Winners of 2026 PANTOMIME AWARDS announced
Photo credit: Ian Olsson
It was a member of the design team at the Wolverhampton Grand (Best Panto over 950 seats) who summed up the recipe for panto success: “We used over 100 kilos of glitter!” Perhaps not glitter but there were ample sequins on show last night (19 Apr) at the Swan Theatre, High Wycombe for this year’s Pantomime Awards, organised by the UK Pantomime Association and sponsored by ATG and Trafalgar. Once again, as so often at these awards, the cast members presenting from across the UK make sure that panto style and panache is carried over into April…
The show started with a witty tribute to the song that gets used in every panto, ‘Up Up Up’, a nice meta touch to get the evening under way. Presenting this year was Vernon Kay (“I hosted Splash and this is much better than that”), himself a previous winner of the Best Newcomer award. The decision to dispense with most of the celebrity presenters and Morgan Brind’s sharp script makes the show a much pacier, tighter event, leaving more time for the all-important after-party. The audience enjoyed Kay’s instruction to practise their “I’m disappointed but not bothered” face.
Photo credit: Andrew Billington
And, Besties, we spotted some of the winners before they were announced; among those panto people we have interviewed this year were two winners and one presenter. Back in the summer, we interviewed Lesley Joseph at the launch of her Woking panto and she told us then how important panto is to her, and why she continues to perform in it each year. Very fitting then that she was announced as one of the two winners of a new award for Panto Icons – the other being Brian Conley, also a panto perennial.
In our new series of panto profiles this year, we interviewed Dame, Director and Writer Andrew Pollard, and he talked then about the importance of a good script. Andrew writes for theatres around the country, but it was Beauty and the Beast in Huddersfield that won him the Best Script award. Also in our profiles series was Andrew Ryan, Dame at the Birmingham Hippodrome, who presented the Nigel Ellacott award for panto tradition and heritage to veteran performer Keith Simmons, who is now performing with his son and is one of the last comic double acts in panto land.
Alongside Wolverhampton, the other awards for Best Panto went to the Arts Theatre Cambridge for another Sleeping Beauty and the Macrobert Arts Centre, Stirling for Weans in the Wood, a welcome return for a lost title, if in a new guise. Writer and Dame at Stirling, and also writer for the Tron, Glasgow, Johnny McKnight was an appropriate winner of the Innovation award for his many reinventions of panto stories for the present day.
Photo credit: Andrew Billington
If there was a theme this year, it was the strong showing of in-house productions alongside nominations from the main panto production companies, and once again Scotland showed itself to be the strongest region of the UK for pantos, both traditional and innovative. Gary Wilmot was, for many years, Dame at the biggest panto of all at the Palladium but this year he was a first time Director and won the award for his production of Cinderella at Richmond Theatre. Thanking all involved, he particularly named the Stage Management team and got the audience to applaud Stage Managers across pantoland.
It was fitting that panto great Stanley Baxter, who died this year, featured not just in the In Memoriam section but also in several winner’s speeches, and that Allan Stewart, who won Best Dame, is his successor in Edinburgh. It was perhaps designer Terry Parsons, winner of this year’s Outstanding Achievement award, who summed it up best. After mentioning that his first designs were for a panto featuring the 81 year old George Lacey, who had himself started performing in the 1920s, Parsons said the summit of his panto career was designing Stanley Baxter’s last four pantos.
The full list of winners can be found below:
BEST CHOREOGRAPHY
Claire Cassidy: Sleeping Beauty, Harlow Playhouse (KD Theatre Productions)
BEST LIGHTING (SPONSORED BY PRODUCTION LIGHT AND SOUND)
Nic Farman: Sleeping Beauty, Assembly Hall Theatre, Tunbridge Wells (Little Wolf Entertainment)
CARMEN SILVERA AWARD FOR BEST MAGICAL BEING (SPONSORED BY BARRY BURNETT)
Joe McElderry: Aladdin, Newcastle Theatre Royal (Crossroads Pantomimes)
BARBARA WINDSOR AWARD FOR BEST PRINCIPAL LEAD (SPONSORED BY SCOTT MITCHELL)
Sario Solomon: Aladdin, Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield (Evolution Productions and Sheffield Theatres)
BEST SCRIPT
Andrew Pollard: Beauty and the Beast, Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield (In-House)
BEST SECONDARY LEAD
Ruth Betteridge: Jack and the Beanstalk, Festival Theatre, Malvern (UK Productions)
BEST VILLAIN (SPONSORED BY BRECKMAN AND COMPANY)
Nigel Harman: Jack and the Beanstalk, Aylesbury Waterside Theatre (UK Productions)
BEST COMIC (SPONSORED BY THE TWINS FX)
Jez Edwards: Sleeping Beauty, Carriageworks Theatre, Leeds (Paul Holman Associates)
BEST COSTUMES
James MacIver: Sleeping Beauty, Belgrade Theatre, Coventry (Belgrade Theatre and Imagine Theatre)
STANLEY BAXTER AWARD FOR BEST DAME (SPONSORED BY JOHN GOOD)
Allan Stewart: Jack and the Beanstalk, Festival Theatre, Edinburgh (Crossroads Pantomimes)
BEST DIRECTION
Gary Wilmot, Cinderella, Richmond Theatre, London (Crossroads Pantomimes)
BEST ENSEMBLE (IN PARTNERSHIP WITH ARTS 1)
Lianha Cooke, Gemma Davis, Chloe Davies, Olly Gooch, Thomas Marc Toombs, Richard Womersley, Erin Harrison and Finlay Tozer: Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Tivoli Theatre, Wimborne (Made to Measure Productions)
BEST CONTRIBUTION TO MUSIC
James Harrison: Aladdin, Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield (Evolution Productions and Sheffield Theatres)
BEST SET (SPONSORED BY BLUE-I THEATRE TECHNOLOGY)
Kenny Miller: Gallus in Weegieland, Tron Theatre, Glasgow (In-House)
BEST SISTERS
Hannah Roberts and Fran Cottington aka Han and Fran: Cinderella, Venue Cymru, Llandudno (Imagine Theatre)
BEST SOUND (SPONSORED BY ORBITAL SOUND)
Conrad Kemp: Dick Whittington, St Helens Theatre Royal (Regal Entertainment)
BEST SUPPORTING ARTIST
Ada Campe: Growled:Beauty and the Beast continues…, Royal Vauxhall Tavern, London (In-House)
BEST NEWCOMER TO PANTOMIME
Jeevan Braich: Cinderella, Norwich Theatre Royal (In-House)
BEST NEWCOMER TO INDUSTRY
Caitlin O’Shea: Sleeping Beauty, Central Theatre, Chatham (Jordan Productions)
BEST PANTOMIME (UNDER 550 SEATS) (SPONSORED BY KB EVENT)
Weans in the Wood, Macrobert Arts Centre, Stirling (In-House)
BEST PANTOMIME (550 TO 950 SEATS) (SPONSORED BY SHOWTIME, PART OF HOWDEN)
Sleeping Beauty, The Arts Theatre Cambridge (In-House)
BEST PANTOMIME (OVER 950 SEATS) (SPONSORED BY UNUSUAL RIGGING)
Sleeping Beauty, Wolverhampton Grand Theatre (In-House)
PANTO ICON
Lesley Joseph
PANTO ICON
Brian Conley
ACHIEVEMENT IN INNOVATION
Johnny McKnight
NIGEL ELLACOTT SPECIAL RECOGNITION AWARD FOR PANTOMIME HISTORY, TRADITION AND HERITAGE
Keith Simmons
OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN PANTOMIME
Terry Parsons