Nominations Eligibility

Eligibility to Nominate

You may nominate for the 2025 Hugo Awards, the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book, and the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, if:

you were a WSFS member of the 2024 Glasgow Worldcon, or
you purchased a WSFS membership for Seattle Worldcon 2025 on or before January 31, 2025, 11:59 p.m. Pacific Standard Time.

If a Seattle Worldcon 2025 WSFS membership is purchased after January 31, 2025, at 11:59 p.m., and the person did not have a WSFS membership with Glasgow 2024, they are not eligible to nominate, but they will be eligible to vote in the finalist ballot.

Previous Winners

The complete list of Hugo Award winners can be found at the official Hugo Award website.

Eligibility for Nominations (Works)

The current rules for the Hugo Awards are contained in Article 3 of the WSFS Constitution (178 KB PDF).

Works published in 2024 for the first time anywhere are eligible for the Hugo Awards being awarded in 2025. So are works published for the first time in English translation in 2024, or for the first time in the United States in 2024, unless they have already appeared on a Hugo Award final ballot.

Books are considered to have been published in the year of the publication date, which usually appears with the copyright information on the back of the title page. If there is no stated publication date, the copyright date is used instead. A dated periodical is considered to have been published on the cover date, regardless of when it was placed on sale or copyrighted. Serialized stories or dramatic presentations are eligible in the year in which the last installment appears.

Nominations may be relocated to a different category boundary (such as in the case of Novel/Novella, Novella, Novelette, Novelette/Short Story, and Dramatic Presentation, Long Form/Dramatic Presentation,Short Form).

Exclusions

The 2025 Hugo Subcommittee is ineligible for the 2025 Hugo Awards. The Hugo Subcommittee consists of Hugo Administrator Nicholas Whyte, Deputy Hugo Administrator Esther MacCallum-Stewart, WSFS Division Head Cassidy, WSFS Deputy Division Head Kathryn Duval, and WSFS Deputy Division Head Rosemary Parks.

Extended Eligibility for non-US published works

Conann a.k.a. She Is Conann, directed and written by Bertrand Mancino
Lovely, Dark, and Deep, directed and written by Teresa Sutherland
Mars Express, directed by Jérémie Périn, written by Laurent Sarfati and Jérémie Périn
Tiger Stripes, directed and written by Amanda Nell Eu
Mollie and Max in the Future, directed and written by Michael Lukk Litwak

Best Series Eligibility 2025

Previous Winners

Previous winners of the Hugo for Best Series under §3.3.5 of the WSFS Constitution are not eligible in the Best Series category. They are:

The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold
The World of the Five Gods, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Wayfarers, by Becky Chambers
The Expanse, by James S. A. Corey
The Murderbot Diaries, by Martha Wells
Wayward Children, by Seanan McGuire
Children of Time Series, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Imperial Radch, by Ann Leckie

Previously Nominated: 2017

The following finalists for the Hugo Award for Best Series in 2017 are not eligible in 2025 unless they have published at least two additional installments consisting in total of at least 240,000 words between January 1, 2017, and December, 31, 2024:

The Craft Sequence, by Max Gladstone
The Temeraire series, by Naomi Novik

Previously Nominated: 2018

The following finalists for the Hugo Award for Best Series in 2018 are not eligible in 2025 unless they have published at least two additional installments consisting in total of at least 240,000 words between January 1, 2018, and December 31, 2024:

The Books of the Raksura, by Martha Wells
The Divine Cities, by Robert Jackson Bennett
The Memoirs of Lady Trent, by Marie Brennan
The Stormlight Archive, Brandon Sanderson

Previously Nominated: 2019

The following finalists for the Hugo Award for Best Series in 2019 are not eligible in 2025 unless they have published at least two additional installments consisting in total of at least 240,000 words between January 1, 2019, and December 31, 2024:

The Centenal Cycle, by Malka Older
Machineries of Empire, by Yoon Ha Lee

Previously Nominated: 2020

The following finalists for the Hugo Award for Best Series in 2020 are not eligible in 2025 unless they have published at least two additional installments consisting in total of at least 240,000 words between January 1, 2020 and 31 December 2024:

InCryptid, by Seanan McGuire
Luna, by Ian McDonald
Planetfall series, by Emma Newman
Winternight Trilogy, by Katherine Arden
The Wormwood Trilogy, by Tade Thompson

Previously Nominated: 2021

The following finalists for the Hugo Award for Best Series in 2021 are not eligible in 2025 unless they have published at least two additional installments consisting in total of at least 240,000 words between January 1, 2021, and December 31, 2024:

The Daevabad Trilogy, S.A. Chakraborty
The Interdependency, John Scalzi
The Lady Astronaut Universe, Mary Robinette Kowal
The Poppy War, R.F. Kuang

Previously Nominated: 2022

The following finalists for the Hugo Award for Best Series in 2022 are not eligible in 2025 unless they have published at least two additional installments consisting in total of at least 240,000 words between January 1, 2022, and December 31, 2024:

The Green Bone Saga, by Fonda Lee
The Kingston Cycle, by C. L. Polk
Merchant Princes, by Charles Stross
Terra Ignota, by Ada Palmer
The World of the White Rat, by T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon)

Previously Nominated: 2023

The following finalists for the Hugo Award for Best Series in 2023 are not eligible in 2025 unless they have published at least two additional installments consisting in total of at least 240,000 words between January 1, 2023, and December 31, 2024:

The Founders Trilogy, by Robert Jackson Bennett
The Locked Tomb, by Tamsyn Muir
Rivers of London, by Ben Aaronovitch
The Scholomance, by Naomi Novik

Previously Nominated: 2024

The Final Architecture, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Last Binding, by Freya Marske
The Laundry Files, by Charles Stross
October Daye, by Seanan McGuire
The Universe of Xuya, by Aliette de Bodard