BFI Awards Fellowship to Guillermo del Toro

The British Film Institute announced on Wednesday that acclaimed Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro will receive its highest honor, the BFI Fellowship, recognizing his extraordinary contributions to cinema through distinctive artistry in animation and live-action films produced in both Spanish and English.

The award, which celebrates del Toro's imaginative and fantastical body of work, will be presented at the annual BFI Chairs dinner in London in May 2026, hosted by BFI Chair Jay Hunt. As part of the fellowship celebrations, del Toro will participate in a public Career Conversation at BFI Southbank, accompanied by a retrospective of his films screened in BFI IMAX and on BFI Player. He will also curate a film season at the venue later and deliver masterclasses to aspiring young filmmakers from the BFI Film Academy. Additionally, del Toro plans to visit the BFI National Archive, a nod to his early career influences, and the institute will rerelease his 1992 debut feature, Cronos, in a newly remastered 4K version.

Del Toro, 61, rose to prominence with films such as the 2004 superhero adaptation Hellboy, the 2006 fantasy drama Pan's Labyrinth, which won three Oscars, and the 2017...