LOS ANGELES, May 31, 2026 — The Academy of Magical Arts presented its 2025 Awards on May 31, 2026, at the Orpheum Theatre in downtown Los Angeles, honoring the past year’s finest Magic Castle performers and recognizing individuals with fellowship honors for outstanding contributions to magic at the clubhouse and beyond.
The ceremony was held as the Orpheum is celebrating its centennial year and the evening opened with a centennial tribute of its own: a salute to Houdini, one hundred years after his death, presented by Jennifer Grant.
Host Nick Diffatte guided the audience through the night of live performances, fellowship presentations, and the evening’s most anticipated category awards.
Magician of the Year — Justin Willman
Ed Alonzo presented the evening’s top performing honor to Justin Willman, and the arc of his ascent tells its own story. Just one year earlier, Willman had been named Stage Magician of the Year. In 2025, he moved straight to the top of the podium — one of the more remarkable one-year climbs in the award’s history. Willman is a magician and comedian who has mastered the art of turning cynics into believers, and his cultural footprint over the past several years has been formidable. He is the creator and star of Magic for Humans, Netflix’s breakout magic series, where he brought his signature style to street magic, social experiments, and some of America’s most wonderfully weird subcultures, with clips earning over 150 million views across social media. In 2024 he returned with The Magic Prank Show, and most recently premiered Magic Lover, Netflix’s first-ever live magic comedy special. He has performed live at the White House for the first family and is a regular on The Tonight Show, Ellen, and Conan. He succeeds 2024 Magician of the Year Mat Franco joining a list including David Copperfield, Penn & Teller, Jeff McBride, and Juan Tamariz to name just a few of the stars of magic on the prestigious honor roll. Willman is currently touring his latest show titled One for the Ages and will be taping a new special when he reaches Phoenix in October 2026.
The Big Three
The evening’s centerpiece was the presentation of the coveted Magic Castle room-based awards. Actor and comedian Jason Segel, best known to audiences worldwide as Marshall Eriksen on the long-running CBS hit How I Met Your Mother, stepped to the podium to present the three most anticipated honors of the night.
Close-Up Magician of the Year — Zabrecky
Zabrecky is one of magic’s most singular figures, and the 2025 award makes him a back-to-back Close-Up Magician of the Year, having taken the same honor in 2024. It is the latest chapter in a career of Academy recognition that is, by any measure, historic. Over the years he has won Stage Magician of the Year in 2011 and 2012, Parlour Magician of the Year in 2014 and 2015, Lecturer of the Year in 2016 and 2018, and now back-to-back Close-Up honors — wins across every major performance category the Academy offers. Born and raised in Burbank, California, his career began as front man for the band Possum Dixon, who released three albums on Interscope Records during the 1990s. Since 2010 he has been performing Victorian-style séances in the famed Houdini Séance Room at the Magic Castle. His absurdist and deadpan humor have delighted audiences from Tokyo to New York City, and his performance on Penn & Teller: Fool Us has been viewed on YouTube over a million times.
Also nominated for Close-Up Magician of the Year were Alfonso, Jonathan Levit, Armando Lucero, and David Regal.
Parlour Magician of the Year — Jon Armstrong
Jon Armstrong’s Parlour win in 2025 makes him back-to-back winner in that category, having claimed the same award in 2024. Growing up in Orlando, Florida, Armstrong became fascinated by the magic he saw in the theme parks around him, a dream that came true when Disney asked him to bring his act to Epcot, making him the resident magician at Walt Disney World at just 20 years old. After five years at Disney, Vegas called, and he became a recurring headliner at Caesar’s Magical Empire. He is best known for his world-class magical talent and for being funny — not just magician funny, actually funny. He has worked as a magic consultant and designer on films including Spider-Man 3 and Ant-Man, and stars in the Netflix documentary Magicians: Life in the Impossible. He also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Academy of Magical Arts as its Chairman, making consecutive Parlour wins a particularly meaningful honor from the organization he helps lead. Armstrong earned a rare double nomination on the night, also appearing on the Stage Magician of the Year ballot.
Also nominated for Parlour Magician of the Year were The Evasons, Christopher Hart, Derek Hughes, and Paul Vigil.
Stage Magician of the Year — Mind2Mind
Mind2Mind is the union of James Harrington and Marina Liani, the FISM World Champion mentalist couple. The pair met and created Mind2Mind in 2017, and their unique live performances are built around what they call “second sight” — in complete physical separation, they transfer details to each other without any technology. They have performed for elite clientele from the Royal Palaces of Bahrain to major technology conferences, and in 2023 became members of the Inner Magic Circle with Gold Star. In 2025 the duo was awarded the FISM Gold Medal, one of the highest honors in the magic industry. Their Stage Magician of the Year win comes as they are arguably at the peak of their powers, with a new residency launching at Fontainebleau Las Vegas beginning June 2026. They step into the role vacated by Justin Willman, who held the Stage title in 2024 before ascending to Magician of the Year.
Also nominated for Stage Magician of the Year were Les Arnold and Dazzle, Jon Armstrong, Tina Lenert, and Artem Shchukin.
Lecturer of the Year — Richard Turner
Beyond the performance awards, Academy of Magical Arts President Simone Turkington presented the Lecturer of the Year award to Richard Turner, an American expert card mechanic who was the subject of the documentary Dealt. Turner’s story is one of magic’s most extraordinary. Turner does not perform magic tricks in the traditional sense — he has dedicated his life to mastering and demonstrating the moves used by cardsharps old and new. His eyesight failed at the age of nine following a bout with scarlet fever, yet he is widely regarded as the greatest card mechanic alive. His honors include the Golden Lion Award in Magic from Siegfried and Roy, the Lynn Searles Award for Excellence in Card Manipulation, and two Close-Up Magician of the Year awards from the Academy of Magical Arts, in 2014 and 2017. He is also a Fortune 500 motivational keynote speaker and holds the title of Master Turner through his attainment of a sixth-degree black belt in Wado Kai-style karate. The Lecturer of the Year award is a fitting tribute to a man who has devoted a lifetime to developing skills that yield profound material to pass on through teaching others.
Also nominated for Lecturer of the Year were Woody Aragón, Javi Benitez, Suzanne, and Erik Tait.
Lifetime Achievement Fellowship — Gay Blackstone
The Lifetime Achievement Fellowship went to Gay Blackstone, a figure whose connection to magic royalty runs as deep as anyone in the art form, and whose name now joins one of the most selective lists in magic. John Gaughan presented the award which the Academy has bestowed fewer than forty times since 1985, to recipients including Harry Lorayne, Shimada, James Randi, and Juan Tamariz. The widow of Harry Blackstone Jr., she served as his co-star and chief assistant throughout his legendary career, but her own résumé is anything but a footnote. Before magic, she became a television fixture as a Golddigger on The Dean Martin Show, and in between performances earned a degree in Physics and worked as a magic assistant for Orson Welles. She co-produced Blackstone: The Magnificent Musical Magic Show, the longest-running magic show in Broadway history, and today continues her producing legacy as executive producer of Masters of Illusion, both the long-running CW television series and its live touring production. She has served as President of the Academy of Magical Arts and as International Ambassador of the International Brotherhood of Magicians. Few figures have given more to the craft, on both sides of the curtain.
Additional Fellowship Awards
The ceremony honored a distinguished group across multiple fellowship categories. Performing Fellowships went to Halfmoon Hide, the performing name of Hide Yamamoto, the celebrated Tokyo close-up artist who presides over the legendary Half Moon Magic Bar in the Ginza district, and to Tina Lenert and Peter Marvey for Stage Magic. Lenert’s honor carried a particular resonance: she was named Stage Magician of the Year by the Academy in 1994, and appeared on this year’s Stage Magician of the Year nominee ballot as well, a thirty-one-year arc of recognition that came full circle in a single evening. The Masters Fellowship was presented to Finn Jon. The Literary Fellowship went to Gabriel Fajuri, and the Creative Fellowship to Dr. Matt Pritchard. Special Fellowships were awarded to Larry John Kahlow, James Olsen, Daniel Summers, Georges Proust, and Greg and Debbie Bordner. The Junior Achievement Award was presented to Skyler Jade.
The Max Maven Memorial Medal, awarded to Gaëtan Bloom, carried particular weight, honoring the towering legacy of the late Max Maven and recognizing a recipient whose contributions to the art reflect that same depth of thought and craft.
Performances of the Night
Live performances were woven throughout the ceremony by three international artists. Mortenn Christiansen, the 2022 FISM World Champion of Comedic Magic from Denmark, brought his signature blend of magic and comedy to the stage. Read Chang, the South Korean magician known for his highly theatrical vintage-style performances including his acclaimed Sherlock Holmes-inspired act Timeless, delivered one of his characteristically elegant sets. Ibuki, representing Japan, is the reigning three-time All-Japan Close-Up Magic Champion and 2025 FISM Grand Prix winner in Close-Up Magic, widely regarded as the world’s number one in his discipline.
The Wait to Know the Newest AMA / Magic Castle Award Winners Is Over
Both the nominees and the members who vote are always anxious to find out who won the Academy of Magical Arts / Magic Castle Awards. Often called the “Oscars of Magic,” the ceremony has been one of magic’s most cherished traditions since it was first presented in 1968. Now that the 2026 curtain has dropped on the 57th annual edition of Magic’s Biggest Evening, the 2025 winners are no longer a mystery.
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