Star Awards


Star Awards are awards for artistic and technical merit where Mediacorp recognises entertainers under their employment for outstanding performances of the year.

History

The first Star Awards presentation was held on 26 February 1994, took place at the Caldecott Broadcast Centre, Mediacorp TV Theatre with an audience of about 500 people. There have no other pre-show and post-awards ceremony held in that year. Winners were announced during the presentation of the ceremony, the ceremony also presented a popularity contest, with Li Nanxing, Chew Chor Meng and Zoe Tay winning the Most Popular Actor and Actress award, respectively. The first Best Drama Serial was only awarded during the third Awards in 1996 to Tofu Street for an outstanding overall performance. The nominees are determined by a team of judges employed by Mediacorp and winners are selected by a majority vote from the entire judging panel. Chew Chor Meng, Li Nanxing, Terence Cao, Sean Say, Desmond Sim, Chen Liping, Chen Xiuhuan, Pan Lingling, Aileen Tan, and Zoe Tay received the award as the 10 Most Popular Artistes, with five awards given to male and female artistes; these artistes were awarded by popularity among the television audience based from the public via telephone and SMS text voting. Since 1997, the number of recipients for each category were expanded to ten.

Institutions and milestones

1994–2010s

  • Fann Wong was the first Best Actress recipient for her role in "Chronicle of Life," marking her as the inaugural awardee since the award's introduction in 1995.
  • Li Nanxing received an award for his performance in "Wounded Tracks," honoring his outstanding leading role, while Zhu Xiufeng was recognized for her supporting role in the drama "Chronicle of Life,".
  • Special Achievement Award, given between 1995 and 2003, honored artistes for their significant contributions, later revived in 2018 with Marcus Chin as the recipient.
  • The recent award in 2022 and 2023 ends with the Best Actor and Actress award, but recent ceremonies' last award would be Top 10 Most Popular Male or Female Artistes award, a popularity contest open for all nominated Mediacorp Artistes.
  • Variety categories were introduced in the 1998 ceremony, expanding eligibility to include variety programs and their artistes.
  • All-Time Favourite Artiste replaced the Special Achievement Award in 2004 ceremony, honoring artistes who won the Top 10 Most Popular Male or Female Artiste awards ten times.
  • Ceremonies were held annually in April to celebrate television talents from the previous year, with changes in scheduling over the years.

    2010–2020s

  • 2010 ceremony introduced new awards like Favourite Male Character and Female Characters and the Rocket Award, focusing on artistes' contributions and improvement.
  • 20th Star Awards ceremony in 2014 introduced the Social Media Award and The Most Popular Regional Artiste Award. 2014 saw revisions in award category quotas, affecting the presentation of certain awards like Best News Presenter and Best Newcomer.
  • 2015 ceremonies marked the last time they were held at the Caldecott Broadcast Centre before moving to the Mediacorp campus. During Show 1 of the presentation, Jeanette Aw emerged as a major winner, securing victories across the majority of categories that night.
  • 2016 ceremony saw changes in award presentation and the last occurrence of online Favourite award categories and the first cremeony which introduced the Best Evergreen Artiste Award. A new category, 'Best Programme Host', was created with a merger of two hosting awards due to a similar presentation style in both the variety and info-ed programmes, as well as similar eligibility criteria. Regrettably, the technical categories moves to backstage during the proceedings of the year 2016. Consequently, these significant aspects of the event were omitted from the broadcast, limiting the recognition and appreciation of the technical excellence displayed by the nominees and winners in their respective fields.
  • At the 2017 ceremony, online voting categories were also streamlined, by putting more emphasis placed on the Top 10 Most Popular Artiste awards, while the Favourite Male and Female Character, and Favourite Onscreen Couple awards, as well as Social Media Award were dropped due to the change. Due to the switch in measuring television viewership, the Top Rated Variety Programme and Top Rated Drama Serial awards were also suspended.
  • The 2018 ceremony saw revamps towards the Top 10 Popularity Awards, whereas a poll of 1,000 people representing a wide demographic across Singapore's population, were conducted independently by an accredited market research company, will be used to shortlist the nominations. The results of the poll weighed 50% towards the combined total, while the other 50% comes from the public vote. Eligibility criteria for performance and popularity categories were also revised, opening up to non-Mediacorp artistes; eligible artistes were now required to lead a role in a programme or play as a supporting role/assistant host in at least three eligible programmes or at least 30 episodes out of all eligible programmes, whichever applicable. Best Evergreen Artiste were also accessed on veteran artistes based on a full calendar year, as opposed to a single programme.
  • The 2019 ceremony, coinciding the silver jubilee of the ceremony on 14 April 2019, introduced two categories to feature miniseries, which were the Best Short-form Drama Serial and Best Short-form Variety Programme.

    2020–present

  • The 2021 ceremony, initially announced to be held on 26 April 2020 and announced that the event is postponed to the second half of 2020 due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, making it the first ceremony in 13 years since the revision of the eligibility period in 2008 where the ceremony would not be held on the month of April; On 7 August 2020, the ceremony was pushed to 18 April 2021 and expanding the eligibility to include 2020 programs, resulting in the increase of nominations for most of the award categories, from the traditional five to seven. The ceremony also introduces radio awards coinciding the 85th anniversary of radio broadcasting in Singapore. For the first time since 2014, the award ceremony was announced to be held outside studios, located on the Jewel Changi Airport and Terminal 4.
In 2022, the ceremony launched the My Pick! Awards; Favourite Couple Pairing, the Male Show Stealer, the Female Show Stealer, Most Hated Villain, Perfect Combo and Most Attention-Seeking New Gen Host. The awards would be given out during the Backstage Live segment of the 2022 ceremony.
  • The 2023 ceremony saw introductions of the Most Popular Rising Star award and revamps towards the Top 10 Popularity Awards. Nominees are no longer shortlisted into the Top 40 nominees, instead they are eligible as long as they have acted in a Lead role or main host in an eligible programme or a Supporting role or episodic host in 3 eligible programme/30 episodes in total across all eligible programme, while having more than 5 years of professional screen acting and/or screen/audio hosting experience before the award ceremony, Most Popular Rising Star have similar requirements, but they can be nominated with being a Supporting role or episodic host in a single eligible programme, while having 5 or less years of professional screen acting and/or screen/audio hosting, and being 18 years and above to be nominated.
  • Star Awards 2024 marks the removal of the Best Evergreen Artiste Award by Mediacorp, and believes that artistic excellence transcends age. As a result, Veteran artistes are now valued based on their contributions across various acting and program categories in the nominations. Additionally, Mediacorp introduced a new category during this year's awards ceremony: "Best Audio Personality," aimed at recognizing outstanding hosts in the audio industry. This initiative aims to provide greater opportunities for DJs and audio presenters to participate and be acknowledged for their contributions.
  • Star Awards 2025 marked the second time in 30 years that Chow Yun-fat was invited to the ceremony to present the Most Popular Artiste award. It also marked a historic milestone, as the Best Actress accolade was awarded for the first time to a non-Mediacorp artiste and non-Singaporean — Jessica Hsuan. Meanwhile, Christopher Lee emerged as the biggest winner of the night, taking home three awards and making history in the process.

    Theme tune

Since 1995, the signature theme tune titled "Linking the World", composed by Christopher Evans. It was subsequently modified to have different renditions of the same tune for subsequent ceremonies.
Since 2019, the original theme tune was re-composed as "Starlight" 《星光》, with a new rendition and lyrics. This new rendition was used as the opener for the ceremony since 2021.

Trophy

Since its establishment in 1994, the Star Awards trophy has undergone four distinct design changes, with a fifth introduced in 2025
  • 1994: The trophy featured a transparent column topped with a silver, multi-faceted star.
  • 1995 to 1997: The trophy consisted of a column topped with a gold star.
  • 1998 to 1999: The trophy took on a conical shape with a large star.
  • 2000 to present: Designed in Shanghai, each trophy weighs 4 kilograms and is valued at $1000. Its design is formed by the crystalline shape of the letter "S," which, when viewed from another angle, resembles the letter "A," forming the abbreviation for "Star Awards." The trophy's color varies each year.
  • 2025: A special edition of the trophy, crowned with a radiant coat of golden sheen, marks this design with distinction — a gleaming tribute to excellence and legacy.

    List of Star Awards ceremonies

Here is a complete list of Mediacorp Star Awards ceremonies.
The latest ceremony, 30th Star Awards ceremony, held on July 6, 2025.