The first thing, of course, is to extend our congratulations (even if it is for the umpteenth time) to our two winners: Xaviera Sancho, managing director of BT Hungary, who took home the Expat CEO Award 2026, and Rezső Rózsai, country managing partner of KPMG Hungary, who won the Community Award, and is a frequent guests panelist at our CEO Boardroom Meeting roundtable events.
When we established the first of those awards 12 years ago, we consciously concentrated on expat CEOs because, while there was, rightly so, plenty of recognition for Hungarian CEOs, there was nothing comparable for their international peers, many of whom were doing amazing work to drive growth, bring investments and create jobs in the economy here. In the years immediately before we founded the award, there had also been a notable political frostiness toward foreign-owned multinationals.
That said, the award was never intended to be divisive, to create a “them and us” between foreigners and locals. We have worked very hard to build a CEO community that embraces both expats and Hungarians, in which each group is equally valued, equally important. I have no concrete figures to hand as I write this, but as I looked around the Corinthia Hotel Budapest’s Grand Ballroom on that evening, I saw as many familiar Hungarian faces as expats, as well as a fine turnout from Budapest’s international diplomatic corps. A high number of LinkedIn posts I have seen since March 27 that reflect on the gala speak about the importance of a platform where expats and Hungarians can meet as peers, exchange ideas, learn from each other, celebrate success and, put simply, have fun together.
The Expat CEO Award is, above all, about inclusivity. It honors and celebrates the points of difference that diversity can bring. It doesn’t matter if you are talking about the shopfloor or the C-suite; the wider the pool of talent you can draw from, the better the results are likely to be. One of the nice little side stories from March 27 was that we had our first nominee from Greece. And, while we have had one winner from the Central and Eastern European region (Veronika Špaňárová, from the Czech Republic, who won in 2023 when she was country head for Citi, and is now CFO for Wizz Air), we also had our first Polish candidate this year. Xavi Sancho can’t quite match that kind of first, as she is our second Italian nominee, but she ensured her country retained its 100% success rate for the main award. No pressure on whomsoever may follow in her footsteps, then!
Robin Marshall
Editor-in-chief
This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of April 10, 2026.
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