The Hugo Awards

The Hugo Awards

The Hugo Awards® are the leading award for excellence in the field of science fiction and fantasy. The Hugo Awards were first presented in 1953 and have been awarded every year since 1955 by the members of the World Science Fiction Society (Worldcon members) at the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon). The complete list of Hugo Award winners can be found at the official Hugo Award website. The current rules for the Hugo Awards are contained in Article 3 of the WSFS Constitution.

Nominations for the Hugo Awards, as well as the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book and the Astounding Award for Best New Writer are now open. In addition to the usual categories, LAcon V will give out a Hugo Award for Best Poem, as announced here. 

Eligibility

You are eligible to nominate for the Hugo Awards if you became a member of LAcon V by January 31, 2026, or were a member of the Seattle Worldcon 2025. 

How to Nominate

Nominations can be submitted through our online balloting system, NomNom, or by mailing in a printable ballot, which is downloadable here.

In order to use NomNom you will first need to create an LAcon V virtual convention account. Eligible nominators should have received an email with instructions on how to set up their account. If you did not, please contact hugo-help@lacon.org for assistance. 

If you use NomNom, you can edit your ballot as often as you like until the close of the nominations period. If you have already set up your virtual convention account and would like to return to your online ballot, you can find it here.

Deadline

Nominations will close on Saturday, March 28, 2026 at 9:00am Pacific Time / 12:00pm Eastern Time / 4:00pm GMT.

Voting

The final ballot will be announced in April, and only members of LAcon V will be able to vote for the winners in each category. If you do not have a membership for LAcon V and wish to purchase one, go here.

Membership will give you rights to vote in the Hugo Awards, download the Hugo Awards Voting Packet, Vote in Site Selection for the 2028 Worldcon (provided you pay the voting fee), submit business to the Business Meeting, and nominate works for the 2027 Hugo Awards if you click the box giving us permission to pass on your data.

Additional information

Extended Eligibility for Non-U.S. published works: In past years, a potential Hugo Award nominee with extremely limited distribution in the year of its first publication or presentation has had its eligibility extended for an additional year by the WSFS business meeting. The 2025 WSFS business meeting did not pass any eligibility extensions for the 2026 Hugo Awards. 

Hugo Subcommittee: The LAcon V Committee has completely and irrevocably delegated its authority to administer the 2025 Hugo, Lodestar, and Astounding Awards to a Hugo Subcommittee consisting of Hugo Administrator Tammy Coxen, Deputy Hugo Administrators Rosemary Parks, Warren Buff and Emily January, and WSFS Division Head Linda Deneroff. Per section 3.13 of the WSFS Constitution, the members of the Hugo Subcommittee will therefore be ineligible for the 2025 Hugo, Lodestar, and Astounding Awards, and remain ineligible regardless of continuing membership in the subcommittee. The Hugo administrator may add to or modify the Hugo Subcommittee at his discretion without having to return to the LAcon V Committee for approval.

Best Series Eligibility

From the WSFS Constitution:

• 3.3.5: Best Series. A multi-installment science fiction or fantasy story, unified by elements such as plot, characters, setting, and presentation, appearing in at least three (3) installments consisting in total of at least 240,000 words by the close of the previous calendar year, at least one (1) installment of which was published in the previous calendar year, and which has not previously won under subsection 3.3.5.
   
• 3.3.5.1: Previous losing finalists in the Best Series category shall be eligible only upon the publication of at least two (2) additional installments consisting in total of at least 240,000 words after they qualified for their last appearance on the final ballot and by the close of the previous calendar year.
   
• 3.4.2.1: For finalists in the Best Series category that have previously appeared on the ballot for Best Series, any installments published in English in a year prior to that previous appearance, regardless of country of publication, shall be considered to be part of the series’ previous eligibility, and will not count toward the re-eligibility requirements for the current year. 

Therefore: 

Previous Winners who are ineligible:

• 2025, Between Earth and Sky, by Rebecca Roanhorse
• 2024, Imperial Radch, by Ann Leckie
• 2023, Children of Time Series, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
• 2022, Wayward Children, by Seanan McGuire
• 2021, The Murderbot Diaries, by Martha Wells
• 2020, The Expanse, by James A Corey
• 2019, Wayfarers, by Becky Chambers
• 2018, World of the 5 Gods, by Lois McMaster Bujold
• 2017, Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold (first year awarded)

Previous Finalists who may be eligible: IF at least two (2) additional installments consisting in total of at least 240,000 words were published 1) after January 1 of the year they last appeared on the final ballot AND 2) on or before December 31, 2025. (Note that this is an unduplicated list – any series that was a finalist in multiple years is only shown in the year of its most recent ballot appearance.)

2025

• The Burning Kingdoms, by Tasha Suri
• InCryptid, by Seanan McGuire
• Southern Reach, by Jeff VanderMeer
• The Stormlight Archive, by Brandon Sanderson
• The Tyrant Philosophers, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

2024

• The Final Architecture, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
• The Last Binding, by Freya Marske
• The Laundry Files, by Charles Stross
• October Daye, by Seanan McGuire
• The Universe of Xuya, by Aliette de Bodard

2023

• The Founders Trilogy, by Robert Jackson Bennett
• The Locked Tomb, by Tamsyn Muir
• Rivers of London, by Ben Aaronovitch
• The Scholomance, by Naomi Novik

2022

• The Green Bone Saga, by Fonda Lee
• The Kingston Cycle, by C. L. Polk
• The Merchant Princes, by Charles Stross
• Terra Ignota, by Ada Palmer
• The World of the White Rat, by T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon)

2021

• The Daevabad Trilogy, by S. A. Chakraborty
• The Interdependency, John Scalzi
• The Lady Astronaut Universe, by Mary Robinette Kowal
• The October Daye series, by Seanan McGuire
• The Poppy War, by R F. Kuang

2020

• Luna, by Ian McDonald
• Planetfall series, by Emma Newman
• Winternight Trilogy, by Katherine Arden
• The Wormwood Trilogy, by Tade Thompson

2019

• The Centenal Cycle, by Malka Older
• Machineries of Empire, by Yoon Ha Lee

2018

• The Books of the Raksura, by Martha Wells
• The Divine Cities, by Robert Jackson Bennett
• The Memoirs of Lady Trent, by Marie Brennan

2017

• The Craft Sequence, by Max Gladstone
• The Temeraire series, by Naomi Novik