Guillermo del Toro to receive a BFI Fellowship

The BFI today announces that it is honouring filmmaker Guillermo del Toro with its highest accolade, a BFI Fellowship.  The award recognises his extraordinary contribution to film and the distinctive artistry that runs through his work across animation and live action, and as a Mexican filmmaker, in both Spanish and English.

Fusing dark horror and gothic fantasy, drawing on folklore, fairytales, literature, sci-fi, religion and comic books, del Toro creates lavish fantastical cinematic worlds and characters, often monsters and creatures, of deep emotional complexity. From Hellboy (2004) and his multiple Oscar triumphs Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) and The Shape of Water (2017) to his recent retelling of Frankenstein (2025) — shot partly in the UK, using locations including Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Salisbury and Peterborough.

The BFI will award Guillermo del Toro his BFI Fellowship at the annual BFI Chair’s dinner, hosted by BFI Chair Jay Hunt, in London in May 2026.  He will take part in a public Career Conversation at BFI Southbank, where, together with BFI IMAX and on BFI Player, he will also be celebrated with a retrospective, and he will curate a film season at BFI Southbank at a later date. Del Toro will also deliver a series of Masterclasses to a group of young, aspiring filmmakers from the BFI Film Academy. In May, the BFI will re-release del Toro’s outstanding debut feature Cronos (1992), recently remastered in 4K by the BFI and Les Films du Camelia, overseen by del Toro and in cinemas UK wide…