The Visual Effects Society (VES) staged its 24th annual awards ceremony in Los Angeles on February 25, 2026, celebrating technical excellence and artistic achievement across the visual effects community. The event, held at the Beverly Hilton, covered 25 categories across theatrical features, episodic television, commercials, special venue projects, real-time experiences and student work. Industry veterans, creatives and technologists gathered to recognize the teams behind the year’s most ambitious visual work.
The evening awarded projects for both technical innovation and artistic craft. Avatar: Fire and Ash led the night with seven trophies, including the ceremony’s highest honor, Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature. In the animation track, KPop Demon Hunters took three awards, among them Outstanding Animation in an Animated Feature.
The data tells us an interesting story about scale and specialization in modern VFX work. Large-format productions continue to dominate photoreal categories because they combine extensive on-set capture with complex post-production pipelines. Meanwhile, animation winners reflect investments in character performance and stylistic rendering that travel across global markets.
Major winners and standout projects
Avatar: Fire and Ash emerged as the most awarded project of the night, securing seven trophies that spanned technical, compositing and effects-simulation categories. The film’s victory in Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature recognizes both its on-set capture techniques and the studio-led pipeline that delivered final images.
KPop Demon Hunters led the animation slate with three wins, including Outstanding Animation in an Animated Feature. Judges cited the project’s choreography-driven animation and stylized lighting as key strengths. In my Google experience, titles that link musical performance with refined animation pipelines tend to achieve higher engagement metrics across international audiences.
The VES awards also highlighted emerging work across real-time experiences and student projects. Those categories signal a shift toward interactive and pipeline-driven education models that feed studio talent pools. The ceremony underscored how technical investment and creative direction together shape industry recognition and commercial performance.
The ceremony further rewarded technical excellence tied to creative ambition. Avatar: Fire and Ash led multiple technical categories. Beyond the top photoreal feature prize, the film won for CG cinematography, character creation for Varang, leader of the Ash Clan, environment design, model work and an Emerging Technology Award for the Kora Fire Toolset. These recognitions highlighted both the film’s aesthetic aims and the pipeline investments that supported them.
KPop Demon Hunters captured the evening’s animation honours. The film took Outstanding Animation in an Animated Feature, Outstanding Character in an Animated Feature for Rumi, and a prize for effects simulations. The results signalled the Visual Effects Society’s acknowledgement of stylized pipeline excellence alongside photoreal achievement.
The data tells us an interesting story about industry priorities. Voters rewarded projects that paired clear artistic vision with measurable tooling advances. In my Google experience, awards that recognise both design and infrastructure tend to influence studios’ budget allocation for future productions.
Television, commercials and special projects
Notable wins across formats
The ceremony recognized excellence across television, commercials and special-venue projects. On television, Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age won Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Episode for its installment “The Big Freeze.” The Residence received an award for supporting visual effects in an episode.
Judges cited a range of craft in episodic work, from large-scale environmental builds to high-end compositing. Those credits underscore how limited-series and serial productions continue to push the boundaries of photorealism and set-piece construction.
Commercial and venue work also featured among the winners. BMW’s short “Heart of Joy | Meet Okto the Octopus” was named Outstanding Visual Effects in a Commercial, with additional recognition for compositing and lighting. The Sphere presentation of The Wizard of Oz took the Outstanding Visual Effects in a Special Venue Project prize, highlighting immersive displays as a growing arena for VFX innovation.
The data tells us an interesting story about industry investment: studios are allocating resources across formats, not only to large features but to episodic, branded and venue-driven projects. That shift affects pipelines, vendor selection and budget models for future productions.
That shift affects pipelines, vendor selection and budget models for future productions. The ceremony also highlighted a range of winners across formats, from videogames to student projects.
Ghost of Yōtei received the award for Outstanding Visual Arts in a Real-Time Project. Practical special effects work on Andor earned recognition in its category. The student project Azimuth was presented as the evening’s highlighted emerging talent. Sinners won for supporting visual effects in a photoreal feature, underscoring how visual effects now augment grounded drama as well as spectacle.
Honors, hosts and industry remarks
Industry figures were honoured alongside project awards. Renowned producer Jerry Bruckheimer received the VES Lifetime Achievement Award. Sir Richard Taylor, co-founder and chief creative officer of Wētā Workshop, was presented with the VES Visionary Award. The ceremony was hosted by comedy duo Randy and Jason Sklar, who served as emcees for their second consecutive year.
The data tells us an interesting story about the field’s broadening scope: recognition extended from blockbuster spectacle to real-time artistry and student innovation. That trend will inform hiring, training and investment decisions across the industry.
That trend will inform hiring, training and investment decisions across the industry. Presenters at the ceremony included performers and creators such as Enuka Okuma, Haley Joel Osment, Jazz Raycole, Lil Rel Howery, Omar Benson Miller and musician Raphael Saadiq. Their participation underscored the collaborative mix of talent that now relies on visual effects to shape performance and storytelling. In remarks captured during the event, VES board chair Kim Davidson praised the community’s ongoing blend of artistry and technical progress and congratulated winners for work that expands the field’s possibilities.
What the results mean for the industry
The data tells us an interesting story about where resources are flowing and why. Awards recognition often accelerates demand for specialised skills, influencing studio hiring and vendor selection. Production budgets and timelines adapt when clients prioritise sophisticated visual effects over other line items.
Studios will likely increase investment in training and pipeline tools to retain competitive advantage. Suppliers and post houses may consolidate services or form tighter partnerships to meet integrated production needs. Measurement of return on creative investment will gain emphasis, shifting conversations toward quantifiable metrics such as project delivery time, cost per shot and reproducibility of effects.
In my Google experience, attribution models change how teams justify technology spend. Marketing today is a science: teams need clear KPIs to link visual innovation to audience engagement and revenue outcomes. Expect commissioners to demand case studies with before-and-after metrics and demonstrable impact on distribution performance.
For talent, the winners’ work signals where skills are valued—compositing, procedural generation, real-time workflows and cross-disciplinary collaboration. Industry training programmes and hiring pipelines that foreground those competencies will attract the most opportunities. The next wave of projects will test whether studios can translate award-winning techniques into scalable production practices.
What the awards reveal about pipelines and tools
The data tells us an interesting story about parallel advances in visual effects. One trend highlights the maturation of photoreal cinematic pipelines, visible in Avatar: Fire and Ash. A second trend stresses the rising influence of stylized and real-time work, evidenced by wins for KPop Demon Hunters and Ghost of Yōtei.
In my Google experience, measurable creative choices drive adoption across formats. The Emerging Technology Award underscored that bespoke systems such as the Kora Fire Toolset now function as production-grade infrastructure. These tools enable repeatable, scalable workflows for complex sequences.
Marketing today is a science: studios and vendors must quantify performance across the customer journey to justify pipeline investments. The winners and nominees illustrated how diverse platforms—from practical model work to real-time engines and advanced compositing—contribute to storytelling in entertainment, advertising and immersive projects.
Industry leaders will monitor whether studios can convert award-winning techniques into standard, cost-effective production practices. Immediate indicators to watch include tool adoption rates, cross-project reuse of assets, and measurable reductions in render time and iteration cycles.