The Voices Behind the Stories We Love Step Into the Spotlight
By Rudy Gaskins, 11/30/2025
The influence of the human voice is often felt long before it is recognized, long before the performer’s name appears in credits or on an awards-night screen. It can lift an animated character into emotional life, turn a commercial into a moment of persuasion, or carry a history text into hours of intimate storytelling. At a time when the craft of vocal performance has never been more essential to contemporary culture, SOVAS™, the Society of Voice Arts and Sciences™, has once again positioned itself at the center of that expanding universe.
The organization’s newly announced nominees for the 2026 Voice Arts® Awards offer a sweeping portrait of a field that has grown far beyond the once-modest boundaries of radio and studio booths. Today’s voice actors move between film franchises, global advertising campaigns, streaming juggernauts, and the billion-dollar gaming world with a fluency that reflects the art form’s arrival as a cultural force of its own. In releasing this year’s list, SOVAS™ has curated not only an awards program but a snapshot of a creative frontier in full acceleration.
Well-known Hollywood names appear, of course. Auli‘i Cravalho and Dwayne Johnson, reprising roles in the Moana universe, are joined by James Hare of Fat Chance The Movie, signaling the comfortable coexistence between celebrity performers and the working actors who form the backbone of the industry. In the audiobook categories, where the spoken word has taken on new prominence in the digital era, familiar voices such as John Green and Matthew McConaughey share space with venerated narrators including Karen Commins, Stephen Fry, and Sutton Foster. Their presence underscores how audiobooks have evolved into something akin to an intimate stage, one in which the performer becomes both interpreter and companion.
Yet the Voice Arts® Awards have increasingly become a global event, reflecting SOVAS™’s long-articulated belief that the voice is a universal instrument. Performers working in African, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish-language markets are given equal footing, and this year’s nominees demonstrate an astonishing range. Simisola Gbadamosi for Iwaju, Phoebe T. Lim in a major Asian advertising campaign, Taeko Mukumoto for American Airlines, and Nicolas Daza for Bakugan are only a few of the names that illustrate how international the field has become. Their work, often consumed across borders without audiences realizing it, speaks to a shared global imagination shaped through sound.
Nowhere is the power of the voice more evident than in video games, a category that grows in ambition every year. The nominated performances from titles including Wizard of Legend 2, Wuthering Waves, Mechwarrior 5, and Digimon Time Story reflect a new kind of dramatic challenge. The actors must sustain emotional arcs that unfold not in a straight line but in open-world narratives filled with player choice and shifting immediacy. The result is a medium in which the voice becomes both a dramatic anchor and a guide, offering continuity in a universe designed to surprise.
In advertising and streaming promos, the fingerprints of voice actors are everywhere, even if their faces are not. The nominees behind campaigns for Apple, Nike, Guinness, Starbucks, Nespresso, the Oscars, U.S. Women’s Soccer, and Netflix reveal the degree to which the modern media landscape relies on voices that can persuade without being seen. These performances, so often overlooked, help define brands, explain stories, and lend emotional color to the digital age’s constant flow of content.
From Society of Voice Arts and Sciences
For SOVAS™, founded on the belief that voice acting is a fully realized performance discipline, the awards are part of a much broader ecosystem. The organization’s educational initiatives, mentorship programs, and the annual “That’s Voiceover!™ Career Expo” have become fixtures for both newcomers and established artists. That’s Voiceover!™ began in 2009 after several years operating under different names, making it the longest-running voiceover conference in the world. These programs represent a commitment to nurturing the profession at a time when technology continues to complicate and invigorate the industry. Artificial intelligence and synthetic voice tools have raised profound questions about creativity, authenticity, and ownership, yet they have also clarified the irreplaceable value of human nuance. In that environment, SOVAS™ functions as both advocate and steward, reminding the entertainment world that behind every meaningful vocal moment stands a human being with skill, interpretation, and intention.
The Voice Arts® Awards ceremony, which has earned comparisons to Hollywood’s most storied nights, is the public culmination of that work. But the list of nominees itself tells a deeper story. It is a record of evolving genres and global voices, of young talent rising beside established icons, and of a craft that has moved from the margins to the center of modern storytelling.
In honoring them, SOVAS™ invites audiences to listen anew to the performances that animate the culture around them, often without credit or fanfare. Some of the nominees are global stars. Many are names that might never appear in bold type. Yet all have helped shape the way narratives sound in an age defined by constant communication.
If the awards remind us of anything, it is that voice acting is no longer the unseen sibling of film and theater. It is a vibrant, influential art form, one that carries stories across continents and into the private spaces of millions.
In the end, the work speaks for itself. And this year, the world is listening.
Click here to see the 2026 Voice Arts® Awards Nominee.
Click here for tickets to the Voice Arts® Award Gala ♦︎♦︎♦︎
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Rudy Gaskins is the CEO and co-founder of the Society of Voice Arts and Sciences (SOVAS), a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting the global community of voice actors and the professionals who contribute to the voice acting industry. I have co-created That’s Voiceover!™ Career Expo and the Voice Arts® Awards . Rudy is an Emmy Award-winning TV producer and documentary filmmaker, with a career spanning PBS, ABC News, NBC Sports, Court TV, and Food Network. His natural talent for advertising led him to become Vice President of Creative Services at Court TV, after which he founded Push Creative Advertising, offering branding services for major global brands such as American Express, Lexus, NBC Sports, Delta Air Lines, Costco, Food Network, BET, and TV One. He has received numerous awards across the media spectrum, including multiple Telly and Promax awards. Under his leadership, SOVAS has been honored with Special Congressional Recognition from the United States Congress, a Certificate of Merit from the New York State Assembly, a City Council Citation from The Council of the City of New York, and the prestigious Barry Cronin Award from the American Council of the Blind for Audio Description Talent Promotion.
From Society of Voice Arts and Sciences
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