Some grassroots award ceremonies end without a confirmed winners list for days or weeks. This one didn’t. McDonald’s and the Irish FA have officially announced the regional winners of the 2026 Grassroots Football Awards, now in their 26th year celebrating Northern Ireland’s football volunteers and clubs.

A Genuine Institution, Not a New Initiative

These awards aren’t a recent addition to Northern Irish football. Having run for 26 years, they’re among the longest-standing grassroots recognition programmes anywhere in the UK, specifically built to honour the clubs and volunteers whose work reaches young people and communities across the country.

Pat Jennings, the Northern Ireland and Tottenham goalkeeping legend who serves as the event’s ambassador, captured what the awards are really about. He described grassroots football as being built by people who turn up week after week, creating spaces where young people can grow in confidence and feel part of a team, and called the awards a genuine chance to thank the volunteers and clubs making that happen across Northern Ireland.

This Year’s Confirmed Regional Winners

Unlike some grassroots award ceremonies where results take time to surface publicly, the full regional winners list for 2026 is already confirmed and public.

Club of the Year went to four regional winners: Wellington Rec Youth, Lurgan Celtic, Cloughey, and Carryduff Colts.

The Football for All Award, recognising inclusive football initiatives, was won regionally by Danny Gallagher of Sion Swifts Sonics, Claire Coney of Ards Rangers Inclusion, Albert Foundry Academy, and Jim McCracken of Antrim and Newtownabbey Disability.

Volunteer of the Year went to Danny McGarry of St Mary’s YCFC and Gary Pitman of Abbey Villa.

Young Volunteer of the Year was awarded to Scarlet Rose Alfred of Scrabo Football Academy.

Wes Gregg Coach of the Year, named after the respected Northern Irish youth football figure, had multiple regional winners, including Ricky McMullan and Matthew McNeill, both of Bushmills United, alongside Jessica Bell of Antrim Town and Nicky Geddis of Glentoran Boys.

The People’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to Grassroots Football went to Tom McKenna, founder of Crewe United Football Club & Academy, recognising his work building the club from the ground up.

Local Stories Behind the National Headlines

What makes this award programme genuinely compelling is how local the coverage gets. In Bushmills specifically, two men from the same small town, Ricky McMullan and Matthew McNeill, both picked up Wes Gregg Coach of the Year honours in the same year, a detail that made its own dedicated local headline. Carryduff Colts’ Club of the Year win and Tom McKenna’s People’s Award both received standalone local coverage too, underlining how seriously these community wins are taken at a hyper-local level, not just as a national press release.

Context From Previous Years

Looking back helps put this year’s winners in perspective. Last year’s ceremony, held at Belfast City Hall, drew over 200 guests, with football legend John Barnes among the special guests alongside Northern Ireland manager Michael O’Neill. Barnes made a point worth remembering: grassroots football, in his words, isn’t really about unearthing tomorrow’s stars. It’s about giving children a safe, healthy environment to enjoy sport, and ensuring the people making that possible get properly acknowledged.

Previous years have also shown how far these awards reach. In 2018, Elaine Junk became the first woman elected to Mid-Ulster FA’s committee after winning the People’s Award, recognised specifically for her contribution to women’s football in the region, a reminder that this programme has a genuine track record of recognising meaningful, lasting community impact rather than one-off headline moments.

Why This Matters Beyond Northern Ireland

For readers elsewhere in the UK, Northern Ireland’s approach is worth paying attention to. A transparent, fully published winners list, released promptly and covered in granular local detail down to individual towns, is exactly the kind of clear, accountable recognition process every grassroots football nation should be aiming for. It stands in useful contrast to award ceremonies elsewhere where winners can remain unconfirmed publicly for extended periods.

The McDonald’s partnership behind the awards also connects to something bigger: McDonald’s Fun Football programme is set to deliver more than 10.5 million hours of free football activity across the UK, delivered in partnership with the Irish FA, Scottish FA, and Football Association of Wales. These regional award winners represent just the visible, celebrated tip of a genuinely large grassroots participation effort running quietly across the country.

Congratulations Where They’re Due

Every name on this year’s list represents real, ongoing work in local communities across Northern Ireland, from inclusive football coordinators to club founders to volunteers who show up match after match with little expectation of recognition. This year, for once, that recognition arrived clearly, publicly, and on time.

What Other Grassroots Programmes Could Learn From This

There’s a genuinely useful lesson here for grassroots football administrators anywhere in the UK. A confirmed, detailed, promptly published winners list does more than simply inform the public. It gives winning clubs and individuals something concrete to actually share, celebrate, and build local pride around, while the moment is still fresh. A vague “ceremony took place, details to follow” update, however well-intentioned, simply doesn’t carry the same weight or local news value as names, clubs, and categories published within days of the event itself.

For Northern Ireland’s grassroots football community specifically, this year’s list is also a reminder of just how broad “grassroots contribution” genuinely is. It spans disability-inclusive coaching, youth volunteering, club founders building something from nothing, and coaches quietly putting in years of unpaid effort in towns most people outside Northern Ireland have never heard of. That range, more than any single headline winner, is really what these awards are built to capture.