The folks at State Street Investment Management (SSIM) and six other fund firms may be popping some champagne in the Sunshine State this week.

Yesterday, the ETF.com team revealed the winners of the 2026 ETF.com Awards. This was the trade publication's 12th annual awards celebration and the pub's first awards since financial services conferences specialists Anil Aggarwal and Matt Middleton acquired a majority stake in ETF.com last year. For the first time, the ETF.com team moved the awards bash from New York City to Miami Beach, Florida, where it was part of Middleton's Future Proof Citywide conference (a four-day event that kicked off on Sunday).

SSIM leads the ETF.com awardwinners pack this year with four awards:

"best new U.S. fixed income ETF", for the SPDR SSGA IG Public & Private Credit ETF (PRIV);

"best new active ETF", for the SPDR Bridgewater All Weather ETF (ALLW);

"best new multi-asset ETF", for ALLW; and

"best new ETF", for ALLW.

The other big winners this time are Vanguard (with three 2026 ETF.com awards) and Bitwise (with two). The remaining winning firms (with one award each) were:

Defiance ETFs;

Fidelity;

Neos; and

Sprott.

Beyond the location and ownership change, the ETF.com team also broadly revamped their awards this year. They refocused the awards solely on ETFs (not on fund firms or related service providers), specifically only new ETFs (ones launched in the U.S. in 2025). That still left 100s of contending funds (by the count of Dave Nadig of ETF.com, by December 16, 2025 there were already 1,060 new ETFs launched last year. Later ETFGI data shows that the U.S. ETF and ETP industry increased, after factoring in both launches and liquidations, by 953 funds last year.)

Nadig explained that, while ETF.com's editorial team chose the 2026 ETF.com Awards nominees, voting on those nominees was open to all those with free ETF.com accounts. Voting opened on January 1, 2026 and closed on January 31.

"Our goal isn't just to create a PR opportunity and buy some Lucite trophies," Nadig wrote back in December. "It's to actually help investors find cool new ideas they might not have considered. We think that's something worth doing, and something worth celebrating." 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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