Mediacorp Screen Awards 2026: Emerald Hill and Korban S2 sweep top craft awards

Mediacorp Screen Awards 2026: Emerald Hill and Korban S2 sweep top craft awards From Emerald Hill and Korban S2 sweeping their respective Drama categories to new honours for microdramas, here are the biggest wins from the Mediacorp Screen Awards 2026. If you’ve watched a Singapore drama and marvelled at a beautifully composed shot, a particularly slick edit or a scene that left you thinking about it long after the credits rolled, chances are there was a whole team of people behind the scenes making it happen. These behind-the-scenes professionals had their moment in the spotlight at the second Mediacorp Screen Awards (MSA2026), held at Mandarin Oriental on Friday (Oct 2). Unlike the star-studded Star Awards, the Mediacorp Screen Awards are largely about the people behind the camera – the directors, cinematographers, writers and editors responsible for turning an idea on a page into something visual for audiences to watch. And if this year’s results are anything to go by, a few productions clearly struck the right creative chord. The biggest sweep of the night came from Emerald Hill – The Little Nyonya Story, which won all four Drama craft awards in the Chinese section. Kok Tzyy Haw took Best Direction, Tommy Lee Heng Soon won Best Cinematography, Ang Eng Tee received Best Screenplay and Poon Yiu Tung picked up Best Editing. For those keeping score, that comes after Emerald Hill was named Best Drama Serial at Star Awards 2026. In other words, the show didn't just connect with viewers and awards voters as a finished product – the individual crafts that went into making it were recognised too. And it wasn't the only clean sweep of the evening. Monochromatic Pictures' Korban S2 accomplished the same feat in the Malay Drama categories, with Jeevan Nathan winning Best Direction, Roszali Samad for Best Cinematography, Umie Isa and Razi Salam for Best Screenplay, and Hafiz Yusri and Andy Tseng for Best Editing. Meanwhile, Tamil supernatural thriller Aah! by Millenia Motion Pictures took home three awards. Sweeping three of the four Tamil Drama awards, including Best Direction for Yahssir M and K Rajagopal, Best Cinematography for Mohammad Shahril, and Best Screenplay for Rashida, Yahssir, K Rajagopal and Suriya Rethnna. The remaining prize, Best Editing, went to Naveen Selvanayagam for Pinky Promise Thozhi. The night wasn't just all about dramas. Over in Chinese Entertainment, Murder On The Menu proved another favourite among the industry crowd, collecting three awards. Kenneth Lau won Best Direction, William Tan Wee Lian took Best Cinematography and Eson Kwong Ka Choy received Best Editing. Emerald Hill – Our Hillside Moments, which was named Best Entertainment Programme at Star Awards 2026, added another trophy to the wider Emerald Hill haul, with Ng Jin Puay winning Best Writing. In Tamil Entertainment, Tantra Inc's Uncle Taxi Season 5 – Australian Adventure scored two wins: Best Cinematography for Sharul Khan and Best Writing for Karthikeyan Somasundaram. This year's awards also offer a glimpse at how the local production industry is evolving. MSA2026 expanded to 35 awards across Drama, Entertainment and Information programming spanning the Chinese, Malay and Indian production communities. Perhaps more tellingly, two new Microdrama awards were introduced, recognising short-form storytelling across languages. The inaugural honours went to Manoj Prabhoda Chandran for directing Honour and Unity, and Chang Kai Xiang for the screenplay of Woke Up In The 60s In My Grandma’s Apron. That might sound like a small addition, but it reflects a much bigger shift in how audiences consume entertainment. With viewing increasingly taking place on phones and social platforms, the craft of telling a compelling story in a much shorter window is becoming a discipline of its own. As Mediacorp's chief customer and corporate development officer Angeline Poh put it, the awards exist to ensure the creative and technical minds behind these productions get their work “seen in turn”. For an industry where the faces on screen naturally receive much of the public attention, that recognition matters. After all, a memorable performance might be what viewers notice first. But someone still has to write the scene, frame the shot, call “action” and piece it all together. At MSA2026, they finally got to take a bow. [Image text:] SCREEN mediacorp