The Merlin Award is presented to those magicians who have achieved the highest level in their craft, both on the national and international stage.

The criteria that the voting members consider are talent, showmanship, originality, skills, and above all the rare ability to entertain under any conditions.

The Merlin Award statue was commissioned to art students in New York. The winning design was carved and created in 1964 by young New York University art student Carol Michaud.

The International Magicians Society was founded in 1968 with a handful of New York magicians.

The IMS reserves the right to change the award presentation dates at its discretion.

For more information on the Merlin Award, click here.

Merlin Award Recipients

The Merlin Award to magic is what the Oscar is for movies.

Merlin Award Recipients

Up until 2010, the Merlin Award has been a recognition award. In 2010, we presented the Merlin Award both as a recognition award and as a competition award. And we also presented the decade Merlin Awards. 2010 has been the most challenging year for IMS, as well as the most exciting.

To check out photos of the Merlin Award, go to the Yearbooks.

Click here to learn about the Merlin Award.

MERLIN AWARD FAQ

Hi. I’m Tony Hassini, Chairman/CEO of the International Magicians Society.

I got into magic when I was 16 years old, working at Tony Corinda's Magic Shop. By the time I was 19 years old, I had a dream of creating a magic club that anyone with a desire to learn magic can join without being sponsored by other magicians.

The more I thought about the magic club, the more I came to realize that the club has to have a purpose.  One morning, I woke up and the answer was clear as daylight.  The purpose of the club is "to promote and preserve the art of magic."

To promote the art of magic, I came up with the idea to create the Merlin Award to reward the magicians for their hard work and dedication to the art of magic.  As a result, the Merlin Award was created four years before I founded the IMS.

I founded the International Magicians Society in 1968 with the purpose of promoting and preserving the art of magic. To promote the magic and magicians, I knew I would use the Merlin Award.  And to preserve teh art of magic, I wanted to do something like Harlan Tarbell.  Mr. Tarbell wrote 6 books, which became known as the Tarbell course in magic.  My idea was to do the same, except with videos.  So we created the Magic Academy 50-volume video course in magic.  We also created:

 Best of the Best 50-volume video course in magic
Platinum Collection 50-volume video course in magic
IMS Pro Magic School 50-volume video course in magic
Masters Series 50-volume video course in magic

Diamond Series 50-volume video course in magic

Just like Mr. Tarbell, we hired the best magicians from around the world to teach their magic on these video courses.

I have devoted my entire life to promote IMS and the Merlin Award.

The Merlin Award was designed to promote the magic and the magician to the general public. A good example of this is Siegfried & Roy using their Merlin Award win on their billboards all over Las Vegas, as well as the marquee billboard on The Mirage Hotel & Casino. David Copperfield uses his Merlin Award in his live shows; before his shows begin, a large projection shows his awards and in large letters, “Magician of The Century, by the International Magicians Society“ is shown over and over again. And Criss Angel uses it quite often in his TV shows, his live show at The Luxor, and his magic set.

Also, the Merlin Award is designed to help magicians to negotiate for their next contract, which quite often becomes a good negotiation tool.

We presented the Merlin Award to Tse Tow Joon Yeen for Best Close-Up Magician In Brunei. The event was covered by radio, television, and all of the newspapers in Brunei. In fact, the Merlin Award made the front page of Brunei’s leading newspaper with the Sultan of Brunei.

When the Chairman/CEO of IMS travels the distance to go to a country to present the Merlin Award to a magician of that country, their media takes interest. This creates good PR for the recipient magician, as well as magicians in general.

Sometimes, I am asked why don’t we publish the year and category for each magician’s Merlin Award on our website. The fact is that when the magician receives his award during that year, we publish the category and announce it at our press conferences. Thereafter, it did not serve a purpose to publish the category or the year on our website. Because some categories might sound more glorious than others, there’s no point of hyping or diminishing anyone’s award or the year they received it. And there’s no point in dating their awards either. The bottom line is everyone who received the Merlin Award is a Merlin Award Recipient and is entitled to enjoy the glory for the rest of their life without dating or categorizing it.

I’m also asked how many Merlin Awards do we present per year. Since we are an international organization and have IMS Presidents in different countries, we try to consider as many countries and their magicians.

There are over 200 countries in the world. It will be humanly impossible to present 200 awards a year. Therefore, we try to narrow it down to approximately 30 countries and their magicians per year. Sometimes, there might be two or three magicians from each country.

We also presented duplicate categories in different countries. For example, there might be a Best Close-Up Magician In India, Best Close-Up Magician In China, and Best Close-Up Magician In Thailand. However, there is only one Magician of The Year, Illusionist of The Year, Mentalist of The Year, and Most Original Magician of The Year within any given year throughout the world.

I’m also asked how do we consider a nominee for the Merlin Award? A magician must send to the IMS World Headquarters a video of his performance for our Board of Directors to consider.

The other question I am asked is “Are there any costs to receive the Merlin Award?” First, I must say that the Merlin Award is not for sale at any cost.

Regarding the actual out-of-pocket cost, this varies from situation to situation.

There are four ways a magician can receive the Merlin Award. One is to attend our Merlin Award banquet dinner; this is by invitation only, after the recipient was voted to receive the Merlin Award.

Two is to participate and win a Merlin Award competition in different countries, which is organized by IMS with the event and convention organizers.

Three is for us to travel to the magician’s country and present the Merlin Award to them in their own country.

And four is for us to present the Merlin Award to them virtually.

So let’s look at the cost of the first scenario, which is where the magician might have to obtain a visa from the US embassy to travel to the USA to receive The Merlin Award at our banquet dinner in Las Vegas.  There is a $1500 USD per plate cost.  The money we raise from this once-a-year event supports our educational programs, which we provide free of charge to public schools.

In the second scenario, again the magician must travel to the event where the Merlin Award competition is taking place, normally in different countries.  The magician has to pay the competition entrance fee.  The entrance fee varies from country to country.

In the third scenario, where we have to travel from the USA to the magician’s country, either the magician or the magician’s producer pays for all of the travel expenses, hotels, meals, airlines, and other related expenses.

In the fourth scenario, the cost for this is $2,000 USD.  That’s to cover our out-of-pocket expenses, including shooting and editing the virtual presentation video and shipping the Merlin Award statue to the recipient.

Within any of these four scenarios, it’s always a trade-off.  It all depends on what the magician who's seeking to be nominated prefers.

Within any of the four scenarios, our main focus is to generate as much PR as possible with the general public. A good example of this is when we were going to present the Merlin Award to Louis Yan in Hong Kong, we could have presented the award to him in our Hong Kong IMS office. Or we could have had our IMS members meet at a nice Chinese restaurant and present the award to him there. Then we came up with an idea. We approached one of the largest shopping malls in Hong Kong. Not only did they build a custom stage and provided enough seating for the audience, they also provided guards for crowd control. The mall management, with their media contacts, were able to invite newspapers, radio, and television to cover the event. Both the mall and Louis Yan received tremendous PR and public awareness.

The Merlin Award is not only presented to the magicians; we presented the award to other individuals who helped create and shape magic and magicians. This includes illusion designers and builders, magic producers/directors, magic convention organizers, and performers who create a magical experience for their audience.

To learn more and see photos, please visit our Yearbooks.