Hugo Award
The Hugo Award is an annual literary award for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year, given at the World Science Fiction Convention and chosen by its members. The award is administered by the World Science Fiction Society. It is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories. Hugos were first given in 1953, at the 11th World Science Fiction Convention, and have been awarded every year since 1955. In 2010, Wired called the Hugo "the premier award in the science fiction genre", while The Guardian has called it the most important science fiction award alongside the Nebula Award.
The awards originally covered seven categories, but have expanded to seventeen categories of written and dramatic works over the years. The winners receive a trophy consisting of a stylized rocket ship on a base. The design of the trophy changes each year, though the rocket shape has been consistent since 1984.
The 2025 awards were presented at the 83rd Worldcon, "Seattle Worldcon 2025", in the United States on August 16, 2025. The 2026 awards will be presented at the 84th Worldcon, "LAcon V", in Anaheim, California in the United States on August 30, 2026.
Award
The World Science Fiction Society gives out the Hugo Awards each year for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The Hugos are widely considered the premier award in science fiction. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, who founded the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories and who is considered one of the "fathers" of the science fiction genre. Hugo Award finalists and winners are chosen by supporting or attending members of the annual World Science Fiction Convention, or Worldcon, and the presentation evening constitutes its central event. The awards are split over more than a dozen categories, and include both written and dramatic works.The idea of giving out awards at Worldcons was proposed by Harold Lynch for the 1953 convention. The idea was based on the Academy Awards, with the name "Hugo" being given by Robert A. Madle. The award trophy was created by Jack McKnight and Ben Jason in 1953, based on the design of hood ornaments of 1950s cars. It consisted of a finned rocket ship on a wooden base. Each subsequent trophy, with the exception of the 1958 trophy, has been similar to the original design. The rocket trophy was formally redesigned in 1984, and since then only the base of the trophy has changed each year. There is no monetary or other remuneration associated with the Hugo, other than the trophy.
Process
Members of the current or previous year's Worldcon are allowed to submit a nomination ballot of works from January through March of each year, with a limit of five nominations per category. Works are eligible for an award if they were published or first translated into English in the prior calendar year. There are no written rules as to which works qualify as science fiction or fantasy, and the decision of eligibility in that regard is left up to the voters, rather than to the organizing committee. These nominations are then used to make the list of six finalists per category using a custom-designed voting system known as E Pluribus Hugo. Finalists are also restricted to two finalists by each author in each category. Members of the current year's Worldcon then rank the finalists in each category in a vote held roughly from April through July, subject to change depending on when that year's Worldcon is held. These votes are counted using instant-runoff voting to determine the winner in each category. Voters may also vote for "no award" in any category, indicating that they feel that any finalists ranked below it are not worthy of a Hugo in that category.Prior to 2017, the final ballot was five works in each category, and the process to determine the finalists did not use E Pluribus Hugo. Worldcons are generally held near the start of September, and take place in a different city around the world each year.
Retro-Hugos
Retrospective Hugo Awards, or Retro-Hugos, were added to the Hugos in 1996. They were awards given by a convention for years 50, 75, or 100 years earlier in which a Worldcon was held but in which no Hugos were awarded. In 2017, the eligible years were expanded to include years after 1939 in which no Worldcon was held. Retro-Hugos were optional; some Worldcons chose not to award them despite a year being eligible. Of the fifteen eligible years, awards were given for eight. In 2025, the WSFS constitution was amended to remove Retro-Hugos.History
1950s
The first Hugo Awards were presented at the 11th Worldcon in Philadelphia in 1953, which awarded Hugos in seven categories. The awards presented that year were initially conceived as a one-off event, though the organizers hoped that subsequent conventions would also present them. At the time, Worldcons were completely run by their respective committees as independent events and had no oversight between years. Thus there was no mandate for any future conventions to repeat the awards, and no set rules for how to do so.The 1954 Worldcon chose not to, but the awards were reinstated at the 1955 Worldcon, and thereafter became traditional. The award was called the Annual Science Fiction Achievement Award, with "Hugo Award" being an unofficial, but better known name. The nickname was accepted as an official alternative name in 1958, and since the 1992 awards the nickname has been adopted as the official name of the award.
For the first few years, Hugo Awards had no published rules, and were given for works published in the "preceding year" leading up to the convention, which was not defined but generally covered the period between conventions rather than calendar years. In 1959, though there were still no formal guidelines governing the awards, several rules were instated which thereafter became traditional. These included having a ballot for nominating works earlier in the year and separate from the voting ballot; defining eligibility to include works published in the previous calendar year, rather than the ambiguous "preceding year"; and allowing voters to select "No Award" as an option if no finalists were felt to be deserving of the award. "No Award" won that year in two categories: Dramatic Presentation and Best New Author. The eligibility change additionally sparked a separate rule, prohibiting the nomination of works which had been nominated for the 1958 awards, as the two time periods overlapped.
1960s
In 1961, after the formation of the WSFS to oversee each Worldcon committee, formal rules were set down in the WSFS constitution mandating the presenting of the awards as one of the responsibilities of each Worldcon organizing committee. The rules restricted voting to members of the convention at which the awards would be given, while still allowing anyone to nominate works; nominations were restricted to members of the convention or the previous year's convention in 1963. The guidelines also specified the categories that would be awarded, which could only be changed by the World Science Fiction Society board. These categories were for Best Novel, Short Fiction, Dramatic Presentation, Professional Magazine, Professional Artist, and Best Fanzine. 1963 was also the second year in which "No Award" won a category, again for Dramatic Presentation.In 1964 the guidelines were changed to allow individual conventions to create additional categories, which was codified as up to two categories for that year. These additional awards were officially designated as Hugo Awards, but were not required to be repeated by future conventions. This was later adjusted to only allow one additional category; while these special Hugo Awards have been given out in several categories, only a few were ever awarded for more than one year.
In 1967 categories for Novelette, Fan Writer, and Fan Artist were added, and a category for Best Novella was added the following year; these new categories provided a definition for what word count qualified a work for what category, which was previously left up to voters. Novelettes had also been awarded prior to the codification of the rules. The fan awards were initially conceived as separate from the Hugo Awards, with the award for Best Fanzine losing its status, but were instead absorbed into the regular Hugo Awards by the convention committee.
1970s
While traditionally five works had been selected as finalists in each category out of the proposed nominees, in 1971 this was set down as a formal rule, barring ties. In 1973, the WSFS removed the category for Best Professional Magazine, and a Best Professional Editor award was instated as its replacement, in order to recognize "the increasing importance of original anthologies".After that year the guidelines were changed again to remove the mandated awards and instead allow up to ten categories which would be chosen by each convention, though they were expected to be similar to those presented in the year before. Despite this change no new awards were added or previous awards removed before the guidelines were changed back to listing specific categories in 1977. 1971 and 1977 both saw "No Award" win the Dramatic Presentation category for the third and fourth time; "No Award" did not win any categories afterwards until 2015.
1980s and 1990s
In 1980 the category for Best Non-Fiction Book was added, followed by a category for Best Semiprozine in 1984. In 1983, members of the Church of Scientology were encouraged by people such as Charles Platt to nominate as a bloc Battlefield Earth, written by the organization's founder L. Ron Hubbard, for the Best Novel award; it did not make the final ballot. Another campaign followed in 1987 to nominate Hubbard's Black Genesis; it made the final ballot but finished behind "No Award". 1989 saw a work — The Guardsman by Todd Hamilton and P. J. Beese — withdrawn by its authors from the final ballot after a fan bought numerous memberships under false names, all sent in on the same day, in order to get the work onto the ballot.In 1990, the Best Original Art Work award was given as a special Hugo Award, and was listed again in 1991, though not actually awarded, and established afterward as an official Hugo Award. It was then removed from this status in 1996, and has not been awarded since. The Retro Hugos were created in the mid-1990s, and were first awarded in 1996.