The Association for International Broadcasting has announced a major new award that is dedicated to discovering and supporting new talent in the factual production sector. The inaugural AIBs Breakthrough Talent award will pay tribute to an individual whose emerging talent marks them out as a future leader in the factual media industry.

This new award is reserved exclusively to those working in factual productions who are under the age of 30. It will reward someone who is making a real difference in their chosen career – whether in front of, or behind, the camera or microphone.

The breakthrough talent award will be presented alongside the rest of the 2018 AIBs at the gala dinner in London on 7 November. Hosted this year by Bloomberg’s Mark Barton, the AIBs gala is attended by executives, producers, editors, journalists and key opinion formers from across the world. It’s an event where the world’s best factual productions across television, radio and online are showcased, and it’s somewhere that jobs have been secured in past years. Inaugural sponsors of this year’s AIBs are Celebro Studios and Signiant.

The new breakthrough talent award sits alongside the other 20 categories in this year’s AIBs. The AIBs are a truly international competition as work in any language can be entered. Over the past 14 years, winning entries have been in languages as varied as Czech, Arabic, Nepali, Hindi, Russian, Filipino and Spanish, as well as English.

The AIBs has a panel of independent judges who come from over 30 countries around the world, adding a further international dimension to the competition.

The AIBs are open for entry until 30 June 2018.