The winners of the award for technology journalists and content creators have been announced.
Just as was evident last year, this year there were hardly any entries for the Siemens Media Award that did not address the potential applications of artificial intelligence (AI). This trend clearly reflects the explosive growth of AI in nearly every area of life. The submitted articles, videos, and podcasts covered a wide range of topics, from education to agriculture, and from humanoid robots to religion, but the most frequently explored theme was clearly AI’s potential in healthcare, diagnostics, and treatment.
The Hungarian awards ceremony for the press award was held on the evening of April 2, where the work of journalists and content creators producing particularly high-quality work in the field of technology was recognized. Once again, entries were accepted for media pieces published between March 1, 2025, and February 28, 2026, that highlight how technology contributes to sustainability or the development of the economy and society. This year, the winner of the international company’s annual press award will be selected from among representatives of 11 countries: in addition to Hungary, Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Israel, Kazakhstan, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, and Slovenia also held competitions.
This year, a total of 37 entries were submitted by 19 entrants, which were once again evaluated by an independent panel of experts: Gyöngyi Sági, owner and editor-in-chief of digitrendi.hu; Enikő Vass, communications specialist; Péter Szigeti, content development and media specialist; and Márk Arató, head of communications at Siemens Zrt. The jury members scored the entries based on their relevance, originality, style, and the value the author added to the topic, which determined the final ranking.
The grand prize was awarded to Dániel Bolcsó (Telex.hu) for his piece titled “I Chatted with Jesus Christ,” which explored the role of AI avatars and chatbots in the realm of faith and religion, while presenting questions that raise serious moral dilemmas with appropriate humor and sensitivity in an easily digestible format.
The other two Media Awards went to entries showcasing pioneering domestic projects. Judit Kis (Forbes) won for her article titled “A Revolution in Bridge Inspection: A Team from BME Uses Artificial Intelligence to Protect Infrastructure,” presented BridgeAid—a solution based on sensors installed under bridges that monitors the load-bearing capacity, condition, and traffic passing over bridges—which play a key role in the road network—with greater precision than ever before.
In his article titled “Index in the Operating Room: First Spinal Surgery Performed with a Surgical Robot in Hungary,” Balázs Rádi (Index.hu) provided an on-site report on the use of a robotic technology that is brand-new in Hungary, maximizes patient safety, and spares doctors from significant radiation exposure, demonstrating how artificial intelligence maps the human body in a “video game-like” manner, making surgical procedures more precise than ever before.
In addition, the jury awarded Csaba Gyetván’s report titled “This Is How Used Tires Are Recycled” a special video prize for making this topic—which is of paramount importance from a sustainability perspective—accessible to the general public through its unique tone and direct approach.
The winning articles have also advanced to the Siemens regional competition, where an international jury will evaluate them alongside the winners of the press awards from other countries. The top five entries selected from the region will be invited to the international awards ceremony on May 22, 2026, which Budapest will host for the first time this year. The winner will be announced at the ceremony and will receive two tickets and hotel accommodations to the Salzburg Festival.
Balázs Rádi and Judit Kis at the awards ceremony. (Dániel Bolcsó and Csaba Gyetván were unable to attend the event.)
About the Awardees:
Dániel Bolcsó has been working as a journalist since 2014. He began his career at Index.hu; he has been a founding member of Telex.hu since 2020 and has served as an editor and reporter for the site’s TechTud section ever since. His work in science communication and popularizing science has been recognized with the Junior Prima Award and the Endre Hevesi Award. He was named Information Security Journalist of the Year in 2016 and IT Journalist of the Year in 2018. In June 2021, she received the Award for Quality Journalism for her coronavirus crash course article, and in 2023, she won the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA) Academic Journalism Award and took second place in the European Science Journalist of the Year award.
Judit Kis worked as a correspondent for MTI for more than 10 years; thereafter, as a freelance journalist, her articles appeared primarily in Magyar Mezőgazdaság and on Növekedés.hu. She has been a journalist at Forbes since 2021 and is currently a senior staff writer there. She won the Siemens Media Award’s national grand prize twice, in 2024 and 2025, and in 2025 she also took home the international Siemens Media Award grand prize.
Balázs Rádi is a journalist specializing in technology, economics, and healthcare. He graduated from Neumann János University in Kecskemét and was awarded the Hungarian National Bank’s Excellence Scholarship in 2019. Since 2022, he has been a senior staff writer at Index.hu and a contributor to the Public Life section.Csaba Gyetván is a television host and content creator. Since 2019, he has been the face, host, and producer of the educational television series *Made In Gyetván Csaba*, which airs on the Discovery Channel. Since 2012, he has been running his own blog and vlog under the name “Hogyan készül?” (How Is It Made?), with more than 100,000 subscribers on YouTube and 150,000 followers on Facebook.