The Regional Banknote and ID Document of the Year Awards form part of the industry’s High Security Printing (HSP) EMEA conference. This year’s event was held in Rabat, Morocco, with the awards presented at a special ceremony during the conference dinner on 10 February.
Awards were made in the three traditional categories for the Banknote awards – Best New Banknote, Best New Series, and Best New Commemorative Banknote – with Libya, Namibia, Zambia, and Morocco all receiving recognition.
The Best House Note category was introduced at last year’s iteration of the conference; this year, Polish Security Printing Works and LEONHARD KURZ were joint winners of the award.
A fifth category, Best New Process or Technology (Currency), was also launched at this year’s event, with Koenig and Bauer Banknote Solutions receiving this new award.
This year’s ID Document Awards, meanwhile, recognised outstanding projects in several categories – Best New National ID Card, Best New Passport, Best New Document Series, and Best New Travel Document – with Estonia, Liechtenstein, Georgia, and the Netherlands all receiving recognition.
Two new categories – Best New House Passport and Best New Process or Technology (ID) – saw ANY Security Printing Company and TOPPAN Security receiving awards for their technologies.
BANKNOTE AWARDS
Best New Banknote
The Central Bank of Libya received the Best New Banknote award for its new polymer 20 Libyan dinar banknote, issued as part of an upgrade programme converting all notes to polymer to enhance the security and durability of the 2013 series.
Designed and printed by De La Rue on SAFEGUARD®, the new note features Enhanced GEMINI™ microtext, and a holographic registered stripe with SPOTLIGHT™, PUREIMAGE™ and DEPTH™, depicting a portrait of Libyan national hero Omar Al-Mukhtar. It also includes dual clear windows and a secondary window with SICPA’s SPARK®, depicting the star and crescent moon on both sides of the banknote.
In addition to the SPARK feature, the obverse design of the note also features an image of the Al-Atiq Mosque (‘Old Mosque’) in Awjila. The reverse depicts a school in Ghadames (an oasis town often termed ‘the pearl of the desert’).
Best New Series
The Bank of Namibia and Bank of Zambia jointly received awards in the Best New Series category.
The Bank of Namibia received the award for its new Namibian Dollar (N$) series, which was issued last year alongside an extensive nationwide publicity campaign to educate the public about the features and how to handle and check their new currency.
Launched under the theme ‘Our Currency, Our Heritage, Our Pride – Meet the Next Generation of the Namibia Dollar’, the new series features both upgraded banknotes and fully redesigned coinage.
The new series celebrates both continuity and innovation in the evolution of Namibian currency, with the aim of its introduction is to modernise Namibia’s currency in line with international standards, while reinforcing the country’s national identity and purpose.
The banknotes are the third generation issued since 1993. The last redesign was in 2011. The new notes have the same motifs as the notes they are replacing (namely portraits of founding father Dr Sam Shafiishuna Nujoma and freedom fighter Kaptein Hendrik Witbooi on the front, and celebrations of Namibia’s wildlife on the back). However, they feature a refined and more modern aesthetic with richer colours, cleaner lines, and enhanced security features.
The two lowest denominations, the N$10 and N$20, are printed on Landqart’s Durasafe paper-polymer composite substrate and the others – the N$50, N$100 and N$200 – on cotton paper.
All of the notes feature tactile marks for the visually impaired and the Bank partnered with the Namibia Federation for the Visually Impaired to roll out targeted training programmes.
The banknotes were designed and printed by De La Rue. Security features include De La Rue’s IGNITE® and PUREIMAGE™ security threads and Enhanced GEMINI® UV print feature. The notes also feature SPARK® Live colour-shifting ink, SICPA Protect® Dew moisture-resistant coating, microtext, UV-reactive elements, and a transparent window with blind embossing of the Bank of Namibia logo.
The Bank of Zambia received the award for its new Zambian Kwacha (K) series issued last year, which was also accompanied by a nationwide currency sensitisation campaign to educate the public about the new currency features and provide information on the exchange process.
The new series showcases Zambia’s rich heritage, with its unique flora and fauna as the central theme; hence it is called the ‘Heritage Series’. It consists of six banknotes (K500, K200, K100, K50, K20, K10) and six coins (K5, K2, K1, 50N, 10N, and 5N).
The design of the new banknotes honours Zambia’s natural beauty, with iconic symbols such as the African Fish Eagle, endemic flowers, waterfalls, and Zambian wildlife, offering a more modern appearance to the country’s currency. They also feature enhanced security features to combat counterfeiting, with two higher-value denominations (K500 and K200) introduced to promote more efficient transactions.
Additionally, the redefined note-coin boundary introduces the new K5 and K2 coins, while the lower-value notes (K10 and K20) are made with durable substrates to ensure longevity in circulation.
All of the notes feature improved tactile marks in distinct patterns, introduced in response to the needs of the visually impaired community.
The Bank engaged Koenig & Bauer Banknote Solutions (KBBS) as the consultant for the design of the new notes. The K500, K200, K20, and K10 denominations were produced by Giesecke & Devrient Currency Technology, while Crane Currency supplied the K100 and K50 denominations.
The new currency series includes several advanced security features, including a Galaxy® thread and SPARK Flow Prime on the K200 and K500. The threads colour-shift from gold to green for the 200, and magenta to green for the for the 500. They also ‘flip’ from the denomination to the Bank of Zambia logo. The K50 and K100 feature SPARK® and have a RollingStar®i+ thread colour-shifting from green to magenta for the 50, and gold to jade for the 100. Both have a dynamic ‘bloom’ effect.
The K10 and K20 are printed on Durasafe substrate with a RAPID® security thread, whilst the remaining denominations are printed on cotton substrate.
Best New Commemorative Banknote
The Best New Commemorative Banknote award was presented to Bank Al-Maghrib was awarded for its new commemorative 100 dirham banknote, issued to celebrating the 35th Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) which took place December to January in Rabat, Morocco.
The commemorative banknote – which has legal tender status – was designed to demonstrate the Kingdom’s commitment to sports, highlighting and celebrating its new sports infrastructure. The obverse features a portrait of His Majesty King Mohammed VI, the Kingdom’s coat of arms, the Prince Moulay Abdellah Sports Complex, the map of Africa, a Moroccan arabesque motif, and a stylised football.
The note’s reverse depicts the name of the issuing institution – in both Latin and Tifinagh script – and shows an interior view of the Sports Complex, with silhouettes of players in action and a football decorated with the map of Africa.
It incorporates several security features, including a 5mm wide Galaxy® gold-to-green colour shifting micro-mirrors security thread from Louisenthal. The registered thread appears in three windows. A five-pointed star is depicted in the centre window, whilst the numeral 100 and DH in the top and bottom windows alternate (or flip) when the note is tilted.
The denomination numeral, featured using SPARK Openform, matches the colours of the thread and displays a star design alongside the colour shift.
Other features include a stylised football printed with SPARK Flow Openform, inside which is a map of Africa, see-through register, security fibres that fluoresce in three colours, and motifs with tactile relief to assist the visually impaired, in addition to microtext.
Design and production of the banknote, and an accompanying commemorative 250 dirham silver coin, were conducted by Bank Al-Maghrib’s own banknote printing and minting works, Dar As-Sikkah.
Best New House Note
The Polish Security Printing Works (PWPW) and LEONHARD KURZ jointly received awards in the Best New House Note category.
PWPW received the award for its MEADOW housenote, which was created in collaboration with Leonhard KURZ, and inspired by the flora and fauna of a summer meadow. Designed by Agnieszka Próchniak, the theme of nature was chosen mainly because of its beauty and the possibility of using a wide range of colours, in addition to the universality and neutrality of the topic.
The entire graphic design presents the meadow landscape mentioned in the title, which can be observed from the perspective of fauna and flora located on ‘different levels’ – sky and earth in the upper part of the feature and underground in its lower part.
The note was printed at PWPW’s paper mill from an eco-friendly blend of cotton and hemp fibres – with the latter sourced from within Europe and requiring significantly less energy to process than cotton.
Security features include a multi-tone watermark depicting a mole digging a burrow in the ground and a second hidden watermark, Multihexa®, embedded within a unique filigree structure comprised of multiple hexagons resembling a honeycomb. It also features a MIR4Note® machine readable two-colour iridescent stripe, a Zora4Note® multicolour latent image applied in the form of a bee, and UV inks. It is overvarnished with Coat4Note® Gloss.
The vertical registered windowed KURZ THREAD with KINEGRAM COLOR is one of the standout features and has been precisely aligned so that an individual colour and specific diffractive image appears in each of the six separate windows. At the time of production, the MEADOW housenote was the first of its type to feature as many as six colours, with the technology previously featuring a maximum of three colours.
LEONHARD KURZ also received the award for its Tree of Life housenote series, created to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the company’s production site in Sulzbach-Rosenberg, Germany.
The notes are themed around the beauty and strength of nature and the passage of time. First is Celebration Note ‘Day’, providing a backdrop for a wide KINEGRAM ZERO.ZERO® stripe with golden metallisation. The daytime scene depicts the old oak drawing water up from the earth to nourish each bough and leaf. On the reverse, a bird swoops in to perch amidst the foliage where, when spring comes again, it will nest, and the tree will cradle a new generation of life.
The second Celebration Note, ‘Dusk’, features a wide KINEGRAM® HDM stripe (with effects including Golden Mirror, Achromatic Effect, or Deep Spot). The tree at dusk is lit by the waning daylight, with shadows lengthening as evening approaches. Among the leaf litter, deer move carefully – alert, yet reassured by the steady, towering presence of the oak, a place they will return to time and again throughout their lives.
Finally, Celebration Note ‘Night’ showcases a wide KINEGRAM® COSMIC stripe with multiple effects including Colorful Movement, Flux Effect, and Surface Relief. By night, the tree is bathed in moonlight that silvers its knurls and contours, shaped across the aeons of its long life. A fox races past its trunk, seeking opportunity in unsuspecting small mammals or insects asleep in the darkness.
On the reverse side of all three celebration notes is a KINEGRAM® VIVID patch. VIVID combines kinematic movements in all directions with a powerful depth effect, and the version on the Tree of Life notes features matching colours and the numeral 30.
Best New Process or Technology (Currency)
The Best New Process or Technology (Currency) award was presented to Koenig and Bauer Banknote Solutions (KBBS) for its Nota-Live™ technology, an advanced real-time 3D simulation software developed in partnership with Fathom Optics.
Nota-Live™ provides accurate live simulation of security documents, complete with realistic optically-varying effects, offering an accurate and dynamic way to visualise the designs of these documents.
It has been purpose-built for the unique characteristics of banknotes and other secure documents (eg. passports and ID documents), offering specialised tools and features tailored to support their inherent complexity and sophistication. It enables highly accurate and dynamic visualisation of security features, UV elements, substrates (with or without windows), and all printing processes on both sides of a document.
Nota-Live generates standalone files that can run on any web browser and can be used offline, without requiring an internet connection. As an independent software solution, it doesn’t rely on specific predefined design tools and is also fully compatible with a wide range of commercial and security design software, including Illustrator, Arziro, Corvina, and ONE Software.
The technology enables designers, security printers, and central banks to preview the final printed result before production and offers tool for sales and communication, making complex security features easier to understand and promote. Beyond design and sales, Nota-Live™ can also serve as an educational tool for the public, helping central banks to introduce new banknote series when they are released into circulation.
ID AWARDS
Best New National ID Card
The Best New National eID Card award was presented to the Estonian Police and Border Guard Board for Estonia’s new-generation national ID card, issued from November 2025. The card pairs an upgraded physical credential with Estonia’s mature eID system that underpins ‘eEstonia’.
Its nature-inspired design aligns with the wider Estonian document family, using consistent colour, typography and security motifs. A diffractive surface pattern evokes shimmering water, while a new-generation DOVID shows a boulder emerging from water, referencing Estonia’s glacial boulders. The country’s national bird, the barn swallow, appears through tactile and optically variable features to support intuitive first-line checks.
As a world first, the card incorporates Thales Gemalto RevealPlus, combining a window with a secondary portrait, decoder lens and hidden portrait data; tilting reveals animated rolling text and angle-dependent information. Thales Gemalto True Vision adds a UV control, revealing a natural-colour cornflower on the reverse. The translucent polycarbonate body shows the embedded contactless antenna, and an advanced chip supports both contact and contactless use for secure access to public and private digital services.
Best New Passport
The Best New Passport award was presented to the Principality of Liechtenstein for its new-generation, fully redesigned passport family, introduced from 3 February 2026. The series standardises regular, diplomatic and service passports on a single technical and design platform.
A polycarbonate datapage with a full-colour personalised portrait significantly increases resistance to forgery and substitution. The portrait is duplicated on the first paper page, providing a robust secondary verification point using a different personalisation technology and substrate.
Security printing is comprehensively upgraded across the booklet. Each visa page features individual artwork with fine-line guilloches and security line structures themed around Liechtenstein’s eleven municipalities. Under UV, a multicolour fluorescent image of Vaduz Castle appears on the datapage, complemented by UV contour lines and street layouts inside the booklet for meaningful, inspection-friendly complexity.
Biometric enrolment is now fully live-capture, enabling immediate issuance following application.
Best New Document Series
The Best New Document Series award was presented to the Government of Georgia for its Georgia Document Family: a harmonised suite of ePassports and eID cards built on a single design and security platform. Developed by Veridos with the Public Service Development Agency (Ministry of Justice) and designer Nino (Nitta) Gongadze, the programme aligns six passport types and four identity cards across materials, features and visuals.
The concept, ‘A Journey Through History, Secured by Design’, embeds geography, culture and heritage into the security architecture. In the ePassport, each double-page spread presents a Georgian region using objects, landscapes and symbols anchored by cartographic fine-line artwork. Under UV, a second narrative emerges as flora, fauna and artefacts fluoresce, with continuous daylight-to-UV transitions supporting intuitive inspection while increasing simulation difficulty.
The custom substrate includes a primary watermark of the Georgian coat of arms, a security thread with the national flag and inscriptions, and highlight page-number watermarks. Multi-colour intaglio, OVI and embossing provide strong first-line controls.
The polycarbonate datapage adds a transparent window, holographic elements, micro-lettering and rainbow printing, plus a transparent stripe revealing the antenna with a dedicated UV brilliance inlay check.
Best New Travel Document
The Netherlands Vehicle Authority (RDW) was awarded Best New Travel Document for its new model Dutch driving licence, which went into production from June 2025, updating the card’s visual design and strengthening authenticity features while retaining the ID-1 format.
Described in public communications as a ‘hidden masterpiece’, the licence is designed to support simple first-line checks – look, tilt, feel and UV – while raising the barrier for counterfeiters. RDW notes that ‘not everything is visible to the naked eye’ and highlights that UV inspection reveals concealed illustrations, including motifs such as a road network and traffic lights, enabling rapid verification.
The 2025 model is built around a multi-technology security architecture with 11 authentication features, including a Sealys® clear window combined with multiple laser image (MLI) effects; a positive/negative image element; a diffractive optically variable image device (DOVID) overlay; and a secured background design.
The licence continues to include a contactless chip supporting online authentication. The production contract for the new model was awarded to Thales, which also produces the Dutch vehicle registration certificate.
Best New House Passport
The Best New House Passport award, a new category, recognised ANY Security Printing Company for its Collaborative Sample Passport, a marketing ePassport produced with SICPA, IQ Structures, BP Security, Hueck Folien, ANY SecLab and other partners. Conceived as ‘a journey through security, art and collaboration’, the booklet demonstrates how an integrated security architecture can be built around a coherent design.
It combines a patent-protected full-colour cover with customised UV graphics and bespoke security paper integrating a multitone watermark, embedded security thread and UV bi-fluorescent additives. Inner covers and visa pages use intaglio, offset and screen printing with IR-transparent/IR-absorbing inks, negative microtext, latent images, UV rainbow printing and up-converting luminescent inks. Penta-fluorescent offset inks deliver five optical responses across UV/IR bands for machine-assisted checks.
A fully ICAO-compliant polycarbonate datapage adds SICPA SPARK® optical security, colour-shift elements and DualGlow™ clear-window fluorescence; further protected by IQ Structures’ full-surface nanoDOVID® IQ proID construction to resist delamination. Multi-level laser perforation serial numbering and AURORA secure QR verification, plus Augmented Reality markers, illustrate physical–digital convergence.
Best New Process or Technology (ID)
In the second new ID category, the Best New Technology award was presented to TOPPAN Security for CHROMA, a colour laser engraving personalisation solution enabling secure, full-colour portraits on polycarbonate passport datapages and ID cards.
CHROMA is a pure colour laser process that forms lifelike, high-definition images inside the polycarbonate structure, producing sharp, photo-realistic portraits with accurate skin tones and smooth tonal gradients without surface printing or added inks.
A single laser source addresses three colour channels—cyan, magenta and yellow—within a CHROMA-reactive polycarbonate layer integrated during lamination. Using a subtractive colour model and finely tuned laser parameters, the system can reproduce up to 16.7 million colours.
As the portrait is fully embedded below the surface, it removes consumables and avoids vulnerabilities associated with overlays or surface-printed colour images. The subsurface image is highly resistant to abrasion, tampering and environmental stress; attempts to peel or replace it irreversibly damage the polycarbonate body. A characteristic micro-line structure visible under 15× magnification adds a forensic control.
The technology complies with ICAO portrait standards while maintaining standard polycarbonate document thickness.
