The nominating period for the 2020 Hugo Awards and 1945 Retrospective Hugo Awards is now open. CoNZealand, the 2020 Worldcon, has published a video discussing the opening of nominations.
Instructions for accessing the online nominating form have been sent via e-mail. Check your junk e-mail/spam/promotions folders in your e-mail client for this e-mail if you did not receive it. Despite the convention’s efforts, voter information notification messages may be flagged as spam by some e-mail systems.
The CoNZealand/2020 Worldcon Hugo Awards web page has instructions for accessing the online nominating ballots for the 2020 and 1945 Hugo Awards and links to PDF versions of the paper nominating ballots.
Paper ballots were mailed to those members of CoNZealand who requested paper publications along with the convention’s Progress Report 2.
Nominations will close on 13 March 2020 at 23:59 Pacific Daylight Time (02:59 Eastern Daylight Time, 06:59 UTC/Irish Time, and 19:59 14 March 2020 New Zealand Daylight Time). Paper ballots must be received by mail by 13 March 2020. The six most popular eligible nominees in each category will go forward to the final ballot. The Finalists for the Awards will be announced in early April. The 2020 Hugo Awards Ceremony will be held on Saturday 1 August 2020 at CoNZealand in Wellington, New Zealand. The timing of the 1943 Retrospective Hugo Awards Ceremony is yet to be announced.
CoNZealand, the 2020 World Science Fiction Convention, will be presenting the 2020 Hugo Awards (generally for works first published or appearing in 2019) as well as the 1945 Retrospective Hugo Awards (generally for works first published or appearing in 1944). Any person who was a voting member of at least one of the 2019 or 2020 World Science Fiction Conventions as of December 31, 2019 may cast a nominating ballot for the 2020 and 1945 Awards.
The ballots will also include voting on two other awards administered by the Worldcon. These are the Lodestar Award for Young Adult Book, presented by the World Science Fiction Society, and the Astounding Award (formerly known as the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer), presented by Dell Magazines. No retrospective versions of these awards are presented.
Eligible members of the 2019 and 2020 Worldcons can make up to five nominations in each category. You are not required to nominate in all categories or to fill every nomination blank on the ballot. As the announcement from CoNZealand states, “The Hugo Awards are fan-run, fan-given, and fan-supported. We recommend that you nominate whatever works and creators you have personally read or seen that were your favorites from 2019 and 1944.”
While members of both the 2019 and 2020 Worldcons can nominate for the 2020 and 1945 Hugo Awards, only members of the 2020 Worldcon are eligible to vote on the final ballot.
Please direct any questions about the administration of the 2020 and 1945 Hugo Awards to the ConZealand Hugo Award Administrators, not to the Hugo Awards web site. The Hugo Awards web site team does not administer the elections for the Hugo Awards, nor do we make eligibility rulings. The 2020/1945 Hugo Awards are administered by the Hugo Awards Administration Subcommittee of CoNZealand, and all decisions regarding the eligibility of works and the administration of nominations are exclusively the committee’s responsibility.
Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book. I notice CoNZealand’s website is using italics in Astounding Award for Best New Writer. I know it’s for the former magazine title, but it could also be taken as emphatically astounding! 🙂
Thank you for the corrections.
Dramatic presentation suggestions:
[Deleted by editors. The Hugo Awards web site does not host suggestions. There are multiple third-party recommendation sites for this purpose.]
When does the voting start after nominations? I must have missed that bit!
CoNZealand, the 2020 Worldcon, which is completely responsible for administering the 2020 Hugo Awards, has not announced when voting on the final Hugo Award ballot will start. They are in the process of counting ballots, determining the initial finalist lists, confirming the eligibility of potential finalists, and contacting finalists to give them an opportunity to decline nomination to the shortlist. This typically takes several weeks.
When we know more about when the finalists will be announced and when voting starts, we will publish it here.