The Australian Production Design Guild (APDG) has announced the nominees for the 2026 APDG Awards. The awards celebrate excellence in both screen and live performance productions, recognising achievements in production design, lighting, costume, art direction, graphic and visual design.

Veteran costume designer Jennifer Irwin has earned two nominations for the Jennie Tate Costume Design for a Live Performance or Event Award – for her work on Opera Australia and Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour’s Guys and Dolls and Sydney Dance Company’s Unungkati Yantatja – One with the Other. Fellow OA costume designer David Fleischer has also earned a nod for Turandot.

The cast of Phar Lap: The Electro-Swing Musical. Photo © John McRae

Sydney-based set designer Hailley Hunt has earned two nominations in the Set Design for a Live Performance or Event Award for her work on Phar Lap: The Electro Swing Musical and Women on the Verge of A Nervous Breakdown, both staged at Hayes Theatre. Also nominated is Dan Potra for State Opera South Australia’s The Magic Flute and Keerthi Subramanyam for Belvoir St Theatre’s The Wrong Gods.

Up for Video and Visual Technology Design for a Live Performance or Event Award is Craig Wilkinson for both Shake & Stir’s 1984 and Belvoir’s Grief Is The Thing with Feathers, Susie Henderson for Legs on the Wall’s ENDLING and Morgan Moroney for Sydney Chamber Opera’s Aphrodite.

Fraser Crane, Toby Schmitz and Philip Lynch in Grief is the Thing with Feathers. Photo © Brett Boardman

Aprodite also resulted in a nomination for designer Isabel Hudson for Multi-Discipline Design alongside Henry 5‘s Anna Tregloan, Little Shop of Horrors’ Penny Challen and the team behind Chasing the Sun – Eamon D’Arcy, Tony Papp, Mick Jessop and Amber Stapff.

Lighting designers Paul Jackson (Rebecca; Troy) and Declan O’Neill (Little Shop of Horrors) have also been recognised for their contributions.

Over for screen design, The Artful Dodger sees nominations for Production Design (Nicholas Dare), Set Decoration (Louise Galligan), Art Direction (Carlo Crescini and Kate Rawlins) and Graphic Design (Nadia King).

Art Director Callum Webster also earns a nod for his work on The Last of Us, with other high-profile screen producions including Apple Cider Vinegar, Good Cop Bad Cop, Jimpa and Anaconda also featured in this year’s selection of nominees.

The full list of nominees for the 2026 APDG Awards can be found here.