Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor

Hugo Award nominees and winners are chosen by supporting or attending members of the annual World Science Fiction Convention, or Worldcon, and the presentation evening constitutes its central event. The selection process is defined in the World Science Fiction Society Constitution as instant-runoff voting with six finalists, except in the case of a tie. The works on the ballot are the six most-nominated by members that year, with no limit on the number of works that can be nominated.^[3] Initial nominations are made by members in January through March, while voting on the ballot of six finalists is performed roughly in April through July, subject to change depending on when that year's Worldcon is held.^[5] Prior to 2017, the final ballot was five works; it was changed that year to six, with each initial nominator limited to five nominations.^[6] Worldcons are generally held near Labor Day, and are held in a different city around the world each year.^[7][8] Members are permitted to vote "no award", if they feel that none of the finalists is deserving of the award that year, and in the case that "no award" takes the majority the Hugo is not given in that category. This happened in both the Short Form and Long Form categories in 2015.^[9]

In the following tables, the years correspond to the date of the ceremony. Editors are eligible based on their work of the previous calendar year, and each date links to the "year in literature" article corresponding with when those works were eligible. Although the Best Professional Editor award is not given explicitly for any particular editing effort and such works are not recorded by the World Science Fiction Society, works that the editor in question was involved with in the eligibility period are listed. This list includes magazines or anthologies that the editor worked on and publishing houses that he or she was employed at, and is not intended to be comprehensive. Entries with a yellow background and an asterisk (*) next to the editor's name have won the award; those with a gray background are the finalists on the short-list.

  *   Winners and joint winners   +   No winner selected

Starting with the 2007 awards, the Professional Editor award was split into two categories: Best Editor (Long Form) and Best Editor (Short Form). The Long Form award is for "the editor of at least four novel-length works primarily devoted to science fiction and/or fantasy published in the previous calendar year" in the official Hugo Award rules.^[86]

The Best Editor Short Form award, also started in 2007, is given to "the editor of at least four anthologies, collections or magazine issues primarily devoted to science fiction and/or fantasy, at least one of which was published in the previous calendar year."^[86]

Beginning with the 1996 Worldcon, the World Science Fiction Society created the concept of "Retro Hugos", in which the Hugo award could be retroactively awarded for years 50, 75, or 100 years before the current year (if no awards were originally given that year).^[3] Retro Hugos have been awarded seven times, for 1939, 1941, 1943–1946, 1951, and 1954. In 1946, 1951, and 1954, the award was given for Best Professional Editor, as the category had not been split, while for the others it was given for Short Form only as Long Form did not have enough responses to make a ballot.^[4]