Supportive Energies: Octopus Energy Joins BBA2026 as Sapphire Partner
Last November, Octopus Energy stepped onto the British Business Awards 2025 stage as UK–Japan Partnership of the Year. This June, they returned to the fold at our BBA2026 Pre-Launch Soirée, sharing their story through PechaKucha before a room of members, partners and friends. We are delighted to share another continuation of that story.
The British Chamber of Commerce in Japan is delighted to welcome Octopus Energy as a Sapphire Partner of the British Business Awards 2026, marking their first-ever year as an official BBA partner.
Octopus Energy is, in many ways, an expression of the relationship the British Business Awards exists to celebrate.
Born from the partnership between Tokyo Gas and UK-founded Octopus Energy, the business brought together two companies with very different histories and a shared appetite for doing things differently. Octopus Energy entered Japan through the joint venture in 2021, pairing its technology and renewable-energy expertise with the scale, knowledge and trust of one of Japan’s most established energy companies. What followed has been an unusually reciprocal UK-Japan story.
Tokyo Gas became an investor in Octopus Energy in the UK. Octopus’ technology platform, Kraken, was subsequently adopted by Tokyo Gas in Japan. Ideas, capital, technology and expertise have moved in both directions, each market informing the other.
Octopus Energy has grown to serve more than half a million households in Japan, while continuing to introduce a distinctly different approach to energy retail: digital-first, customer-led and built around the changing ways in which people produce, consume and think about electricity.
It was this partnership, and the results emerging from it, that earned Octopus Energy the BBA2025 UK-Japan Partnership of the Year. The full post-win profile can be read here. The award recognised something larger than growth alone. It recognised what can happen when a British idea is reshaped through a thoughtful partnership in Japan. Seven months later, the team joined us once again.
At the BBA2026 Pre-Launch Soirée at Mandarin Oriental, Tokyo, Octopus Energy Chief Customer Officer Paul Sands took to the stage as one of our returning winners, presenting the company’s story through the fast-moving format of PechaKucha.
It offered a different view of the business behind the award: the people, the culture, the ambition and the choices that had carried Octopus Energy from a new entrant in Japan to one of the country’s most closely watched energy challengers.
And now, for the first time, they return not as applicants or winners, but as supporters of the awards themselves. Speaking with Paul once more, reflecting on their first year as a BBA2025 winner & now BBA2026 Sapphire Partner:
'Our team were super proud to be honoured with an award last year, as we like everything that the BBAs stand for: collaboration, customer excellence, responsibility, innovation and so much more. This year we wanted to lend our support as a partner and will be cheering loudly when other worthy winners take home a trophy!'
The British Business Awards has always been about more than one evening. It is about giving remarkable work a platform, bringing the people behind it together, and creating space for one moment of recognition to lead naturally into the next.
As we move closer toward the British Business Awards 2026 - The Nineteenth Evening on 13 November, we are enormously pleased to welcome Octopus Energy into the BBA2026 partnership for the very first time.
Our warmest thanks to the entire team for choosing to stand behind this year’s awards, and for continuing a UK-Japan story that we have had the privilege of watching unfold.
