May 22, 2026
IES Boston Illumination Awards 2026: Four Firms, One Dominant Night
Nearly 500 attendees celebrated excellence, ingenuity, and standout projects
Boston, that relentless City of Champions, has learned to pace itself. Remarkably, the Celtics are not deep into a playoff run. The Bruins wrapped things up early enough that nobody had to choose between accepting an Honorable Mention and checking the score on their phone. For once, the lighting design community had the city's full, undivided attention, and they used it.
Close to 500 attendees packed into the 2026 IES Boston Illumination Awards, what may well have been the largest gathering the section has ever produced. Designers, manufacturers, reps, the occasional distributor: they were all at the Renaissance Boston Seaport Hotel on Thursday night.
The after-party ran late, fueled by the same DJ who has warmed up crowds for the six-time world champion New England Patriots. DJ Chris Roxx, it turns out, knows how to read a room whether the audience just won their umpteenth AFC Championship or a special citation for Lighting Control Innovation.
The Numbers Behind the Night
Twenty-one awards. Seventeen of them went home with four firms.
- CannonDesign Lighting Studio (5)
- HLB Lighting Design (4)
- Lam Partners (4)
- Sladen Feinstein Integrated Lighting (4)
The remaining four awards were split among four separate firms. The full summary of projects and firms is below.
What sharpens the picture even more is the geography. Nearly two-thirds of the recognized work happened outside New England entirely. The IES Boston section was, in effect, celebrating a national portfolio under a local banner.
Above: Matt Milanese of Abernathy Lighting Design accepts the 2026 Lighthouse Award
The evening's highest honor, the Lighthouse Award, went to a Rhode Island team that traveled to Indianapolis and took the checkered flag. Abernathy Lighting Design, a studio of Eos Lightmedia, took it for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum, an experiential project led by Jason Rainone, Luke Ellis, and Nicki Shaw.
While other firms stacked up multiple awards across a busy night, Abernathy collected one. It just happened to be the one that mattered most.
A Collaboration Worth Noting
Among the evening's most discussed moments came early, when the collaboration award was presented to Night Lights in New Lebanon. Approximately fifteen lighting design firms participated in the lighting festival, a Labor Day Weekend installation event where designers transform a rural property with creative light installations and invite the surrounding community to experience them.
Above: Sara Schonour and Shantel Schonour (front, center) organized Night Lights in New Lebanon, which earned a Collaboration Award at the 2026 IES Boston Illumination Awards.
When the award was announced, the stage became a minor spectacle: designers from numerous firms piled on to accept the recognition together. It was the most crowded the podium had been all night, and also the moment that felt least like a competition.
The Efficient Machine That Runs It
IES Boston runs a tight ship, and the crowd knows it by now. The sponsored tabletops give attendees plenty of time to catch up over dinner before the program begins, and at 8:12pm, when the awards get underway, the room is ready.
What follows is forty-five minutes of focused recognition: specialty honors and all twenty-one project awards, called, photographed, and done. Firms with multiple entries get their awards grouped so the same team isn't making three separate trips to the stage. Honorable mentions come up together in one efficient wave. The absence of acceptance speeches is not an oversight. It is the design.
At an event approaching 500 people, that pace is no small achievement. Nobody left checking their watch, and the after-party had plenty of night left in it when the last award was handed out.
The lights shined brightly on Thursday night. Boston's other championship teams are resting. And the lighting community, for one night at least, did not have to share the city with anyone else.
Lighthouse Award
Awards of Merit
Section Awards
Honorable Mentions
