by name, so the shortlist reflects the full field rather than just those with an engaged network behind them.
Step 3: Excellence Awardees named
Excellence Awardees are named in every category except Lifetime Achievement and notified directly by phone or email. That designation alone places a professional among the country's top performers in their category. Each Excellence Awardee is then asked to complete a more detailed submission addressing the category criteria, kept confidential and shared only with the judging panel. Awardees are announced publicly in September.
Step 4: An independent panel decides
Detailed submissions go to an 11-member judging panel drawn from across the mortgage, real estate, and technology sectors, with voting running through October and November. Any judge with a conflict of interest in a given category must recuse themselves from it — a safeguard that's central to what gives a CMA win its credibility in the market.
Akshay Gupta, a commercial real estate mortgage agent at Foundry Mortgage Capital Corp. in Toronto and last year's Young Achiever of the Year, said that credibility carries beyond the ceremony itself. "I reference it in my professional profile and in client conversations," Gupta said, "because people deserve to know the calibre of the professional structuring their deal."
Step 5: Winners are announced November 25
A points-based system aggregates the panel's votes, with the highest-scoring Excellence Awardee in each category named the winner. Results are published live at the gala and across CMP's channels the same night. Brokers can look at CMP's coverage of last year's winners and what a CMA title changed for them before deciding who to put forward.
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