30 September 2026
International Splash Awards 2026: three wins for digital ecosystems
Factorial won three awards at the International Splash Awards 2026, including first place in the Commerce category.
The International Splash Awards 2026 took place in September at DrupalCon Europe in Rotterdam, honouring outstanding Drupal projects from around the world. Interest keeps growing: this year saw 40 percent more submissions than in 2025. An independent jury of experts in web design, user experience, open source development and digital strategy judged every entry on concept, execution, emotional appeal, accessibility, performance, innovation and social relevance.
Three projects by Factorial were among the winners. They come from very different worlds: a manufacturer with an international dealer network, a foundation that helps people find their way through the German healthcare system, and an AI website studio. What they share is less obvious and more important. Each one started with a goal, not a technology.
Category: Commerce (Winner)
Finstral Compendium
One source, every market
Finstral, a family business from South Tyrol, makes windows, entrance doors and glass walls and works with more than 1,000 dealer partners in 14 countries. The brand promise: everything from a single source. The digital reality told a different story. Two terabytes of assets were scattered across different systems, the old extranet could only be used by insiders, and access management had become an obstacle for dealers, partners and architects alike.
The Compendium brings the promise into the system itself. As the central asset hub within Finstral Cloud, it connects Drupal as the experience layer with pixx.io as the DAM backbone and Algolia for search. Products, assets and access rules are defined once and synchronised across the entire ecosystem. All access for dealers, partners and employees runs through Drupal, which decides which partner in which market may see which price list. Architects receive time limited access through magic links, without creating an account. When an asset changes in pixx.io, the Compendium shows the new version within minutes.
Result: 60 percent more current and verified assets, 50 percent better discoverability, and one asset hub for 14 countries in 8 languages. The External Roles module created for the platform is published as open source on drupal.org. What was solved for Finstral is now available to the whole Drupal community.
Category: Non-profit (Runner Up)
UPD Foundation Advisory Cockpit
One cockpit instead of many switches
The Stiftung Unabhängige Patientenberatung Deutschland (UPD Foundation) was established in 2024 on a statutory basis. It offers free, independent and quality assured advice to everyone in Germany, from health insurance and patients’ rights to medical care and psychosocial support. Demand is rising quickly: from around 24,000 counselling contacts in 2024 to around 48,000 in 2025, with roughly 900 people seeking advice every week.
Since the foundation’s launch, counsellors have worked with separate systems for telephony, video counselling, knowledge management, office work and HR. None of them talked to each other, so counsellors had to switch between applications in the middle of sensitive conversations. The Advisory Cockpit is designed to bring all of this together in one interface, so that counsellors only need to open a single application each morning. The first version already covers written digital counselling, counselling by letter, contact data and case documentation. Telephony, online appointments, video and chat counselling follow step by step.
The platform is based on JOCI OS, Factorial’s platform for counselling organisations, and combines a Drupal backend with a Vue.js frontend in a headless architecture. Since it handles highly sensitive health data, privacy was an architectural decision from day one: end to end encryption and a granular rights and roles concept are part of the core.
Result: In production since early 2026, with 99.9 percent system availability in BSI C5 certified hosting and a portal for people seeking advice that has passed the BITV accessibility test. A foundation designed to grow with the organisation.
Category: AI-Enhanced Experiences (Runner Up)
Atelier by AIncient Labs
A website that listens
Most AI features in a content management system add a chat window to the admin screen. Atelier turns this around: the conversation is the interface. You describe what you need in plain language, and Atelier composes pages, generates and edits images, writes alt text and sets up the site.
One rule applies to every step: AI proposes, people decide. Nothing goes live without human approval. A defined set of components with brand presets keeps generated pages on brand and structurally sound, because the AI can only assemble building blocks that already exist. Every AI capability runs as an auditable workflow on the open FlowDrop engine, which also makes the product easy to extend.
Result: A website studio on Drupal that installs with one click, updates itself and is fully open source under GPL. It shows that Drupal can be the foundation for a new generation of AI products, not just a consumer of AI services.
Three International Splash Awards make us proud, but they belong to our team. Most projects start with the technology and figure out the rest later. Our team does it the other way round: first the goal, then how the work really happens day to day, then who decides what. Technology comes last, and by then the choice almost makes itself. These awards recognise exactly that work, and the people who do it every day.
Volkan Jacobsen, Managing Partner, Factorial.io
What would your platform look like if the technology came last?
At Factorial, we combine economic impact with technological excellence. Recognised internationally.
