16 June 2026

Jessie Ridler: Judging at Eurobike 2026 Awards

Minimal’s Engineering Project Manager, Jessie Ridler, details her experience judging for the Eurobike Awards 2026.

Joining the jury for the Eurobike Awards 2026 provided a unique opportunity to collaborate with peers from the wider cycling industry, and celebrate the breadth of innovation in the space.

The jury brought together six judges from across the cycling world: Andrea Reidl, freelance journalist and author; Milosz Kedracki, founder and editor of bikeBoard; Jan-Willem van Schaik, editor-in-chief of Bike Europe; Marco Brust, managing director of Velotech; and Nils Holger Moormann, multiple award-winning designer and art director.

The process ran in two stages. Firstly, an online pre-selection phase gave us the chance to work through the huge volume of entries methodically before arriving in Frankfurt for two days of in-person judging.

Getting hands-on with the products in Frankfurt was where the real judging happened. Two days of testing, riding and debating across 10 categories - from bicycles and e-bikes through to digital solutions and adventure equipment - and scored against five criteria: innovation, functionality, sustainability, design and workmanship.

There's no substitute for in-person evaluation, understanding how a product works, how it feels, how intuitive it is to use and for the bikes and e-bikes, actually riding them. You get a real sense of the ergonomics, the usability and what separates a good product from a great one.

My background is in design engineering and micromobility which gave me a particular lens on the Light Electric Vehicle and E-Bike categories, but what made the jury so rewarding was hearing the range of perspectives around the table. A designer sees something an engineer doesn't. A journalist asks questions a retailer wouldn't. This was the value of a diverse jury. The discussions that emerged from those different perspectives challenged my thinking more than any other part of the process.

Between us, we selected 22 products to receive a Eurobike Award, with Gold awarded to the standout entries and two special awards recognising sustainability and startup innovation. The winners will be announced at the ceremony on 24th June in Frankfurt, with all winning products on display in Hall 12.

Eurobike exists to surface the best of what this industry is producing, the innovations, the solutions and the products that move cycling forward in every direction. Being invited to contribute to that process felt like a genuine honour.

The breadth of what we assessed, from high-performance road bikes to cutting-edge components to urban mobility solutions, is a reminder of how wide and varied the cycling world really is.

At Minimal, our focus is a specific part of that picture: using purpose-built electric cargo bikes to transform how commercial goods move through cities. It's a different problem to the ones many of the entries were solving, but it sits within the same broader ambition: better, smarter, more sustainable ways to move.

I’ll be with the Minimal team when we exhibit at Eurobike next week, showcasing the Pedal 4 and our fleet management software, and giving an exclusive look at our Pedal 2 vehicle prototype, all at Stand B04 in Hall 12.

If you're attending, come and find us and give the Pedal 4 a ride for yourself.