The Hugo Awards Come to Anaheim

At eight o’clock on the evening of Sunday, August 30, 2026, the house lights will drop in the Arena at the Anaheim Convention Center, and Ursula Vernon - writing as T. Kingfisher, and serving LAcon V as toastmaster - will begin reading names. The 84th World Science Fiction Convention will present the 2026 Hugo Awards, the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book, and the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, in front of a live audience and a free public stream on YouTube.

It is the fourth time the Hugo ceremony has been staged in Anaheim, and the seventh Worldcon in the Los Angeles region. For a trophy shaped like a 1950s rocket ship, in a city that has spent seventy years selling the future, the fit is close to perfect.

A rocket named for an editor

The Hugos were created in 1953, at the 11th World Science Fiction Convention in Philadelphia, where seven awards were given out. They were named in honor of Hugo Gernsback, who launched Amazing Stories in 1926 and gave the field both a magazine of its own and, eventually, a name.

The 1953 awards were not initially meant to recur. There were none in 1954. They came back in 1955 and have been presented every year since. For four decades the official title was the Annual Science Fiction Achievement Award; the nickname everyone actually used became the official name in 1992.

The machinery around the award was built in stages. From 1953 to 1963, each Worldcon committee decided its own categories. The World Science Fiction Society Constitution, adopted in 1963, moved that authority to the membership as a whole, where it remains - the categories are set by the WSFS Business Meeting, which is why the ballot has grown to take in comics, games, podcasts, editors, artists and, most recently, poetry.

The trophy and the base

The rocket itself was made by Jack McKnight and Ben Jason for that first ceremony, a finned silver ship whose lines owe an obvious debt to the hood ornaments of 1950s Detroit. Peter Weston refined the design in 1984, and that refinement is the version handed out today. The rocket does not change.

The base does. Every Worldcon commissions its own, which makes the Hugo one of the few major awards in any field where the physical object is redesigned annually by the host city.

LAcon V announced its designers in June 2026. The Hugo base is the work of Scott Lefton, a multidisciplinary artist and consulting engineer who designed the 2004 bases and who built a miniature Hugo rocket that flew to the International Space Station. The Lodestar Award is being made by H Emiko Ogasawara, a California artist and instructor who works in ceramics, sculpture, printmaking and paper engineering, including kinetic and interactive pieces.

“The Hugo trophy is the SFF community’s equivalent of the Oscar,” Lefton said in the convention’s announcement. “I’m honored to have been chosen to craft this year’s Hugo base.” Neither design has been shown publicly. Both will be unveiled at Opening Ceremonies on August 27.

How the ballot works

The Hugos are a membership award, start to finish. There is no jury and no academy. Anyone who holds an eligible WSFS membership in Worldcon can nominate and vote, and attending in person is not required - an online or WSFS-only membership carries full ballot rights.

Nominating runs early in the year, with each member listing up to five works per category. Since 2017 the nominations have been tallied using E Pluribus Hugo, a points-distribution method that spreads a ballot’s weight across the works it names, and since the same year each category has carried six finalists rather than five. LAcon V received 1,488 valid nominating ballots for the 2026 awards, six of them on paper.

The final ballot is ranked. Winners are determined by instant-runoff voting, in use since 1968, and every category also carries a No Award option. LAcon V’s final voting opened on May 6 and closed at noon Pacific on August 8, run through the NomNom platform with a printable mail ballot available and a voter packet supplied to members. The 2026 awards are administered by Tammy Coxen, with deputy administrators Rosemary Parks, Warren Buff and Emily January, under WSFS Division Head Linda Deneroff.

What is on the ballot

The categories span the field: Best Novel, Novella, Novelette and Short Story; Best Series; Best Graphic Story or Comic; Best Related Work; Best Dramatic Presentation in Long and Short Form; Best Game or Interactive Work; Best Editor in Long and Short Form; Best Professional Artist; and the fan categories - Semiprozine, Fanzine, Fancast, Fan Writer and Fan Artist. Best Poem joined the ballot and was first presented at Seattle in 2025.

Two awards are voted and presented alongside the Hugos without technically being Hugos. The Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book was established in 2018. The Astounding Award for Best New Writer dates to 1973, is sponsored by Dell Magazines, publisher of Analog, and is open to writers in their first or second year of professional publication. Jerry Pournelle won the first one. It took its present name with the 2020 award year, tracking the magazine’s own lineage from Astounding to Analog.

The 2026 Best Novel finalists are A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett, Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor, Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky, The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow, The Incandescent by Emily Tesh, and The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson.

Recent form

Bennett arrives in Anaheim as the reigning Best Novel winner: The Tainted Cup took the 2025 award at Seattle. That ceremony also gave Best Novella to Ray Nayler’s The Tusks of Extinction, Best Novelette to Naomi Kritzer’s “The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea,” Best Short Story to Nghi Vo’s “Stitched to Skin Like Family Is,” and Best Series to Rebecca Roanhorse’s Between Earth and Sky. Dune: Part Two won Long Form Dramatic Presentation; Caves of Qud won Best Game or Interactive Work; Marie Brennan won the inaugural Best Poem. Moniquill Blackgoose took the Astounding Award, and Darcie Little Badger’s Sheine Lende the Lodestar.

Anaheim’s own Hugo ledger

The Southern California Institute for Fan Interests, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit behind LAcon V, has run Worldcons in Anaheim in 1984, 1996 and 2006.

L.A.con II, at the Anaheim Convention Center and the Anaheim Hilton over Labor Day weekend 1984, drew 8,365 attendees - a Worldcon record that stood for decades. Robert Bloch was toastmaster. David Brin won Best Novel for Startide Rising; Octavia Butler won Best Short Story for “Speech Sounds.”

L.A.con IV, in August 2006, used the convention center plus the Hilton and the Marriott - the same footprint LAcon V will occupy - and drew 5,913 attendees from 23 countries. Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin won Best Novel.

Under the banner “Dare to Discover, Dare to Explore, Dare be Uncharted!”, LAcon V runs August 27–31 across the Anaheim Convention Center, the Hilton Anaheim and the Anaheim Marriott. Attendance at the ceremony is included with membership. What the audience will be watching is a seventy-three-year-old object, made new at the base, handed to writers and artists by the readers who voted for them.

Sources

• A Short History of the Hugo Awards Process - The Hugo Awards
• Hugo Award FAQ - The Hugo Awards

• The Hugo Awards - LAcon V
• Hugo Award Base & Lodestar Award Designers Announced - LAcon V
• 2026 Hugo Award Finalists - LAcon V
• 2025 Hugo Award Winners and Statistics - Seattle Worldcon 2025
• Astounding Award history - The Hugo Awards
• About LAcon V

Research verified August 8, 2026. Schedules, exhibitors, speakers, prices and access details may change; confirm current information with the organizer before attending.