Institutions and milestones

The first Best Actress awarded was Fann Wong, in her performances in Chronicle of Life (Chinese: 缘尽今生) as Fang Ling 方玲 in the drama. Fann Wong is the first leading actress who have won this award since the awards was introduced in the 1995 ceremony. At the same ceremony; Li Nanxing received the award for his role in Wounded Tracks (Chinese: 伤城记) and it is given in honour of a Mediacorp actor who has delivered an outstanding performance in a leading role. Also, Zhu Xiufeng received the award for her supporting role in Chronicle of Life (Chinese: 缘尽今生) and it is given in honour of a Mediacorp actress who has delivered an outstanding performance in a supporting role in the 2nd year of the Star Awards ceremony.

Between 1995 and 2003, the Special Achievement Award is given to one artiste who have made significant contributions in the performance of his/her respective field of profession over the past few years. The award was discontinued in 2004 until it was revived again in 2018 with Marcus Chin receiving the award. Also, each ceremony ends with the Best Actor and Actress award, but recent ceremonies' last award would be Top 10 Most Popular Male or Female Artistes award, a popularity contest open for all nominated Mediacorp Artistes.¹ Beginning in the 1998 ceremony, the variety categories were introduced in the awards, and variety programmes, as well as the artistes playing a role in these programmes were now made eligible; these includes Sitcoms, Variety Programme Hosts, and Variety Special (a one-off episode with a longer runtime, such as awards ceremony or live finals). For the first time in the awards' history, Technical Categories were also presented, but they were taped outside the ceremony on a separate date, and presented on a clip montage due to time constraints; these practice would later be done on later years except for 2010–15, where it was done on a single show instead. The 2000 ceremony further added awards in recognition to News and Current Affairs team and the Top Rated Drama Serial and Variety Programme.

Beginning in the 2004 ceremony, the All-Time Favourite Artiste Award was introduced in the place of Special Achievement Award. Chew Chor Meng, Li Nanxing and Zoe Tay received the award after winning the Top 10 Most Popular Male or Female Artistes award from 1994–2003. It is given in honour of an artiste who has won the Top 10 Most Popular Male Artistes or Top 10 Most Popular Female Artistes for ten times (not necessary to be consecutive). Artistes who receive the award will no longer be eligible for the running of the respective Top 10 Most Popular Male or Female Artistes awards from that particular year onwards, allowing younger Mediacorp artistes have a chance to win the popularity awards as well. 24 artistes have been awarded the All-Time Favourite Artiste award since its inception, and it has been awarded in almost every ceremony since except 2007, 2013 and 2018.

The ceremonies were held annually in April to honour television talents from works from the previous year; prior to the 2007 ceremony, the ceremony were held at the end of the year while there is no ceremony in 2008 due to a format change.

In the 2010 ceremony, held in 2010, introduced the six awards, Favourite Male Character, Favourite Female Character, Most Unforgettable TV Villain, Male Media Darling, Female Media Darling and Rocket Award. The first three awards were decided by online voting with the results being announced during the first ceremony. The Rocket Award was also introduced, which mainly focuses on the artiste who contributed the most improvement throughout the past year.

In 2014, the 20th Star Awards ceremony was held. The title of the Star Awards also short-formed to Star Awards 20 as a remarkable awards night. The first ceremony was held at the Mediacorp TV Theatre with the veteran artistes; Chen Shucheng who was the first Star Awards hosts came back as a co-hosts after 20 years hosting the first ceremony. Samuel Chong, Dasmond Koh, Vivian Lai, Lee Teng, Pornsak, Zhang Wei and Zhou Ruzhu and was held at the Mediacorp TV Theatre. Social Media Award and The Most Popular Regional Artiste Award were introduced at the ceremony. The second ceremony was held at Suntec Singapore International Convention and Exhibition Centre with hosts Guo Liang and Quan Yi Fong.

2014 also saw a revision of quota towards the category, as categories requires at least ten nominations in order to be presented; this result in the suspension of three awards, Best News Presenter, Best Current Affairs Presenter, and Best Newcomer. However, despite 8World (renamed from the Channel 8 News and Current Affairs Team in January 2019) had fulfilled the minimum quota of 10 nominations, these awards have yet to be presented since its last presentation in 2013, while Best Newcomer returned except for 2016 and 2017, both of which were not presented due to the same reason.

In 2015, both ceremony was held on 19 April 2015 and 26 April 2015. It's the last year that Mediacorp presented the awards at the venue of Caldecott Broadcast Centre, Mediacorp TV Theatre (hence the Caldecott subtitle was present in the name of ceremony). Both ceremonies were held in the venue before moving to Mediacorp campus at 1 Stars Avenue for the next ceremony.

At the 2016 ceremony, the Professional and Technical awards ² have been moved to a backstage awards and also the last time it held a double ceremony (not counting prelude or special episodes). The online Favourite award categories were held for the final time, with Jeanette Aw nominated again for Favourite Female Character and Favourite Onscreen Couple (Drama). Aw won six voting-based awards in Show 1 in 2015 including three Most Popular Regional Artiste Awards, Social Media Award and Favourite Female Character award for her role in The Journey: Tumultuous Times. Aw expressed her intention to be removed from the voting,^[3] but was rejected as Mediacorp said that the awards were determined though online voting, and still requiring her to participate. There was a change in lineup of the awards streamlined to 19 categories. A new category, 'Best Programme Host', was created with a merger of two hosting awards (Best Variety Show Host and Best Info-Ed Programme Host) due to a similar presentation style in both the variety and info-ed programmes, as well as similar eligibility criteria. 'Best Evergreen Artiste', which was based on the performances for drama veterans, was also introduced in 2016.

At the 2017 ceremony, online voting categories were also streamlined, by putting more emphasis placed on the Top 10 Most Popular Artiste awards, while the Favourite Male and Female Character, and Favourite Onscreen Couple awards, as well as Social Media Award were dropped due to the change. Due to the switch in measuring television viewership, the Top Rated Variety Programme and Top Rated Drama Serial awards were also suspended.

The 2018 ceremony saw revamps towards the Top 10 Popularity Awards, whereas a poll of 1,000 people representing a wide demographic across Singapore's population, were conducted independently by an accredited market research company, will be used to shortlist the nominations. The results of the poll weighed 50% towards the combined total, while the other 50% comes from the public vote (with 50% weighed on telepoll and online votes each). Eligibility criteria for performance and popularity categories were also revised, opening up to non-Mediacorp artistes; eligible artistes were now required to lead a role in a programme or play as a supporting role/assistant host in at least three eligible programmes or at least 30 episodes out of all eligible programmes, whichever applicable. Best Evergreen Artiste were also accessed on veteran artistes based on a full calendar year, as opposed to a single programme.^[4]

The 2019 ceremony, coinciding the silver jubilee of the ceremony on 14 April 2019, introduced two categories to feature miniseries, which were the Best Short-form Drama Serial and Best Short-form Variety Programme.

The 2021 ceremony, initially announced to be held on 26 April 2020 and announced that the event is postponed to the second half of 2020 due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, making it the first ceremony in 13 years since the revision of the eligibility period in 2008 where the ceremony would not be held on the month of April;^[5] On 7 August 2020, the ceremony was pushed to 18 April 2021 and expanding the eligibility to include 2020 programs, resulting in the increase of nominations for most of the award categories, from the traditional five to seven.^[1] The ceremony also introduces radio awards coinciding the 85th anniversary of radio broadcasting in Singapore. For the first time since 2014, the award ceremony was announced to be held outside studios, located on the Jewel Changi Airport and Terminal 4.^3[6]

The 2022 ceremony brought back the popularity awards that were discontinued during the earlier awards. They were introduced as MyPick! Awards and the awards were presented in the backstage livestream instead of the Main ceremony.

The 2023 ceremony saw introductions of the Most Popular Rising Star award and revamps towards the Top 10 Popularity Awards. Nominees are no longer shortlisted into the Top 40 nominees, instead they are eligible as long as they have acted in a Lead role or main host in an eligible programme or a Supporting role or episodic host in 3 eligible programme/30 episodes in total across all eligible programme, while having more than 5 years of professional screen acting and/or screen/audio hosting experience before the award ceremony, Most Popular Rising Star have similar requirements, but they can be nominated with being a Supporting role or episodic host in a single eligible programme, while having 5 or less years of professional screen acting and/or screen/audio hosting (excluding cameo appearances/experiences before turning 18 years of age), and being 18 years and above to be nominated.^[7]

^1 The last 2 awards at Star Awards 2022 were the Best Actor and Best Actress Awards instead of the Top 10 Awards.^[8]
^2 Previously, technical category awards (e.g. Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Variety Show Producer, etc.), newscaster and current affairs awards and, for a time, the Young Talent Award (for child actors) were held separately at a gala dinner (or afternoon conference) due to time constraints and results and clips from the event would be shown either during the ceremony, or live-streaming before the ceremony. Between 2010 and 2015, and again in 2017, those technical awards were presented in Show 1 (or during the three prelude episodes, in 2017), while the Show 2 presented the main awards. Since 2016 (with the exception for 2017), the format was reverted with the technical category awards presented at an off-site ceremony.
^3 In accordance to the social distancing measures, the ceremony is conducted closed-doors, and international celebrities communicate via teleconference due to travel restrictions.^[9]

Lists of award ceremonies

To date, 28 ceremonies were held, as summarised below:

Ceremony hosts

The following individuals have hosted the Star Awards ceremony.

Judged categories

Popularity categories

Technical Awards
As of 2018, only four technical awards were presented during off-site ceremony.

• Best Screenplay 最佳剧本
• Best Variety Producer 最佳综艺编导
• Best Director 最佳导演
• Best Variety Research Writer 最佳综艺资料撰稿

Discontinued or suspended awards

One-time Awards

• 40th Anniversary Evergreen Achievement Award 电视40长青奖 (Awarded only in 2003)
• Talented Artiste Award 多才多艺红星奖 (Awarded only in 2004)
• Honorary TV Award (Awarded only in 2013)
• Perfect Combo 最合拍搭档 (Awarded only in 2022)
• Most Attention Seeking New-Gen Host 最抢镜新晋主持人 (Awarded only in 2022)

Technical Awards
Note: All the categories were introduced in 1998 (unless otherwise stated), and these awards were presented outside broadcast except for 2010–2015, where it was presented on one show.

Retired awards

A number of awards have either suspended or retired throughout the years, including some that have been replaced by similar award categories in other areas of recognition:

Suspended Awards

Overall wins/nominations by a performer, program, etc.