Singapore – October 02, 2026 -- AhaSlides has won the 2026 Training Magazine Network Choice Award in the Gamification & Game-Based Learning category, a prize decided entirely by votes from working L&D professionals rather than editorial judges.
Voting pool of 2,207 trainers cast 11,692 votes across 296 companies
The Choice Awards, run by Training Magazine Network's 100,000+ member base, collected ballots between April 28 and June 30, 2026, spanning seven categories. Training magazine Editor/Publisher Lorri Freifeld announced the results on September 29, 2026.
Platform engagement data shows 80.9% of audiences actively participate
AhaSlides reports that 44.6% of users engage with every interactive slide on the platform, which now serves more than 4 million presenters across 142,000-plus organisations and 24 million-plus participants. The company frames the data against research from Dr Gloria Mark of UC Irvine showing focused screen attention has dropped from 2.5 minutes to roughly 47 seconds over two decades, a shift it says trainers confront in every session.
Catalog of 30-plus ready-made training activities targets live-session facilitation
AhaSlides built out its library this year with activities spanning light engagement to clinical skills training. Duck Race offers a short break between learning segments, while Calm provides a full-screen guided breathing pause with ambient sound. Draw on Image allows trainers -- including medical instructors sharing ultrasound scans with nurses -- to annotate visuals directly during a session.
Escape Room launches to all users in October 2026 after winning internal hackathon
The newest addition, Escape Room, has teams race against a clock to solve clues and apply training content to exit a scenario. It took first place and the Most Loved award at AhaSlides' September 2026 hackathon before being scheduled for company-wide rollout this month.
Reporting and survey tools expand ahead of planned self-paced e-learning launch
Beyond live sessions, AhaSlides upgraded its reporting dashboards for post-session analysis and introduced surveys for pre- and post-training feedback collection. Self-paced e-learning is next on the company's roadmap, intended to let learners continue progress between live facilitated sessions.
"We're grateful for this one, because trainers voted for it," said Dave Bui, CEO of AhaSlides. "Our job is to make engagement easy: a trainer shouldn't have to design a game from scratch to get a room involved."
Kassy LaBorie, a keynote speaker and recipient of ATD's 2026 Talent Development Outstanding Professional Award, said the platform gives her creative ways to draw audiences into training sessions.