Star Awards (Chinese: 红星大奖) are awards for artistic and technical merit where Mediacorp recognises entertainers under their employment for outstanding performances of the year. The awards are given annually in a ceremony. The various category winners are awarded a trophy, with initial designs featuring various star shapes. The star was subsequently removed and the trophy is designed as an S-shaped column, depicting the star.

History

The first Star Awards presentation was held on 26 February 1994, took place at the Caldecott Broadcast Centre, Mediacorp TV Theatre with an audience of about 500 people. There have no other pre-show and post-awards ceremony held in that year. Winners were announced during the presentation of the ceremony, the ceremony also presented a popularity contest, with Li Nanxing, Chew Chor Meng and Zoe Tay winning the Most Popular Actor and Actress award, respectively. The first Best Drama Serial was only awarded during the third Awards in 1996 to Tofu Street for an outstanding overall performance. The nominees are determined by a team of judges employed by Mediacorp and winners are selected by a majority vote from the entire judging panel. Chew Chor Meng, Li Nanxing, Terence Cao, Sean Say, Desmond Sim, Chen Liping, Chen Xiuhuan, Pan Lingling, Aileen Tan, and Zoe Tay received the award as the 10 Most Popular Artistes, with five awards given to male and female artistes; these artistes were awarded by popularity among the television audience based from the public via telephone and SMS text voting. Since 1997, the number of recipients for each category were expanded to ten.

Superlatives by a winning Actor/Actress

Institutions and milestones

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1994–2010s

2010–2020s

2020–present

The last 2 awards at Star Awards 2022 were the Best Actor and Best Actress Awards instead of the Top 10 Awards. Previously, technical category awards (e.g. Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Variety Show Producer, etc.), newscaster and current affairs awards and, for a time, the Young Talent Award (for child actors) were held separately at a gala dinner (or afternoon conference) due to time constraints and results and clips from the event would be shown either during the ceremony, or live-streaming before the ceremony. Between 2010 and 2015, and again in 2017, those technical awards were presented in Show 1 (or during the three prelude episodes, in 2017), while the Show 2 presented the main awards. Since 2016 (with the exception for 2017), the format was reverted with the technical category awards presented at an off-site ceremony. In accordance to the social distancing measures, the ceremony is conducted closed-doors, and international celebrities communicate via teleconference due to travel restrictions.

Theme Tune

Since 1995, the signature theme tune titled "Linking the World", composed by Christopher Evans. It was subsequently modified to have different renditions of the same tune for subsequent ceremonies. Since 2019, the original theme tune was re-composed as "Starlight" 《星光》, with a new rendition and lyrics. This new rendition was used as the opener for the ceremony since 2021.

Trophy

Since its establishment in 1994, the Star Awards trophy has undergone four different designs:

Awards ceremonies

Lists of award ceremonies

To date, 29 ceremonies were held, as summarised below:

Ceremony hosts

The following individuals have hosted the Star Awards ceremony.

Telecast

The major awards are presented at a live televised ceremony, commonly in April following the relevant calendar year in order to focus on the full calendar year; prior to the 2007 ceremony, the ceremony were held at the end of the year (usually December) while there is no ceremony in 2008 due to a format change. 2007 was the first ceremony to have a double ceremony, one that paid tribute to the 25th Anniversary of television, and a second ceremony being the normal ceremony. Between 2010 and 2015, the Professional and Technical awards (given out to backstage crew and scriptwriters) were telecast and presented in the first show, and the main awards on the second, airing the following week. While the first show was still held at Mediacorp TV Theatre, the second show was, for the third time in Star Awards history, being held on the new location of Resorts World Sentosa, after 1996 and 2006. Both of the ceremonies were broadcast live on 18 and 25 April 2010. The post-show was held after the second ceremony at 10pm on Channel U. In 2016, although the show was a two-part program, the technical awards was, for the first time since 2009, presented in an off-site non-televised presentation instead of being presented live in show 1. In their place, the main ceremony (which was presented in show 2) was also split into two shows, allowing to put more emphasis on mostly variety/info-ed award categories and drama award categories, for shows 1 and 2, respectively. The Post-show Party, airing after show 2, focuses on online voting award categories. For the first time in Star Awards history, the awards for the Top 10 Artistes were presented in separate shows instead of single show, with the female artistes awarded in show 1, and the male artistes on show 2. At the 2017 ceremony, in a gap of eight installments since 2009, the ceremony was reverted to one show, and the post-show party was scrapped. In-lieu of the "3+1" change, a three-episode weekly preludes aired on Sundays before the main ceremony. The preludes were removed in 2018. With the merger of Mediacorp with SPH MediaWorks on 1 January 2005, nominees now include artistes and shows from Mediacorp Channel U, formerly MediaWork's Chinese language channel, and were broadcast for said channel since. Between 2010 and 2014, xinmsn provided its first online Live streaming for both the ceremony as well as backstage, and since 2013, Toggle (both the website and the smartphone/smart TV application). However, these streams were only viewable exclusive to Singapore. Starting from the 2019 ceremony, the awards are also livestreamed on YouTube, and is viewable to the world.

Venues

In 1994, the first Star Awards were presented at the Caldecott Broadcast Centre, Mediacorp TV Theatre and the following year until 2015; however, seven ceremonies were held outside the studios: in 1996, the venue of Star Awards changed to World Trade Centre, Harbour Pavilion and was hosted by Guo Liang and Yvette Tsui. In 2006, the ceremony was held at St James Power Station, near VivoCity and Sentosa. Between 2010 and 2014, the ceremony was also held outside location while the show was split into two, with the first show held at Caldecott Hill, while the second show was held at Resorts World Sentosa (2010 and 2011), Marina Bay Sands (2012 and 2013) and Suntec City (2014). In 2016, the awards had since held at the new Mediacorp Campus, MES Theatre @ Mediacorp, and it became the presentation's current venue with incredibly spacious interior and stunning architectural designs, the 1,500-seater performance venue features tiered seating in its stalls and two circle levels, including removable seats at the lower stall and additional audience sitting space at the orchestra pit for people with special needs. However, two other ceremonies that are held outside the studios, making the tradition of holding the ceremonies outside the studios being brought back after a 9 year hiatus and 5 years after the new theatre was opened. The 2021 was held in Jewel Changi Airport and Changi Airport Terminal 4 while the 2023 ceremony was held in Marina Bay Sands for the third time, after 10 years.

Awards

Judged categories

Popularity categories

Technical Awards As of 2018, only four technical awards were presented during off-site ceremony.

Discontinued or suspended awards

One-time Awards Technical Awards Note: All the categories were introduced in 1998 (unless otherwise stated), and these awards were presented outside broadcast except for 2010–2015, where it was presented on one show.

Retired awards

A number of awards have either suspended or retired throughout the years, including some that have been replaced by similar award categories in other areas of recognition: Suspended Awards

Records

As of 2025:

Overall wins/nominations by a performer, program, etc.

Awards and nominations

Star Awards had been nominated for 16 times since the Best Variety Special category was introduced in 1998 (with the exceptions for five shows, the award was not presented in years 2000 and 2018; while the ceremony were not nominated in years 1999, 2001 and 2006). As of 2021, eight shows, out of the total 22 ceremonies since 1997 were won, with their first win in 2007 which was awarded for the 2006's ceremony. Other categories for Star Awards, which were nominated or won, were also reflected in the table: undefined Each year is linked to the article about the Star Awards held that year.