Nominations for the 2016 Hugo Awards and John W. Campbell Award and the 1941 Retrospective Hugo Awards closed on March 31. The finalists will be announced by this year’s Worldcon, MidAmeriCon II, on April 26. Voting on the final ballot will open May 15 and close July 31.

To vote on the final ballot, you must be a member of MidAmeriCon II. Both attending and supporting (non-attending) members can vote. MidAmeriCon II also has certain discounted membership levels that include voting rights. See the MidAmeriCon II Membership Registration page for details.

The 2016 Hugo Awards will be presented at a ceremony at MidAmeriCon II in Kansas City on the evening of August 20, 2016. The 1941 Retro-Hugo Awards will be presented at a separate ceremony earlier in the 2016 Worldcon. We will announce further details of both events when they are revealed by MidAmeriCon II.

Direct all questions about the administration of this year’s Hugo Awards to the current Worldcon’s Hugo Award Administrators. MidAmeriCon II is exclusively responsible for the administration of the 2016 Hugo Awards, the John W. Campbell Award, and the 1941 Retrospective Hugo Awards.

5,950 members of this year’s Worldcon voted in the 2015 Hugo Awards, according to an announcement from Sasquan, the 2015 World Science Fiction Convention. This breaks last year’s record of 3,587 ballots, and represents a 57% voter turnout, the highest participation level in the past decade. More people voted this year than attended all but eight of the 72 past Worldcons.

There were 5,914 ballots cast online and 36 on paper. Sasquan will release full details about voting and nominating for the 2015 Hugo Awards following the 2015 Hugo Award Ceremony on the evening of August 22 in Spokane, Washington. The details will be included with the 2015 Hugo Awards information on the Hugo Awards web site.

On Sunday, April 19, Best Fanzine finalist Black Gate announced that they were withdrawing from consideration in the 2015 Hugo Awards. This announcement came after the deadline for withdrawing from the 2015 Hugo Award shortlist as announced by this year’s Hugo Awards Administrators. According to the Administrator in a statement quoted on File 770, “The ballot is indeed locked, and Black Gate will remain on the ballot.”

The ballot is already at the printer in anticipation of a mailing of Hugo Award Finalist and 2017 Worldcon Site Selection voting ballots planned in the near future.

The Administrators are considering the possibility of including a statement regarding Black Gate’s announcement on the online voting page when that page launches in the near future.

Address any questions about the administration of this year’s Hugo Awards to the 2015 Hugo Award Administrators, not to the Hugo Awards web site.

The 2015 Hugo Award Administrators have announced that two of the finalists originally announced for the 2015 Hugo Awards have withdrawn their acceptances and will not appear on the final ballot for the 2015 Hugo Awards. We have updated the 2015 Finalist Shortlist accordingly.

In the Best Novel category, Lines of Departure by Marko Kloos was withdrawn by its author. It has been replaced by The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (translated by Ken Liu).

In the Best Short category, “Goodnight Stars” by Annie Bellet was withdrawn by its author. It has been replaced by “A Single Samurai” by Steven Diamond.

The Administrators also announced that in the Novelette category, the listing for “The Day the World Turned Upside Down” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt originally did not include the name of the translator, Lia Belt. That oversight has now been corrected. The announcement from the 2015 Worldcon further noted that this year appears to be the first time that multiple fiction finalists for the Hugo Award were originally written in languages other than English. Under World Science Fiction Society rules for the Hugo Award, a work originally published in a language other than English gets an additional year of eligibility if it is published in English in a later year.

This year is the first time in the history of the Hugo Awards that a finalist has withdrawn a work after announcement of the finalist shortlist. Nominees with sufficient nominating votes to make the shortlist have in the past declined nomination as Finalists; however, this has always happened before the shortlist was announced.

In the statement explaining the above changes, the Administrators announced that the ballot is now going to the printer and there will be no further revisions. The original finalist announcement stated that they expected to open the final ballot for voting by the members of the 2015 Worldcon “as soon as possible.” We will post an announcement on The Hugo Awards website when online voting opens.

Only supporting and attending members of Sasquan, the 2015 Worldcon, are eligible to vote on the final Hugo Award ballot. See the 2015 Worldcon Membership Registration Page for information about joining Sasquan. Membership is open to any person with an interest in SF and Fantasy literature.

A Hugo Voter Packet of nominated works will be released as soon as it is available with versions of the nominated works for members of the current Worldcon to review so that they can be better-informed voters. The availability of nominated works is dependent upon the generosity of the authors, artists, publishers, and rights holders, and no work is guaranteed to be in the Hugo Voter Packet. Only eligible voters (voting members of the 2015 Worldcon) will be given access to the Hugo Voter Packet.

The 2015 Hugo Award and John W. Campbell Award winners will be announced Saturday, August 22, 2015, during the Hugo Awards Ceremony at the 2015 Worldcon.

Please direct questions about the administration of this year’s Hugo and Campbell Awards to the Sasquan Hugo Administration Subcommittee. TheHugoAwards.org does not actually manage the administration of each year’s Hugo Awards, and while we can answer general queries, definitive answers to specific questions about given year’s Awards can only come from that year’s Administrator.

Sasquan, the 2015 World Science Fiction Convention, has disqualified two finalists from the 2015 Hugo Award finalists due to eligibility issues and clarified the status of two other finalists.

In the Best Novelette category, “Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus” by John C. Wright (The Book of Feasts & Seasons, Castalia House) was originally published online in 2013 prior to its appearance in that collection. It has been replaced by “The Day the World Turned Upside Down” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (Lightspeed Magazine, April 2014).

In the Best Professional Artist category, Jon Eno was replaced by Kirk DouPonce.

In the Best Novella category, both Big Boys Don’t Cry and One Bright Star to Guide Them were previously published in much shorter versions, and were significantly expanded to novella-length in their 2014 publication. Following previous precedents, for the purposes of the 2015 Hugos they are designated as new works. Both works remain as finalists in this category.

In the Best Fancast category, he original Hugo Award finalist announcement did not include the full name of Adventures in SciFi Publishing.

The full revised and corrected list of finalists is on the 2015 Hugo Awards page.

A list of the top 15 nominees in each category, along with the number of nominations received by each, will be released after the Hugo Awards Ceremony on Saturday, 22 August, 2015 at Sasquan.

Direct administrative questions about the 2015 Hugo Awards to the Sasquan Hugo Administrators. Please do not send administrative questions about the current Hugo Awards to TheHugoAwards.org, as we are not the ones who actually administer the Awards, and it will slow the answer to your query while we forward to the current Administrators.

Sasquan plans to release the final Hugo voting ballot to members of Sasquan online and by mail sometime in late April 2015. Only supporting and attending members of Sasquan are eligible to vote on the final ballot.

Full details of how to become a member of Sasquan are available on the Sasquan web site Registration page.

The 2015 Worldcon in Spokane (“Sasquan”) has opened nominations for the 2015 Hugo Award and John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. See the Nominating Ballot at the Sasquan web site to make your nominations.

Anyone who is or was a voting member of the 2014, 2015, or 2016 Worldcons by the end of the day (Pacific Time/GMT – 8) on January 31, 2015 is eligible to nominate. You may nominate only once, regardless of how many of those three Worldcons you are a member.

Nominations close at 23:59 Pacific Daylight Time (GMT – 7) on March 10, 2015. The works/people receiving sufficient nominations in this first stage of the balloting will go on to the final ballot, which will be announced later this year. Only members of the 2015 Worldcon will be eligible to vote on the final ballot. The January 31, 2015 membership deadline does not apply to the final ballot, only the nominating ballot.

In general, works first published or appearing in calendar year 2014 are eligible for the Hugo Award. Works previously published in languages other than English but first published in English in 2014 are eligible. Works previously published outside of the USA but first published in the USA in 2014 are eligible. Medium of publication is irrelevant: works published or appearing online are considered the same as if published in hard-copy form or shown on television or in theaters, including film festivals. Works published in multiple parts, such as serialized stories including graphic works, are eligible if their final part appeared in 2014. Detailed rules for the Hugo Award are contained in Article 3 of the World Science Fiction Society’s constitution.

Direct specific questions about the 2015 Hugo Awards to the 2015 Hugo Award Administrator through the 2015 Worldcon Committee Contact List. (Scroll down to “Hugo Administrator” for the specific contact information.) Please do not ask specific questions about the 2015 Hugo Awards by commenting here or sending inquiries to TheHugoAwards.org. The team managing this web site does not actually run the individual awards, so we can only forward your questions to the current year’s Hugo Award Administrators, which will delay a reply.

Besides online voting (which requires a Personal Identification Number (PIN) issued by the 2015 Worldcon), you will also be able to vote on a paper ballot. Members of the current Worldcon will be mailed ballots. A PDF of the ballot is available from the 2015 Worldcon Hugo Awards page

Note: In the interest of maintaining neutrality, we cannot approve any comments on TheHugoAwards.org promoting (or criticizing) specific works or people. If you post such a comment, we will not let it out of moderation. There are other venues (some of which are listed on the sidebar under “Third Party Recommendation Sites”) that are appropriate for discussing recommendations for the Hugo and Campbell Award. TheHugoAwards.org does not endorse any of the content of those sites.