Nerd Ballot

Rank the year's best science fiction and fantasy.

Nerd Ballot is an independent, community-driven site for discovering science fiction and fantasy books and predicting how they will fare at the Hugo and Nebula Awards. It runs on AT Protocol, so your ballots belong to you.

In development

Four award tracks

Nerd Ballot follows works published in 2026 across four award categories.

Hugo: Best Novel2027 award cycle
Hugo: Best Novella2027 award cycle
Nebula: Best Novel2026 works
Nebula: Best Novella2026 works

How it works

Sign in with any AT Protocol account, such as a Bluesky handle. Browse the catalog, suggest books that belong in it, and keep a ranked ballot of up to five books for each category. You can reorder, replace, or clear a ballot at any time while a poll is open.

Every ballot feeds two public standings:

First Choice

How many readers put a book at the top of their ballot.

Consensus

Points from every rank: five for first place down to one for fifth, summed across all ballots.

Book pages

Each book gets its own page with cover art, author, publication date and venue, a short spoiler-light synopsis with its source, and the evidence behind its eligibility. Hugo and Nebula eligibility are judged separately, and only verified works count toward the standings. Once official finalists and winners are announced, they are marked alongside the community results.

Built on AT Protocol

AT Protocol is the identity and data layer under Bluesky, but Nerd Ballot is its own site with its own interface. When you save a ballot, it is written as a record to your own personal data server. Nerd Ballot reads those public records to compute the standings, and your ballot stays in your account.

Nerd Ballot is unofficial. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Hugo Awards, the World Science Fiction Society, Worldcon, or SFWA and the Nebula Awards. Rankings here are community predictions, not official votes, and the scoring differs from the actual Hugo and Nebula voting methods.