2025 Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards: What's New & How to Prepare

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  • May 16, 2025

The 2025 Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards are on the horizon, and this year brings a significant shift. Microsoft released its 2025 Partner of the Year Awards guidelines and rules on May 14th, 2025, signaling the official start of the award season for Microsoft Partners.

The nominations open on June 18, 2025, aligning with Microsoft Ignite later in the year. This extended timeline offers Microsoft Partners a valuable opportunity to develop compelling submissions that demonstrate their innovations and successes.

Whether you’re a returning winner or aiming for global recognition for the first time, now is the time to start acting. The competition is global, the categories are expanding, and Microsoft is increasingly focused on customer impact, AI innovation, and cross-cloud excellence. 

Nominations close July 18th, which means waiting until June to start creating case studies and preparing your submissions could leave you scrambling. Many participants are already acting on award strategies and preparing formal submissions to seize an early mover advantage.

Why Early Movers Win

The best award submissions don’t happen overnight. They’re the result of strategic storytelling, clear outcomes, and alignment with Microsoft’s evolving priorities, including AI, sustainability, and industry-specific transformation.

By preparing now, you can:

  • Identify your strongest customer success stories.
  • Map impact to Microsoft’s solution areas and partner pillars.
  • Gather testimonials, metrics, and technical detail while they’re still fresh.

This year, excellence isn’t solely about technology, but about proving your business delivers real-world results and innovation through Microsoft solutions.

What’s Different in 2025?

While we’re seeing many of the familiar, foundational award categories, 2025 introduces the Accelerate Developer Productivity Partner of the Year Award. This category identifies a new class of partners who are changing how apps are built faster, smarter and more secure using Microsoft and GitHub’s connected developer system. This award recognises innovators who are accelerating their developer productivity using tools such as GitHub Copilot, Azure DevOps and Visual Studio. 

Even though Microsoft is opening nominations later this year to align with Microsoft Ignite, preparing now is essential. The later timeline means tougher competition and higher expectations, but don’t let that surprise you - plan ahead so that you can stand out.

Get ahead of the curve, refine your narrative, engage customers for support, and put yourself in a good position when the submissions go live. 

Make 2025 Your Microsoft Partner of the Year Award Recognition Year

At Orange Bridge, we specialize in turning complex projects into powerful, award-winning stories. Our expertise has helped partners across Microsoft’s 400,000+ global partner ecosystem become winners and finalists, and gain recognition on a worldwide scale. 

As the industry’s leading content developers for the Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards, we merge extensive technology expertise and knowledge of the Microsoft technology ecosystem with a deep understanding of what makes a winning entry. We have achieved an 89% success rate since 2020, earning 14 wins and 6 finalist positions in 2024 alone. 

Orange Bridge offers a specialized Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards Submission Writing Service designed to help organizations increase their chances of securing success. 

Nominations close July 18th, so don’t wait any longer to begin organizing your customer stories and preparing your submission strategy. If you’ve delivered something great with Microsoft this year - let’s talk. Contact us now to start your 2025 Partner of the Year journey.

Learn more about how we’ve helped numerous organizations earn recognition at the Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards. 

 

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