Beyond the Index: Active Funds and Crypto Dominate 2026 ETF Awards

MIAMI, FL – March 09, 2026

By Anthony Hughes

In a ceremony that underscored a profound evolution in the investment landscape, ETF.com announced the winners of its 2026 awards from the FutureProof Citywide conference, celebrating a year that saw the exchange-traded fund industry shatter records and redefine its own boundaries. The winning funds, all launched in 2025, paint a clear picture of an industry moving decisively beyond its passive, index-tracking roots and into the sophisticated realms of active management, alternative assets, and complex new strategies.

Triple-winner SPDR Bridgewater All Weather ETF (ALLW) and the innovative Bitwise Solana Staking ETF (BSOL) were among the top honorees, signaling a market that is rapidly embracing complexity to deliver value in an uncertain world. The awards ceremony served as a capstone to what ETF.com President Dave Nadig described as “the biggest year for ETFs in decades.”

A Record-Shattering Year Sets the Stage

The context for these awards is a market experiencing explosive growth. The claim of 2025 being a “record-breaking year” is no mere hyperbole; it is a statistical fact. Global ETF assets under management (AUM) swelled to an astonishing US$19.9 trillion by the end of 2025, a nearly 34% increase from the previous year. This surge was fueled by unprecedented investor demand, with the industry attracting a record US$2.4 trillion in net inflows globally.

The United States market was the engine of this growth, with U.S.-listed ETFs pulling in a historic US$1.48 trillion. This flood of capital was met with a wave of product innovation. Over 1,000 new ETFs were launched in the U.S. alone, with a remarkable 83% of them being actively managed. This data confirms a structural shift: the number of active ETFs in the U.S. now surpasses their passive counterparts, and they captured roughly a third of all new inflows in 2025.

“2025 was, in many ways, the biggest year for ETFs in decades,” said Dave Nadig, President and Director of Research at ETF.com, in a statement. “The ETF industry of today is a far cry from the simple cheap baskets of stocks from 30 years ago,” added Matt Middleton, CEO of ETF.com. “Everything interesting happening in markets is happening in ETFs at the same time.”

Active Management and New Assets Take Center Stage

Nowhere was this trend more evident than in the list of winners. The night's biggest star was the SPDR Bridgewater All Weather ETF (ALLW), which secured a rare trifecta of awards: Best New ETF, Best New Active ETF, and Best New Multi-Asset ETF. The fund’s strategy, designed to perform across diverse economic conditions like inflation, deflation, and varying growth environments, exemplifies the “real-world active management” Nadig highlighted. Its success points to a growing investor appetite for dynamic, professionally managed portfolios that can navigate market volatility without being tethered to a specific index.

Equally telling was the recognition of the Bitwise Solana Staking ETF (BSOL) as the ETF Innovation of the Year. This fund not only provides exposure to the Solana cryptocurrency but also incorporates a staking mechanism. Staking allows investors to earn yield by using their assets to help secure the underlying blockchain network. Offering this feature within a regulated ETF wrapper represents a significant leap forward, bridging the gap between the decentralized finance world and traditional portfolio management. It follows the successful launch of spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs and signals a strong industry push into more sophisticated digital asset products.

Other key winners further illustrated the theme of innovation:

• Best New Thematic ETF: Defiance AI & Power Infrastructure ETF (AIPO) captured the zeitgeist, tapping into the immense investor interest in the hardware and energy infrastructure underpinning the artificial intelligence revolution.
• Best New Options Income ETF: NEOS Gold High Income ETF (IAUI) highlighted the growing demand for alternative income sources, using options strategies on gold to generate yield.
• Best New U.S. Fixed Income ETF: SPDR SSGA IG Public & Private Credit ETF (PRIV) showcased the industry’s push to democratize access to previously hard-to-reach asset classes, in this case, private credit.

An Investor's Playbook for a New Era

The 2026 awards are more than just a celebration; they are a practical guide for investors and advisors navigating the current market. The winners reflect solutions to today’s most pressing portfolio challenges, from managing inflation and geopolitical risk to sourcing income in a volatile rate environment.

Vanguard, a firm long synonymous with low-cost indexing, also featured prominently, winning awards for its new U.S. and international equity funds. Its Vanguard Emerging Markets Ex-China ETF (VEXC), which won Best New International Equity ETF, is a direct response to investor demand for emerging market exposure that decouples from the specific economic and regulatory risks associated with China. This nuanced approach to portfolio construction is becoming increasingly common.

Similarly, the rise of active fixed income and alternative strategy funds, like the Fidelity Managed Futures ETF (FFUT), which won for Best New Alternatives ETF, provides investors with a more diverse toolkit. These funds offer strategies designed to be uncorrelated with traditional stocks and bonds, providing potential diversification benefits when they are needed most.

The Power of Recognition

The awards were presented at FutureProof Citywide in Miami, an event that has quickly become a premier gathering for financial advisors, asset managers, and fintech innovators. Holding the ceremony at such a venue underscores the credibility and influence the ETF.com Awards command within the industry.

The selection process itself is designed to be both rigorous and democratic. A four-phase methodology begins with a quantitative screen, followed by a qualitative deep-dive where ETF.com's editorial team scores funds on their Merit, Position, Utility, and Power. After a shortlist is created, the final winners are chosen by a community vote of ETF.com readers. This multi-layered process, combining expert analysis with community consensus, aims to identify funds that are not just popular but genuinely innovative and useful.

As the ETF wrapper continues to absorb ever more asset classes and strategies, these awards serve as a crucial curatorial voice, helping to distinguish true innovation from marketing hype. The class of 2025 demonstrates that the ETF is no longer just a vehicle for cheap market access but a dynamic tool for sophisticated, forward-looking investment management.