The 2025 Expo App Awards: A celebration of the best Expo apps

We’re excited to announce the first ever Expo App Awards, a celebration of the most beautiful and powerful applications built with Expo.

Over the years, developers have used Expo to build apps that reach millions of people, transform industries, and showcase what’s possible with React Native. The Expo App Awards are an opportunity to honor the craft and creativity of Expo developers, and to share their talent with the world.

The truth is that we’ve been sitting on this idea for years. And we’re finally making it happen because the overwhelming quantity of beautiful Expo apps demands it. We see you out there on Twitter, Youtube, Linkedin, and Bluesky (cough…Expo app) showing the world what you’ve made. And we want to build a stage to formally recognize excellence.

Today, Expo apps are often counted among the best apps in the world. They top the App Store charts across various categories and they win the Google Play Store app of the year. With these awards, we want to:

• Celebrate outstanding apps and the developers behind them.
• Show that Expo apps are every bit as polished, scalable, and innovative as anything else in the stores.
• Create lasting showcases of what’s possible with Expo, so future developers and companies can see the bar you all have set.

To underscore this, we partnered with Norbauer to design a one-of-a-kind, mastercrafted mechanical keyboard for the winners. It’s a symbol of the craft and quality we value and a reflection of the care we see in the apps you build (more on this later).

Submissions are open across five categories. To be clear, you are not required to specify the category that you believe your app belongs in. But you are welcome to mention a category in the description of your app. Here are the five categories:

• App of the Year: The best overall app, demonstrating Expo at its finest.
• Most Creative: An app that celebrates imagination and originality.
• Community’s Choice: Voted on by the Expo community in an open poll.
• Largest Scale: An app that demonstrates how Expo supports massive, complex, high-traffic use cases.
• Most Innovative: A frontier app that pushes boundaries with technology or product vision.

Submissions are open from October 6 through October 31, 2025 (11:59 PM PT).

To enter, submit your app here. We ask for basic details about your app, screenshots, and links so our team can review it. In the description of your app please share what you believe makes your app unique and impressive. Tell us which details you want us to appreciate.

For clarity: the app does not need to have been built in 2025. It can be a solo project you've tinkered with for years, a full-scale enterprise app that's on most of our phones, or an exciting new startup project you've recently published to the app store. The only requirements are that the app is published and it uses Expo.

Integrity in the evaluation process is essential. Here’s how we’re approaching it:

• Internal review only. All submissions will be judged by the Expo team.
• No outside sponsors or influence. This is entirely an Expo initiative.
• Holistic criteria. We’ll evaluate apps based on design, technical excellence, performance, innovation, and feel. (The measurable “success” of an app or popularity of the developers are not factors here.)

Finalists will be announced on November 6, 2025, and winners will be revealed on November 13, 2025.

For the Expo App Awards we want winners to receive a prize that matches the craft we see in their apps. That’s why we partnered with Norbauer & Co., the Los Angeles keyboard atelier known for making the finest keyboards on earth.

Each Norbauer keyboard is meticulously assembled and tuned by hand, using the best materials that create incredible feel and deeply satisfying acoustics. They aren’t just input devices, they’re retro-futurist works of art that celebrate the optimism of early personal computing while pushing the limits of modern engineering.

Some glam shots of a Norbauer keyboard.

Just as Expo apps show what’s possible with React Native, Norbauer keyboards show what’s possible when no corners are cut and every detail matters. That’s the level of quality we want to honor with these awards.

There will only be 5 of these keyboards in the world. They are custom built with Expo keys and an Expo App Awards name plate on the back. This is a truly excellent piece of equipment and a fitting reward for the most talented Expo developers in the world.

The Expo App Awards keyboard backplate.

Winners in each category will receive:

• A Norbauer mechanical keyboard, custom-made for the Expo App Awards.
• Exclusive Expo App Awards apparel.
• Recognition across Expo’s channels and inclusion in our permanent showcase of winning apps.

If you’ve built something you’re proud of with Expo, now’s the time to share it.

Submit your app, inspire the community, and help us show the world what’s possible when you combine React Native with Expo.

Submit your app today!

We can’t wait to see what you’ve built.