#hugos

as of 04/22/26

Novel: 5/6

Novella: 4/6

Novellette: 0/6

Short Story: 0/6

Series: 3.16/6

Graphic Story: 1/6

Related Work: 2/6

Dramatic Presentation Long Form: 2/6

Dramatic Presentation Short Form: 1/6

Game: 1/6

Lodestar: 2/6

Astounding: 3/6

The Hugo Award is for science fiction and fantasy (or other subgenres under the speculative umbrella). This is the one that fans vote on, not some committee. There are categories for books, movies, short stories, and a bunch of other media. Voting for this year (2026) is for works that were published last year (2025). You can learn more about the awards here: https://www.thehugoawards.org/

Also unrelated but the ceremony was a mess. Love all the volunteers. Hosts, get your act together and don’t put singing your made-up song above getting the names right and NOT MISSING A WHOLE NOMINEE. You had one job!!!

I cannot believe this is the highest award in science fiction and fantasy. Ursula K Le Guin was right. Stop treating the work unseriously and the literary public might stop laughing at our entire genre.

thank you! That's really sweet.

First off on a personal level I had a really good time watching the ceremony, I streamed the livestream over discord to some friends and had about 6 people watching which was way more than I've gotten previously. Plus I knew some people who were at worldcon and watching the awards live and they would occasionally message us about the awards which was cool.

Anyways! Overall pretty happy I think:

editor/fancast/zines/fanwriter/poem: I didn't vote in these this year so don't really have opinions. I was happy Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones won though, everything I've heard about it sounds great, she's such an incredible writer and a deep dive into her whole bibliography is amazing, also I like both the hosts as authors.

I did vote for the artist categories but didn't have strong/informed opinions there

Astounding: I'm so happy Moniquill Blackgoose won, she was my top pick this year and last year. I really loved To Shape a Dragon's Breath

Lodestar: Sheine Lende was not my personal top pick, but I'm pleased it won, it was a really lovely book and deserved it

Graphic Novel: Lower Decks! Lower Decks! Also not my top pick (that was The Deep Dark) but it was my second pick, and a tough decision for me. I thought it did a really good job being clever with its format, and delivered a really funny and emotional narrative.

Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: this wasn't my top pick, I didn't actually think the Lower Decks finale was spectacular and this episode probably won more as a symbol of the series as a whole than on individual merit, which is not really what this award is for but it was a really good series (for what it's worth I think the season 4 finale arc is the best and most thematically resonant part of lower decks).

Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: I was really hoping I Saw the TV Glow would take it :( oh well. I suppose Dune has such a massive footprint in sff spaces, and it does look like a spectacular movie (and part 1 also won the hugo. I'd also like to note that the audio on the livestream cut out a bit here and it took us a while to figure out what had won.

Game or Interactive Work: I'm so fucking happy it was an indie game. I had a post about my (lack of) theories on what would win for this category, and even though Caves of Qud wasn't my top pick I'm grateful that the category didn't seem to be popularity/exposure buying the victory. Also, I think I severely underestimated the impact/legacy/reputation of Caves of Qud when I wrote that post, so by the time the award was announced I was pretty sure it would win. Also major props to this category for continuing to have winners show up and give really nice speeches (*cough* dramatic presentation *cough*). This win also made my gamer friend who streamed caves of qud for me so I could vote about it happy.

Related Work: I was really surprised here, I thought for sure it would be one of the Chengdu reports. Maybe having two of them nominated split things up? I bounced off Speculative Whiteness a bit, it was a little more academic than I had the brains for when I read it, but a good win.

Series: Not going to lie, I'm really confused as to how Between Earth and Sky won this one, I really struggled to finish it and it was my lowest pick. My personal top vote was for The Tyrant Philosophers, which absolutely blew me away, but I thought it might be too bleak and disunified to win. Stormlight Archive was always going to be too long and not quite the right circle to win and Incryptid has a bad case of always the finalist, never the winner, but I would have thought Southern Reach for a weirder more literary winner, or Burning Kingdoms for an epic fantasy trilogy

Short Story: I for sure thought the Omelas one was going to win here, really surprised by the result. Stitched to Skin was good! I liked it! But nothing about it jumped out among the other nominees

Novelette: fuck yeah Four Sisters. Naomi Kritzer has been really cleaning up the short/mid lengths the past couple years, and I am entirely in favor of this because she's really really good. No one else I've seen has quite her talent for these impeccably executed stories just slightly to the side of our own world. This was my top vote

Novella: Tusks of Extinction was not my top pick, but was in my top three. I think this year novellas were pretty uniformly strongish, with no clear frontrunner, so I would have been happy with most winners

Novel: The Tainted Cup was amazing. On my ballot it came down between it and Alien Clay, and it very narrowly missed the top slot, but I was so incredibly pleased with this result. Ana Dolabra my beloved. These are beautifully constructed mysteries, incredibly engaging worldbuilding, and some excellent theme and character work as well. I hope Robert Jackson Bennett keeps writing one of these a year forever.