The MEDEA Awards were launched in November 2007 and were an immediate success, with submissions sent in from across Europe and beyond. Over the years, several new awards have been introduced, recognising and rewarding different aspects of the field of media in education and its importance in a European context. Since 2010, the MEDEA Awards have also been integrated in the Media & Learning Conference, an event bringing together practitioners and policymakers and highlighting the latest developments, services, and digital and media competences in education and training.

From 2012 to 2014, the MEDEA Awards were supported by the Lifelong Programme of the European Commission through the MEDEAnet project. Two previous European Commission-funded projects expanding the reach of the MEDEA Awards were called MEDEA:EU (2008-2011) and MEDEA2020 (2010-2012). From 2015 onwards, the MEDEA Awards have been supported by the Media & Learning Association.

In recent years, there has been remarkable interest in the creation and use of digital video and audio in education, boosted by the increasing impact of multimedia and video-based websites and the widespread availability of mobile devices with increasing imaging capacity.

The pedagogical vision is clear: Only when video and audio are routine components of education and online learning will we have an educational environment that reflects the media-rich world in which our learners now live.