Revealed: the winners of People's Choice 2026

Every year, the ShAFF audiences get to have their say on which films they loved the most thanks to BoomBeam, our interactive voting system. It's simple: audience members are given the chance to rate each film out of 10, and the highest average score wins our People's Choice Award, sponsored by Street Food Chef.

The results for 2026 are in and we're delighted to announce The Oldest Munro Bagger is the People's Choice for 2026! It's a beautiful, poignant film about 82-year old Nick Gardner's attempt to complete all 282 of Scotland's Munros in the wake of his wife's dementia diagnosis. It stormed to first place with an average rating of 9.70 after 90 votes – seriously impressive! Directed by Jay Golian, The Oldest Munro Bagger was also selected before the festival as one of the Best Films by our judging panel. A deserved winner!

In silver place for the People's Choice was Girl Climber, the extraordinary life story of Emily Harrington as she prepares to take on El Capitan in a single day, with a score of 9.46. It just pipped our bronze-placed film The Finisher which scored 9.43, and documents Jasmin Paris as she makes history by becoming the first woman to finish the Barkley Marathons.

It was another fantastic weekend at Showroom with 104 films in total showing across three days. Congratulations to our winners on their awards, and thank you to everyone who voted. We'll be back soon with news on the 2027 festival, as well as on one-off events happening throughout the year and Spirit of Adventure in the autumn. Subscribe to our newsletter and you'll be the first to hear.

P.S. We’ll be in touch this week about the winners of the Rab men’s and women’s jackets. Good luck!