Luminary team at Biggest Morning Tea

Our most memorable moments of 2025

Join us as we take a stroll back through our highlights from the year that was.

Tami Iseli

03 December 2025

7 minute read

There’s something intensely satisfying about reflecting on what you’ve accomplished over the course of a year. Something that makes all the frantic caffeine-fuelled sprints to meet end-of-year deadlines dissolve into the background. 

For us, the end of 2025 has also been a chance to catch our breath and take stock of the dizzying pace of change that our industry witnessed over the past 12 months. Here are some of the key moments that shaped us over that time. 

Kicking goals with the MCG

Without question, one of our key highlights of 2025 was the launch of the MCG and Melbourne Cricket Club’s new websites. The responsibility of taking on the digital reimagining of these sporting icons was a weight that was keenly felt by our team – but equally, it was a project that will undoubtedly be a career highlight for all involved. We worked closely with the MCC on the development of two new websites, one for the MCG (incorporating the Australian Sports Museum), and the other for the members of the Melbourne Cricket Club. The result was a complete overhaul of both sites, with key improvements including a new stadium mapping system for the MCG, and a vastly streamlined mobile-first portal for MCC members. 

MCG gif

Ramping up our AI and GEO services

In line with the explosion of AI this year, we saw a huge surge in demand for our AI and generative engine optimisation (GEO) services

We focused on redefining our own internal processes with AI, and agents while implementing similar transformative solutions for our clients. We also became the first agency in Australia to become certified in Opal, Optimizely’s proprietary AI offering. Meanwhile, our head of GEO, Shayna Burns, was in high demand from both clients and the media, as companies scrambled to figure out how to optimise for AI search. 

Illustration respresenting GEO with a cartoon-style man talking to a robot on screen

Our third Optimizely partner win

Also on the Optimizely front, we were named Optimizely One Solution Partner of the Year, backing up two consecutive years of winning the platform’s APAC Solution Partner of the Year award. We also achieved Optimizely Platinum Partner status and deployed the first Optimizely SaaS site in APAC. On top of that, we launched sites on the platform for a range of clients including the MCG, MCC and network infrastructure provider, Vocus. We co-presented with Vocus at the Optimizely Digital Summit in Sydney, and also attended Opticon in New York, where we got a sneak peek of what’s to come from Optimizely in 2026.   

Optimizely Digital Summit presentation with Vocus

Adding more household names to our portfolio 

As well as continuing to work with our existing stable of valued clients, we welcomed AMP, Australian Made (which joined sister brand Remade in working with us), EVT Hotels (incorporating QT, Rydges and Atura hotels, among others), The Greater Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust, property investment company ISPT, The Real Estate Institute of Queensland, disability care software provider Unplexi, and Vocus into the fold. We also saw the return of global investment management company Vanguard, which we worked with a number of years ago. 

A grid of logos of our new clients

Partnering with Beyond Blue

While we’ve worked with mental health charity Beyond Blue for many years, we took things to the next level in 2025, officially becoming a Supporting Partner of the organisation. The partnership took on many forms throughout the year, including our participation in Coastrek, the 2XU Wellness Run (where our CEO, Marty Drill, ran his first ever half marathon!), and Big Blue Table. We also welcomed Lived Experience speaker Megan Barrow to talk to our team about her mental health journey. In addition, we sponsored A (Very) Musical Christmas – a special ABC television event that brought together some of Australia’s best musical talent in support of mental health awareness. Last but definitely not least, we contributed a proportion of pro bono hours towards the development of PACE, a new wellbeing app, which is set to be officially rolled out in 2026. 

Marty with Georgie Harman and Luminary team in Melbourne office

Reeling in the awards

We continued to put the load-bearing capacity of our trophy cabinet to the test, winning 21 awards for the year so far. Highlights included winning the Travel Innovation People’s Choice Award in the Finder Innovation Awards for the wayfinder we built for Melbourne Airport, as well as ranking 12th on Great Places to Work’s ‘Best Workplaces in Tech’ list. We also made it onto the Top 40 Workplaces to Give Back list, which recognises companies for giving back via donating, volunteering, fundraising, and other pro-social initiatives. You can check out our full list of awards here

Picture of the Luminary sign and trophies

Getting recertified as a B Corp

Back in 2020 we embarked on a journey to attain certification as a B Corp. Our B Corp status became official in March 2021. In other words, we cemented our commitment to balancing profit with the needs of people and the planet. As anyone who has been through this process will attest, it’s not easy. There are many hoops to jump through to prove that you are, in fact, using business as a force for good. The other thing about becoming a B Corp is that it’s not a ‘set and forget’ title. You need to recertify every three years, which means you have to go through the whole process again, and the bar is continually being raised. So we were thrilled to announce earlier this year that we passed the recertification test and retained our B Corp status. 

Turning up the heat at OzHarvest’s CEO Cook-off

In October, our CEO, Marty Drill, went head-to-head with 13 other CEOs from all over Melbourne in OzHarvest’s annual CEO Cook-off. While he wears many hats at Luminary, ‘chef’ is not one he’s usually known for. However, by all accounts, the chocolate and caramel petit gâteau he whipped up – under the guidance of MasterChefs Sarah Todd and Andy Allen – was top-notch. The CEO CookOff is OzHarvest’s flagship fundraiser and is held across a number of events around the country throughout the month of October. Marty and his fellow CEO chefs raised over $76,000 through the event, and created a night to remember for people in need. Over the last couple of years, Luminary has volunteered at OzHarvest six times across its Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane locations.

Marty at the OzHarvest CEO Cookoff

Putting a new spin on Fred’s Big Run 

For the sixth consecutive year, Luminary stepped up to take on Fred's Big Run, a month-long fitness and fundraising event run by our friends over at The Fred Hollows Foundation. This year, we decided to raise the stakes and split our 40 participants into three competing teams. Each week, the teams went head-to-head in a race for glory across three categories: funds raised, kilometres logged, and challenges completed. The challenges came in the form of weekly ‘bingo cards’, covering everything from running around in silly costumes, to ice bucket challenges, to photography competitions and Strava art. All up, we logged 3695kms and raised $8254! Since 2020, Luminary has raised almost $50,000 through Fred’s Big Run, and restored sight to up to 1969 people! 

Sponsoring the Young Achiever Awards

We continued our sponsorship of the Victorian Young Achiever Awards in 2025, through the Luminary Tech Visionary Award. This category of the awards honours young people who are leading the way with innovative technology initiatives that have the potential to help shape a brighter future. Our category winner in 2025 was robotics engineer Grace Brown, with Abi, a social humanoid robot designed to combat loneliness in aged care. Grace had been a finalist of the Luminary Tech Visionary Award in 2022, when Abi was still in the prototype stage. Fast-forward three years, and her company, Andromeda Robotics, is now struggling to keep up with the demand for Abi. If you know a young person who is making a difference with technology, nominations are now open for the 2026 Luminary Tech Visionary Award

As we stand on the precipice of 2026, we can only imagine what our world is going to look like in another 12 months’ time. If one AI year is equivalent to seven internet years, as they say, we can be pretty sure the view is going to look different to what we’re seeing now. We’re excited to see what the new year will bring, and we look forward to working with you to tackle the challenges that lay ahead. If you want to see what our resident prognosticators foresee that the new year has in store for us, check out our post on Digital predictions for 2026.  

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