In 2013, Diebold was the sole recipient of Austrias highest research award across all disciplines, the Wittgenstein Award. The award, which comes with substantial unrestricted research funds, is bestowed in support of the notion that scientists should be guaranteed the greatest possible freedom and flexibility in the performance of their research. It enabled Diebolds research activities to flourish without restriction. Other honors include:
* 2004 Fellow, American Physical Society, "For groundbreaking research on the role of defects in the interplay between bulk and surface properties of transition-metal oxides and on STM imaging of their surface structure.",
* 2005 Fellow of the American Vacuum Society
* 2007 Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science
* 2011, 2019 Advanced Grants by the European Research Council, for work on "Microscopic Processes and Phenomena at Oxide Surfaces and Interfaces"  (2011), and "Water at Oxide Surfaces: a Fundamental Approach" (2019).
* 2013 Arthur W. Anderson Award of the American Chemical Society, for Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Surface Chemistry.
* 2013 Wittgenstein Award
*2014 European Academy of Sciences 
*2014 Elected as a Full Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. 
* 2015 Blaise Pascal medal in Materials Sciences by the European Academy of Sciences, for "Surfaces of Metal Oxides, Studied at the Atomic Scale". 
* 2015 Debye Lecturer at Utrecht University, The Netherlands, entitled "Surface Science Studies of an Iron Oxide Model Catalyst" . 
* 2015 21st Annual Schrödinger Lecturer at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, with the title "An Atomic-Scale View at Oxide Surfaces". 
* 2015 R. Brdička memorial lecturer at the J. Heyrovský Institute of Physical Chemistry, Prague, entitled "Surface Science of Metal Oxides". 
*2015 Elected to the Leopoldina, the national academy of sciences in Germany, 
*2019 Science award of the city of Vienna. 
*2020 Gerhard Ertl Lecture Award
*2021 International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 
*2022 Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry