Channel Madness 2026 Tip-Off: Voting Is Underway

Polls are now open in CRN’s 12th annual Channel Madness Tournament of Chiefs, which begins with 32 of the industry’s most prominent channel executives and ultimately crowns one champion—decided by the channel community.

https://youtu.be/bExD9AcVs_s

It starts with 32 of the industry’s most influential channel chiefs. It ends with one.

The 2026 CRN Channel Madness Tournament of Chiefs opened Thursday, March 12, launching a series of head‑to‑head matchups among some of the channel’s top executives, with readers voting to determine who advances.

Contestants in our 12th annual tournament will make their way, round by round, through the bracket, moving closer and closer to the championship match over the course of three weeks.

With 2025 champion Tom Evans sitting out in favor of fellow Cloudflare executive Christine McElduff, the tournament will crown a new winner in 2026. Returning contenders include two members of last year’s Field of Four—Michael DePalma of OpenText and Scott Barlow of Sophos—along with former champion Kevin Rooney of Veeam Software.

The bracket also features several first-time competitors, including Hope Galley of Everpure, Craig Patterson of Exabeam, Wade McFarland of Lenovo and Michael Park of ServiceNow, adding a new dynamic to this year’s competition.

Will you give your vote to an industry veteran who’s had your back? Or will you vote for an up-and-comer who’s opening new doors? It’s up to you. The power of the vote is entirely in your hands.

One thing’s for sure: It will all be a lot of fun.

CRN editors picked the 32 participants, many of whom appeared on the 50 Most Influential list as part of our 2026 CRN Channel Chiefs project, representing a variety of vendors across the technology industry. Each is competing in one of four "regions:" Transformation, Acceleration, Innovation and Evolution.

Voting for Round 1 opened on Thursday, March 12 with 16 executive face-offs and will remain open until Wed., March 18 at noon ET. You can follow all the action at crn.com/madness and on social media with the hashtag #CRNChannelMadness And there's still time to enter our bracket contest to see if you can predict the winner.

Here's a look at the 2026 CRN Channel Madness tournament matchups.

Transformation

Match #1: Christine McElduff, Cloudflare vs. Nick Tidd, Zoom Communications

Match #2: Scott Lannum, HP Inc. vs. Michelle Welch, WatchGuard

Match #3: Bob Skelley, Arctic Wolf vs. Nicole Dezen, Microsoft

Match #4: Tara Fine, Broadcom vs. Jennifer Heard, Red Hat

Acceleration

Match #5: Michael DePalma, OpenText vs. Craig Weinstein, Nvidia

Match #6: Gordon Lord, Schneider Electric vs. Michael Rogers, CrowdStrike

Match #7: Dan Tomaszewski, Kaseya vs. Tim Coogan, Cisco Systems

Match #8: Lisa Citron, F5 vs. Jeremiah Jenson, HPE

Innovation