Andor has picked up another very deserved trophy — and this one goes straight to the people who made the galaxy feel heavy, dirty, dangerous, and beautifully expensive in all the right places.
The series won Special, Visual and Graphic Effects at the 2026 BAFTA Television Craft Awards, with BAFTA naming Mohen Leo, TJ Falls, Luke Murphy, Neal Scanlan, Jean-Clément Soret, and Industrial Light & Magic as the winning team for Andor. The result is listed on BAFTA’s official Special, Visual and Graphic Effects award page.
The Invisible Work That Made Andor Hit Harder
This is the kind of award that fits Andor perfectly, because the show’s effects work was never about shouting, “Look, expensive pixels!”
It was about texture.
Imperial facilities looked cold and cruel. Ferrix felt lived-in, worn down, and politically tense. Spacecraft had weight. Cities had systems. Prisons felt industrial rather than fantastical. Even when Andor went big, it rarely felt like the effects were dragging the story away from the people inside it.
That is a huge part of why the series worked. Andor made Star Wars feel physical again — less like a theme park ride and more like a galaxy where someone had to weld the doors, scrub the floors, and quietly fear the bootsteps outside.
Mohen Leo, TJ Falls, Luke Murphy, Neal Scanlan, Jean-Clément Soret and Industrial Light & Magic bag the Special, Visual & Graphic Effects BAFTA for their work on Andor ✨#BAFTACraftAwards with @samsunguk OLED pic.twitter.com/bXayK9eceV
— BAFTA (@BAFTA) April 26, 2026
ILM Adds Another Star Wars Win
Industrial Light & Magic also celebrated the win, noting in its own announcement about Andor’s BAFTA victory that the ILM team joined their Lucasfilm counterparts in taking home the award for the show’s second season.
That is not exactly shocking. ILM and Star Wars have been joined at the hip since the franchise began, but Andor is a slightly different flex. This was not just spectacle for spectacle’s sake. The visual effects had to disappear into a grounded political thriller, supporting the tension rather than blasting over it with a fleet of glowing distractions.
That takes restraint. And restraint, in modern franchise television, is practically a Force power.
A Win for the Craft Behind the Rebellion
The BAFTA Television Craft Awards exist to celebrate the behind-the-scenes work that makes television function — editing, sound, design, effects, writing, directing, and all the other departments that rarely get trailer voiceovers. BAFTA’s official 2026 winners announcement confirmed this year’s ceremony took place in London and highlighted the industry talent behind the year’s major TV productions.
For Andor, this win feels especially fitting. The show’s rebellion was built out of speeches, sacrifice, spycraft, and tiny acts of defiance. But it was also built out of craft: production design, practical effects, digital extensions, creature work, environments, and all the invisible visual labor that made the Empire feel terrifyingly real.
Andor did not win this BAFTA because it made Star Wars bigger.
It won because it made Star Wars feel believable.
And sometimes, that is the hardest trick in the galaxy.
