Starboard has been named Brand of the Year at the 2026 Supconnect Awards, the 17th edition of the industry's longest-running SUP awards. It marks the sixth time Starboard has taken the title, a run that reflects three decades of work across design, construction, and athlete support.
The Supconnect Awards judge brands on four criteria: ambassadorship, involvement, performance, and support. Winners are decided through a mix of public voting, retailer and industry feedback, the Supconnect advisory board, and the editorial team. Starboard earned the top honour on the strength of its product range, its dealer support, and its results across multiple disciplines over the past season.
Starboard has been named the 2026 Supconnect Brand of the Year, recognizing another outstanding year of innovation, performance, and leadership within the stand-up paddleboarding industry. Throughout the past season, Starboard continued to set the benchmark across multiple disciplines, delivering award-winning products while supporting elite athletes, grassroots events, retailers, and paddlers around the world.
From earning top honors in the Best Race SUP and Best All-Around SUP categories to receiving consistent praise from retailers for the strength of its product lineup and dealer support, Starboard demonstrated excellence across every level of the sport. Combined with strong backing from the paddleboarding community during this year's voting, the brand exemplifies the values of the Supconnect Awards through exceptional product quality, industry leadership, and lasting contributions to the growth of stand-up paddleboarding, making Starboard a deserving recipient of the 2026 Supconnect Brand of the Year award.
— SUPConnect Magazine
Starboard Go and AllStar win Gear of the Year
Alongside Brand of the Year, Starboard collected two Supconnect Gear of the Year wins in the 2026 awards. Both are boards built for very different paddlers, which is part of the point.
Starboard Go, Best All-Around SUP
The Starboard Go took the all-around category for its balance of stability, glide, and everyday versatility. It suits recreational cruising, family sessions, fitness paddling, and anyone building confidence on the water, which is exactly what an all-around board is meant to do. SUPConnect called it a benchmark in the category, and paddlers, retailers, and testers scored it highly across the board.
Starboard AllStar, Best Race SUP
The Starboard AllStar took the race category for its blend of speed, stability, and control across technical courses, open water, and flatwater. Years of refinement on the international racing circuit sit behind it, and that track record is a large part of why it remains one of the most trusted race boards in the sport.
Those two wins fed directly into the Brand of the Year decision. SUPConnect named the Best Race and Best All-Around titles among the reasons Starboard stood out, so the brand honour rests on real, checkable results rather than reputation alone.
The people behind the win
An award like this is never really about a logo. It's about the people who stand behind it.
It belongs to the team pushing the brand and its products forward every day, the ones who design, test, refine, and sweat the small details long before a board reaches the water. It belongs to the distribution partners and dealers around the world who carry Starboard, service it, and put the right gear under the right paddler. And it belongs to the athletes who trust the brand, line up on Starboard equipment, and ride it at the highest level, season after season.
Brand of the Year is not a single-product prize. It rewards consistency across a whole range, and across everything around the product too: the athletes a brand backs, the events it supports, and the retailers and paddlers it serves day to day. Winning it six times means doing that well, repeatedly, as the sport and its standards keep moving. None of it happens alone.
So to everyone who paddles a Starboard, races one, teaches on one, distributes one, or sells one, and to every Starboard fan around the world, this recognition is yours!
Thanks to SUPConnect
A word of thanks to SUPConnect for running the awards year after year. Seventeen editions in, the awards have become one of the sport's most respected benchmarks, and the work behind it, weeks of evaluation, community voting, and input from retailers, athletes, and industry experts, is what gives the recognition its weight. Starboard is grateful to be part of it.
