Nominations are officially open for the 2026 Model Car Hall of Fame Awards! You can nominate all your favorites here.
For 2026, we have lots of exciting changes;
First up, in the Models section, we’ve added a new category, Model Bus of the Year to recognize all the incredible models of busses and coaches that are currently being made. We’re also making a change to the Military Model of the Year category. Previously, this was limited to diecast models. Now, however, we’ll also be accepting (and encouraging) model kit nominations in this category too, given how many wonderful military vehicles models are now being made in kit form.
Secondly, in the Brands section, after the huge the new categories we debuted in 2025, Slot Car Brand of the Year and Model Kit Brand of the Year were both huge hits, each attracting lots of fantastic nominations, we’re adding a third category for 2026; Brick Set Brand of the Year. As we saw at the recent Nuremberg Toy Fair, as well as there being lots of amazing companies producing model kits and slot cars, there are also a huge number of brands producing amazing brick set models and we want to make sure they also get their due.
But that’s not the only new Brand category; we’ve also added Museum of the Year, where you can nominate your favorite publicly-displayed collections of model vehicles.
And lastly, we’ve streamlined the People section, combining a few of the former categories where there was overlap and launching a new category; Model Car Legend of the Year. This is where you can nominate anyone who’s made an outsize contribution to the hobby; founders like Jack Odell, Mario Besana or Emile Veron, for example, or historians, designers, distributors or anyone else who fits the brief!
As ever, model nominees should be models released in the last year (ie since the last round of nominations closed in September 2025) and brands should be nominated based on their work in the same period. You can nominate as many models, brands and people as you like – and you can now sign up for MCHOF update emails when you make your submissions.
Nominations for the 2026 Awards will close at the start of September.
