Now Announcing the 2025 Baldrige Award Criteria!

The process for the 2025 Baldrige Award, the nation’s highest recognition for excellence in organizational performance, is now underway, with the 2025 Baldrige Award Criteria now available.

The Baldrige Award Criteria are used to identify and recognize organizations that are U.S. role models of resilience and long-term success and from which other organizations can learn and improve. Feedback from customers and stakeholders, including from examiners and Baldrige Award applicants, was used to validate, refine, and improve the criteria and award process.

Key Award Process Dates

While interested applicants for the Baldrige Award may review the criteria now, the online application will open in late January. Other key process dates follow:

2025 Timeline

• January 28: Award application opens. 
• April 10: Eligibility portion of award application closes.
• May 22: Responses to results questions due.
• June 17: Examiners begin independent analysis of results responses.
• July 30: Examiner teams finalize consensus evaluation of results responses.
• August 13: Baldrige judges determine award finalists; applicants notified of decisions.
• August 19: Site visit planning between applicants and examiner teams begins.
• September 4: Finalist responses to process description questions due.* 
• September 24‒October 1: On-site and virtual site visit interviews occur.
• November 3-7: Baldrige judges review site visit data and assessments and recommend Baldrige Award recipients.

*Applicant organizations may begin entering process description responses as soon as the application opens in January, but they are not due until September 4.

2025 Baldrige Award recipients will be honored at a formal ceremony in the spring of 2026. The ceremony will be held in conjunction with the 37th Quest for Excellence® Conference at which award recipients will present the best practices that contributed to their success.

Learn more about the Baldrige Award process.

Award Criteria

The 2025 Baldrige Award Criteria consist of sections that contain three types of questions: context, results, and process. Context questions are first, followed by questions on results/outcomes. Context questions are not evaluated. Finally, process questions related to results are requested. 

During the Application Evaluation phase (which includes Independent Analysis and Consensus Evaluation), applicant responses to results questions are rated using a rubric that determines responsiveness to the question, performance levels, performance trends, and relevant comparisons. Applicant responses to process questions in five sections will only be reviewed and rated by examiners if the applicant is selected as a finalist. Processes will be rated for being regular and repeated as well as improved based on evaluation.  

There are five Baldrige Award Criteria sections that ask for results/outcomes:

• Leadership and Governance
• Operations (includes Operational Continuity)
• Workforce
• Customers and Markets
• Finance

There are also three Baldrige Award Criteria sections (Strategy, Organizational Learning, and Community Relationships) that only request context and process questions because the efficacy of these core activities is demonstrated through the results presented in other sections. Applicants’ responses to process questions for these three sections will be evaluated during the Application Evaluation phase of the award process, along with results.

Eligibility

There are detailed eligibility requirements for Baldrige Award applicants. 

Application

Baldrige Award applicant organizations will use an online application (opening in January 2025) to submit information about their performance results/outcomes and core business. For results/outcomes, the application requests relevant (e.g., industry, best-in-class) comparisons to show the goodness of the results and five years of data that show performance levels and trends.

More space has been allotted in the 2025 application for narrative and the uploading of graphics. In addition, a few context-setting questions will appear immediately before each section. Baldrige examiners—trained, volunteer experts in various fields and from a wide range of industries—will assess the applications.

The application is part of the Baldrige Award cycle. 

Evaluation Report

At the end of the award process, all applicants for the Baldrige Award will receive an evaluation report that will include the examiners’ ratings and rationales. The reports reflect examiners’ supporting evidence and analyses for response ratings. Findings will not prescribe specific improvements, but low ratings could point applicant organizations to where they may want to improve the processes behind the results. High ratings should be built on to achieve or sustain a competitive advantage; sharing such high ratings and the processes behind them could speed organizational learning.

Baldrige Excellence Framework®

The next version of the Baldrige Excellence Framework®, from which the Baldrige Award Criteria are derived, will be published in the fall of 2025. The framework is being reorganized, simplified, and refocused as a maturity model improvement guide that will allow organizations to identify their maturity within each category and start process improvement initiatives based on clear steps.

The framework will also make clear its alignment to the Baldrige Award Criteria. If an applicant for the Baldrige Award finds that its evaluation report highlighted an area to improve, the applicant will be able to seek guidance in the framework for how to enhance the processes that yield improved results/outcomes.

The primary purpose of the Baldrige framework will still be to guide organizational development and performance improvement, and it will still be the best resource for organizations seeking a comprehensive tool that offers a wide range of best practices. Use of the framework for a systems approach to performance improvement and organization-wide assessments (conducted by the nonprofit, Baldrige-based Alliance for Performance Excellence programs) will lead organizations to resilience and long-term success.

The Baldrige Performance Excellence Program is a public-private partnership within the National Institute of Standards and Technology, dedicated to promoting U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology. The program has fostered the adoption of proven leadership, management, and operational best practices, and supported a global community that values people, organizational learning, continuous improvement, and striving for sustained excellence.