Crunchyroll is hosting the 10th annual Anime Awards this weekend. For the second year in a row, Dan Da Dan leads the pack with the most overall nominations, including Anime of the Year. Chainsaw Man: The Movie – Reze Arc leads the way for anime films, while last year’s somewhat controversial Anime of the Year winner, Solo Leveling, only picked up a few scattered nominations for its second season.
If you’re planning to check out this weekend’s ceremony, here’s everything you need to know.
When and Where Are The Anime Awards?
This year’s Anime Awards will take place on May 23. While the ceremony was initially hosted in California, it was moved to the Grand Prince Hotel Takanawa in Tokyo in 2023. Unfortunately for us North Americans, that does mean the ceremony is based on local Japan time. Here’s when the ceremony will kick off across different time zones:
- 5pm JST
- 8am UST
- 1am PST
- 4am EST
- 10am BST
If you want extra confirmation about when the ceremony kicks off in your area, Crunchyroll lets you add an event straight to your Google or Apple Calendar. The calendar invites have the awards slated for three hours total.
How to Watch
The ceremony will be livestreamed on Crunchyroll’s YouTube and TikTok channels. Somewhat surprisingly, that means you don’t need a Crunchyroll subscription to tune in.
How Does Voting Work?
A panel of judges selects six nominees in each category based on the series and movies that were released between January and December of 2025. These judges encompass a wide range of expertise on anime, including IGN’s resident anime expert, Mike Mamon. You can see the full list of judges here.
Voting was open to fans from April 2 to 15. Deadline recently reported that the service had received over 73 million votes, the most ever submitted. The final winners are based on a combination of votes from both the fans and judges.
Who’s Hosting?
Sally Amaki and Jon Kabira will be returning to host this year’s Anime Awards for the fourth year in a row. Crunchyroll has also already confirmed that The Weeknd will be presenting the award for Anime of the Year.
What About Performances?
Crunchyroll has already announced a long list of “Talent” who will be participating in the event. Specific performances will celebrate the 30th anniversary of Neon Genesis Evangelion as well as the 10th anniversary of My Hero Academia.
Major Categories and Nominees
This year’s Anime Awards will include 32 categories. While there are no new categories being introduced this year, new additions from last year’s ceremony include Best Background Art, Best Isekai Anime, and Best VA Performance (Hindi).
Here are the nominees for the two biggest categories:
Anime of the Year
Film of the Year
The Full List of Nominees
Click through to see the full list of nominees in each category:
Blythe (she/her) is an Audience Development Coordinator at IGN who spends way too much time in character customization screens and tracking down collectibles.
