Choose Your Champion: 2026 CRN Global Channel Cup Voting Is Now Open!

Voting is now open in CRN’s first-ever Global Channel Cup Tournament, which starts with 32 of the industry’s most prominent channel-focused companies and ends with one winner.

From 32 companies to one global champion.

The 2026 CRN Global Channel Cup Tournament kicked off Thursday, matching up some of the channel’s most influential companies in head-to-head battles where CRN’s worldwide readership votes to determine the winners.

The victors will make their way, round by round, through a bracket, moving closer and closer to the championship match.

Over the course of three weeks, the tournament will shine a spotlight on how IT channel-focused companies—including technology vendors, distributors and marketplaces—support and grow their partner ecosystems.

CRN editors selected the 32 participants, representing a variety of technology areas across the industry from cloud, security, networking and storage, among others. Each company is represented by a roster of global channel executives, led by their CEO team managers and will be competing one of four “regions:” Transformation, Acceleration, Innovation and Evolution.

Round 1 will see a number of exciting matchups, including Google Cloud vs. AMD in the Transformation region, Lenovo vs. Nutanix in the Acceleration region, Microsoft vs. Acer in the Innovation region and Dell Technologies vs. Alibaba Cloud in the Evolution region.

Voting for Round 1 opened with 16 face-offs and will remain open until Wed., July 1 at noon EDT (UTC -4). You can find all the action at crn.com/channelcup and on all of CRN’s global sister sites, including CRN Asia, CRN Australia, CRN Germany and CRN UK. Follow along on social media with the hashtag #CRNChannelCup.

Here’s a look at the 2026 CRN Global Channel Cup Tournament match-ups.

Transformation

Pax8 vs. IBM

CrowdStrike vs. Schneider Electric

HPE vs. ThreatLocker

Google Cloud vs. AMD

Acceleration

Ingram Micro vs. Everpure

Palo Alto Networks vs. Cloudflare

Amazon Web Services vs. Eaton

Lenovo vs. Nutanix

Innovation