DMA Breakthrough Award 2025

We’re delighted to announce that Barclays will be partnering with us for the DMA Breakthrough Award for the third year in a row.

“After the success of last two years, we’ve chosen to partner with the DMA Awards programme again for 2025” said Matt Conner, Digital and Innovation Director, Barclays UK, he continues “We believe it provides a fantastic opportunity for the next generation of emerging UK talent to showcase their capabilities, catching the attention of marketing and agency leaders from a diverse set of sectors and disciplines”.

The Breakthrough Award provides aspiring creative marketers up and down the UK the opportunity to:

• Add real client work to their portfolios.
• Experience what it’s like to work on a real-life creative brief.
• Gain invaluable experience pitching their work to a panel of judges.
• Have their talent recognised by industry greats at the DMA Awards.

“Last year we loved meeting the next generation of marketeers” said Matt Conner, Barclays UK, “we were incredibly impressed with the calibre of the pitches and the range of ideas the teams brought to us — we are really excited to see what this year’s students bring”.

This year's brief challenges participants to make Barclays the go-to choice for graduates and craft a targeted, digital creative strategy that speaks directly to this audience.

DMA Breakthrough Award 2025 Brief

After reviewing all the entries, we invited a shortlist to one of our regional heats Edinburgh, London, Manchester, Cardiff in November with a regional winner being crowned at each.

Our finalists this year were:

North: Maya Chamma & Nadia Socha, Manchester Metropolitan University
Scotland: Thomas Allcock & Aleksandra Kacprzynska, Edinburgh Napier University
South: Daisy Calloway Pile & Elliott Manacchini-Godfrey, University of the Arts
West: Shannon Northcott Comer & Sean Gilham, University of Gloucestershire

Our regional winners pitched to the senior leadership team at Barclays at Canary Wharf on the afternoon of Tuesday 2 December 2025, just ahead of the DMA Awards at Old Billingsgate in the evening.

The winners Thomas Allcock & Aleksandra Kacprzynska from Edinburgh Napier University were presented with their Award on stage by Ellie Taylor in front of 700 marketers.

If you’d like to take part in 2026, please get in touch by emailing dmatalent@dma.org.uk and we’ll share the new brief when it’s ready in Spring 2026.