On Friday 26 June, at Magazin in der Heeresbäckerei in Berlin, Knk Explained won Best Social Media Campaign at the SXMAwards 2026. The series had spent the previous 12 months answering beginner questions about BDSM on Instagram, taking the FET account from 1,000 followers to 11,500 in a year and past 16,000 by the time of the awards.
The Series That Won
Knk Explained was built around the questions people ask before they've had any kink experience at all. Who can I trust? What does a red flag look like in practice? How do I say what I want without feeling judged for asking?
Those questions turned out to have a large audience. The post on spotting a fake Dom reached 35,970 accounts and brought in 259 saves, 83 shares, 82 comments, and 101 new follows. The post on how to be a good brat reached 25,336 accounts, with 324 saves, 175 shares, 41 comments, and 72 follows.
Saves and shares are the numbers worth watching for a series like this, because they show a post has moved from something people enjoyed to something they expect to need again, or think someone else needs to read. Posts on aftercare, submissive identity, BDSM breakups, and terminology drew both consistently. Most of those are questions you need answered at a particular moment, and usually before you feel ready to ask anyone.
One comment on the fake Dom post: "I appreciate this post very much. Not said enough."
"Kink education on Instagram is a constant negotiation. You're writing for a platform that would rather you didn't exist, and for people who need the information anyway. Knk Explained worked because we wrote for the people and not the platform."
Violette de Jaer, Brand Manager
Where the Posts Came From
Topics came from what kinksters were already asking, in public and in private, and each one was made in whatever format suited the question.
"The forums were the main thing, plus whatever came in through DMs and comments. People ask things there they won't ask anywhere else. A lot of what we made started as a thread I couldn't stop thinking about."
Molly Antigone Hall, Content Manager
Inside the Gala
The night was hosted by Harpy Fatale, a drag performer born in Greifswald and raised in London, trained in dance, hosting, and stand-up. She carried the room from the red carpet through to the closing photos. She's also clear about what the job is for: drag has always been political, and hosting is a question of who gets handed the microphone as much as it is a performance.
What the SXMAwards Recognize
The SXMAwards run across 12 categories covering campaigns, products, and design in the sex and intimacy industry. Alongside Best Social Media Campaign, the list includes Best Creator Platform Collaboration, Best Design, Best Growth Marketing Tool, and Best Community Engagement Product.
Nominations and votes come from the industry rather than a closed panel. Only email-verified accounts can take part, each account gets one nomination per category, and duplicate and bot detection runs across the whole process.
Little Leaf Agency was named Best Marketing Agency, with Admin by Amari Agency taking second place in the same category. The Code and Erika Lust were among the other nominees on the night.
The Rest of the Weekend
FET exhibited at SX Festival on June 27 and 28, across two stages and a garden. The program ran to far more talks, keynotes, panels, and workshops than we could get to, and plenty of it involved men, but the weekend was led mainly by women and femmes, which is still not the default in this industry. These are a few of the sessions we caught.
Reed Amber ran "Your Feet are Sexy: A Foot Fetish Workshop" in the kinky garden, and it was as funny as it was intimate. A sex educator, speaker, and kink and fetish expert, she teaches from her own experience rather than from theory, and co-hosts the award-winning podcast Come Curious with Florence Bark.
Susan Bratton gave a keynote, "Crossing the Gasm Chasm: Activating and Expanding Your Female Orgasmic Potential," drawing on decades of work as an intimacy expert and more than 30 years of her own marriage. She pitched it at anyone who wants a better intimate life, whatever that happens to look like for them, and it landed that way in the room.
Bratton also joined the "Non Monogamy Without the Filter" panel alongside Ally Iseman and others. Iseman is a modern intimacy expert and the founder of Passport 2 Pleasure, with a book on the way called For the Love of Jealousy. We will be reading it.
Calandra Balfour and Catherine Denoire hosted the Sensual Stage. Balfour has been hosting stages at SX Tech since 2019 and it shows. She's a sex therapist and educator, founder of the sex-positive platform LoveGivr, owner of Brighton's Lust!, and the author of Parts of Me. UK readers may know her from the Channel 4 documentary A Very British Sex Shop, which was made about her and her business.
Ana Ornelas and Lea Holzfurtner hosted the Impact Stage. Ornelas works as Pimenta Cítrica, roughly citric and spicy in Portuguese, and is a clinical sexologist and certified sex coach whose Berlin practice works with vulva owners around orgasm, shame, and guilt, and with couples and polycules who have lost desire or worry that their libidos no longer match, without treating any of it as a condition to be cured. She wrote The Ultimate Guide to Female Orgasm and hosts the RTL+ series Stranger Sins.
On Instagram
The FET Instagram account has been unavailable since shortly after the awards. Accounts serving this community run into this regularly, and we're working on getting back. In the meantime, the Knk Explained material lives here, and so does the community it was made for.
Your Turn
Knk Explained came out of the forums, so this is where it goes back. Which post taught you something you hadn't come across before, or something you wish you had known earlier? Tell us in the FET Forum, and it may well become the next thing we make.
If you would rather talk it through live, the BDSM Chat is open.
Frequently Asked Questions
What did FET win at the SXMAwards 2026?
Best Social Media Campaign, for Knk Explained, a year-long BDSM education series on Instagram.
Who decides the SXMAwards?
Nominations and votes come from verified members of the industry and its audience, one nomination per account per category, across 12 categories.
What was Knk Explained?
A run of posts answering beginner questions about kink and BDSM, from aftercare and terminology to spotting a fake Dom. The series grew the FET Instagram account from 1,000 to 11,500 followers in a year.
What happened at SX Festival?
FET exhibited on 27 and 28 June. The weekend included Reed Amber's foot fetish workshop in the kinky garden, a keynote from Susan Bratton, and the "Non Monogamy Without the Filter" panel with Ally Iseman and Bratton.
Has FET won anything before?
Yes. FET won Best Fetish App/Website at the UK Fetish Awards last year.
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