The Africa Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards has never been merely a ceremony. It is, at its core, an annual audit of the continent’s creative conscience. The 12th edition, announced on Sunday, 29 March 2026, arrives with a list of nominees that reads less like a shortlist and more like a declaration.
A NIGHT THAT HAS BEEN BUILDING ALL YEAR
The nominations for the 12th edition of the Africa Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards were announced on Sunday, 29 March, with The Herd and Gingerrr securing the most nominations.  That fact alone tells you something about the year Nollywood has had. These are not franchise extensions or sequels banking on established goodwill. They are original works, born from genuine creative ambition, and the industry has recognised them accordingly.
The 2026 Africa Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards nominations offer a snapshot of Nollywood today, with names like Lateef Adedimeji and Bimbo Akintola leading a competitive field. This 12th edition features 32 categories, as unveiled by the head of the jury, Joke Silva, during the live broadcast. 
The ceremony, one of the most closely watched award seasons in African film and television, is scheduled to take place on 9 May 2026.  Lagosians who have attended previous editions will know the weight that date carries. This is the night the industry stops talking about films and starts deciding which ones mattered most.
THE FILMS LEADING THE CHARGE
The Herd and Gingerrr: Nine Nominations Each
Gingerrr and The Herd lead the nominations list with nine each, followed closely by To Kill A Monkey with eight and My Father’s Shadow with seven nominations. 
The dominance of Gingerrr is felt across Best Movie, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Cinematography, Best Make-up, Best Score Music, Best Sound Design, and Best Writing Movie.  For a film to register that broadly, across creative, technical, and performance categories simultaneously, is rare in any awards cycle. It speaks to a production that understood what it was trying to be and executed accordingly.
The Herd earned nominations in major categories including Best Overall Movie, Best Director for Daniel Etim Effiong, and Best Writing in a Movie. It also received acting nominations for Genoveva Umeh in the Best Lead Actress category, and for Linda Ejiofor and Amal Umar in Best Supporting Actress. In addition, the film was recognised in technical fields such as Cinematography, Sound Design, and Art Direction. 
Daniel Etim Effiong directing The Herd is a significant development in Nollywood’s current creative moment. Here is an actor of considerable standing choosing, at this point in his career, to step behind the camera with a project of real substance, and the industry’s most prominent jury has responded with the most nominations in the entire field. That is not a small thing.
To Kill A Monkey: The Netflix Series Making Its Mark
The Netflix series To Kill A Monkey picked up nominations in Best Series (Scripted), Best Lead Actor, Best Lead Actress, and Best Supporting Actor, as well as nods for Cinematography and Score Music.  Its presence across both series and individual performance categories confirms what subscribers have suspected: this production carried genuine weight in the 2025 content cycle, not simply the weight of a platform’s marketing spend.
My Father’s Shadow: Seven Nominations and a Directorial Conversation
Akinola Davies Jr. earned a Best Director nomination for My Father’s Shadow,  placing him in conversation with Tunde Kelani, James Omokwe, Daniel Etim Effiong, Yemi Filmboy Morafa, and Asurf Amuwa Oluseyi in what is arguably the most competitive directing field the AMVCAs have assembled in several years. The presence of Davies Jr., whose international profile has grown considerably, alongside veterans like Kelani signals that the jury is weighing craft, not reputation alone.
THE PERFORMANCES THE INDUSTRY IS WATCHING
Lateef Adedimeji: The Most Nominated Individual
Lateef Adedimeji is the most-nominated individual of the year, earning three nominations that highlight his range across different genres.  He appears in Best Supporting Actor for Gingerrr, Best Supporting Actor for Red Circle, and Best Lead Actor for Lisabi: A Legend Is Born. Three nominations, three different films, three different registers of performance. Whatever the outcome on 9 May, the nominations alone constitute a statement about where Adedimeji stands in the current Nollywood hierarchy.
Bimbo Akintola: A Legacy Reaffirmed
Bimbo Akintola’s nomination for Best Lead Actress in To Kill A Monkey is one of the most anticipated individual contests on the night. She enters the category alongside Linda Ejiofor (The Serpent’s Gift), Genoveva Umeh (The Herd), Sola Sobowale (Her Excellency), Scarlet Gomez (Behind The Scenes), Ifeoma Fafunwa (The Lost Days), Ariyike Owolagba (Something About The Briggs), and Gloria Anozie-Young (Mother Of The Brides). It is a category where any of eight women could reasonably win. That is not dilution of competition; it is proof that the year produced performances of exceptional quality.
The Double-Category Performers
Several stars and technicians have landed multiple nominations, proving their dominance in their respective fields. Linda Ejiofor received nominations for both Best Lead Actress and Best Supporting Actress. Sola Sobowale earned nominations in both the same categories. Uzor Arukwe and Femi Branch both appeared in Best Supporting Actor and Best Lead Actor categories simultaneously.  These are not scheduling accidents; they reflect performers whose bodies of work in 2025 were simply too consistent to be captured in a single category.
THE NEW STRUCTURE: 32 CATEGORIES AND A BROADER CONTINENTAL REACH
The 2026 edition features 32 categories, comprising 18 jury-voting categories, 11 public-voting categories, and three special recognition awards, including Lifetime Achievement and Trailblazer honours. 
The most significant structural development, however, is geographic. The AMVCA 2026 introduces two new categories, Best Indigenous Language Film (North Africa) and Best Indigenous Language Film (Central Africa), aimed at making the awards more inclusive as it expands its pan-African scope, according to MultiChoice, which organises the awards. 
The North Africa category nominees include The Omnipresent, The Delivery, The Hidden Voice, This Is Portsaid, and Artal Alhanin: Our Memories. The Central Africa category includes Mabanda, Safou: A Gift From Nature, and Golden Spoon. These are productions that, in previous editions, would have had no formal home within the AMVCAs. Their inclusion this year is not ceremonial. It is an acknowledgement that African storytelling has never been confined to Lagos and Johannesburg, and that the continent’s most prominent film awards should reflect that reality.
East Africa’s Growing Footprint
Kenya secured 12 nominations across films and television productions, including MTV Shuga Mashariki. Also nominated from East Africa are Uganda’s Oscars 2026 entry Kimote, Tanzania’s My Son, and Ethiopia’s Addis Fikir for Best Indigenous Language Film (East Africa); Ugandan documentary BOU; and reality series Undugu (Tanzania) and Kampala Creme (Uganda). 
The Ethiopian entry Addis Fikir competing in the East Africa Indigenous Language category, alongside the writing nomination for Besufekade Mulu in Best Writing TV Series, marks a quiet but important expansion of the awards’ scope. A film from Addis Ababa standing alongside productions from Lagos, Nairobi, and Kampala, on the same nominations list, managed by the same jury, is the kind of practical Pan-Africanism that rarely receives the attention it deserves.
JOKE SILVA AT THE HELM: A CONSIDERED APPOINTMENT
Veteran actress Joke Silva was appointed as Head Judge, succeeding filmmaker Femi Odugbemi.  Her appointment carries a symbolism that is worth pausing on. Silva is not a film critic or an industry executive in the traditional sense; she is a practitioner of decades’ standing, someone who has sat on both sides of the camera, navigated the commercial and artistic pressures of Nigerian screen work, and maintained a level of craft that the industry regards with something close to reverence.
Her appointment underscores the awards’ commitment to rewarding authentic African narratives that resonate globally.  With Silva as Head Judge, the jury is being led by someone whose own body of work embodies the standards these awards are intended to recognise.
THE TECHNICAL FIELDS: WHERE NOLLYWOOD’S MATURITY SHOWS
One of the more telling signs of an industry’s development is the depth and seriousness of competition in its technical categories. The AMVCAs have always included these fields; what distinguishes the 2026 edition is how intensely contested they have become.
In Best Cinematography, Emmanuel Igbekele earned three separate nominations, for The Herd, The Serpent’s Gift, and Gingerrr. That one director of photography worked at the level required to earn three nominations in the same awards cycle, across three different productions, speaks to both his individual quality and the expanding demand for skilled cinematographic work in the industry.
Similarly, Tolu Obanro appears in both Best Sound Design and Best Music Score, while Adeola Bamgboye earned three nominations in Best Makeup for Lisabi: A Legend Is Born, Abanisete, and Labake Olododo. These are craftspeople whose contributions rarely attract the public attention that performance nominations do, but whose work is what gives Nollywood’s best productions their visual and sonic authority.
THE CATEGORIES OPEN TO PUBLIC VOTE
Voting is already underway for the public categories on the AMVCA website and will close on 26 April 2026. 
The public voting categories include Best Series Unscripted, Best Series Scripted, Best Movie, Best Lead Actor, Best Lead Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Director, Best Digital Content Creator, Best Indigenous M-Net Original, and Best Documentary. For viewers who believe their favourites have been shortchanged by jury panels in previous years, this is the mechanism through which those grievances can be expressed in a way that counts.
THE BEST OVERALL MOVIE CATEGORY: A FINAL RECKONING
The Best Overall Movie nominees are Gingerrr, The Herd, My Father’s Shadow, 3 Cold Dishes, The Serpent’s Gift, and Behind The Scenes. Six films. Each with a credible case. Each representing a distinct approach to African storytelling.
Funke Akindele’s Behind The Scenes and Toyin Abraham’s Oversabi Aunty earning places in the nominations alongside more festival-oriented works confirms something that industry observers have noted for some time now: the line between commercial Nollywood and prestige Nollywood has grown considerably thinner. Productions can now pursue wide audiences and critical recognition within the same release cycle, without the two being treated as mutually exclusive objectives.
THE AWARDS NIGHT: 9 MAY 2026, LAGOS
The category winners will be announced at the AMVCA gala event in Lagos on 9 May 2026.  The broadcast will be carried live across Africa Magic channels, reaching audiences across the continent.
What makes this edition particularly worth following is not any single nomination or any single frontrunner. It is the structural moment the AMVCAs now occupy in African cultural life. An awards ceremony that began as a platform for celebrating African screen content has, over twelve editions, become the primary annual occasion on which the continent’s film and television industry takes stock of itself, debates its priorities, and recognises the work it most wants to stand behind.
The 2026 nominations list reflects a continent whose creative industries are maturing in real time, absorbing new talent, expanding geographically, and producing work of sufficient quality that the debates about who deserves recognition are genuinely difficult to resolve. That difficulty, that sense that any of several productions and performers could reasonably win, is not a problem with the AMVCAs. It is precisely the point.
The reckoning begins 9 May.
LRanks Africa Magazine covers culture, business, and creative excellence across the African continent. For editorial inquiries or to feature your production, contact the editorial desk.
