Apple Design Awards 2026 - Apps & Games That Won Over Apple!

Every year, Apple’s Design Awards spotlight the apps and games that make the best use of the company’s latest platform features, and the 2026 crop is a particularly varied mix. Hosts Micah Sargent and Rosemary Orchard walked through the winners and finalists across seven categories, from a Neolithic affirmation app to a deeply personal game about eating disorders. Here is what won, what was nominated, and why each pick stood out to Apple’s judges.

Delight and Fun: Grug and This Seat Is Taken

The app winner in this category is Grug, a daily affirmation app that delivers its wisdom in the form of “Neolithic grunts.” As Apple’s copy puts it, reading lines like “only walking grug, find breakthrough; sitting grug, find nothing” is a “primal joy.” The app has no login, no cloud syncing, and nothing extraneous — just clever scribble design and a sense of humor about self-help. The runner-up apps were Blipo Plus and Metaboles.

On the game side, the winner is This Seat Is Taken, a logic puzzle game from Pati Pati Studio. Rosemary admitted logic puzzles make her anxious, but she acknowledged the game has strong word of mouth. The runner-up was Power Wash Simulator, which Micah was sorry to see lose — he called it deeply satisfying.

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