EVH Awards 2026: nominate your favourite café, gym, kids' class, group or dog

From Monday 26 October until Sunday 15 November, you can nominate your favourite places, local help, groups and dogs in E20 for the EVH Awards. There are no judges. Anyone with an EVH account and a confirmed email can nominate, then vote, and that decides the winners.

There are eight categories: favourite café, favourite place to eat or drink, favourite gym, studio or trainer, favourite pet care, favourite local help, favourite kids' class, favourite community group, and dog of the year. You pick from what is already on EVH, so dog of the year comes from the E20 dog gallery, where Laphroaig, Milo and Chowie are among the entries. If what you want isn't there, each category page has a link to add it: list a business, recommend someone, add a group or add a dog to the gallery. It can be nominated once it's on EVH.

You can nominate one in each category, with a line on why if you like. The five most nominated in each go through to a vote that opens on Thursday 19 November, as long as at least three different people nominated them. Voting closes on Sunday 6 December and the winners go up on Friday 11 December, with how many people voted.

Two accounts on the same inbox count once. Members get no extra vote and EVH takes no sponsors, so nothing here can be bought, and how many votes each entry got is never published. Anyone shortlisted can ask to be left out. Dogs are shown by name and photo, never their owner's name.

Some of the people who made this year better aren't businesses or groups. If a neighbour helped you, tell me about them through the tip line. They won't be voted on. I'll share a few of these stories in December, and only name someone who has said yes.

Nominate on the EVH Awards page.

Photo: Victory Park, Stratford (December 2023) by DiscoA340, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Cropped.