The British Fashion Council announced on Wednesday, November 4, that Awar Odhiang will be honoured as Model of the Year at The Fashion Awards 2026. The ceremony takes place on Monday, November 30, at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The award, in the Council's definition, goes to the model whose work over the past year has most changed what the industry looks like, on the runway and far beyond it. It is the industry's own verdict on the year in faces, delivered by the people who hire them.
The case for Odhiang, as the Council states it, is a sequence of bookings that any working model would recognise as the top of the profession. Since closing Matthieu Blazy's debut show at Chanel, she has been central to the standout fashion moments of the past year. She has appeared on eight international magazine covers this year. Her campaign work in the same period fronts Chanel, Chloe, Louis Vuitton, Saint Laurent, Loro Piana and H&M. The Council describes a distinctive presence and an expressive energy that have made her one of the defining faces of 2026, a phrase that is doing precise work: in a trade that sells recognisability, she became the face other faces were measured against.
Odhiang's own statement, published by the Council, is notable for refusing the usual script of triumph over rivals. "To be recognised as Model of the Year is an incredible honour," she said. "I have always believed that you can be both kind and strong, both gentle and resilient. You never have to dim your light to belong, nor lose your softness to prove your strength." She thanked those who had believed in her and appreciated her for exactly who she is. Read as a professional document rather than a speech, it is a claim about sustainability: a career at this level is a decade of early call times and other people's decisions, and the models who last are the ones the industry finds it can build around.
How the award is decided matters as much as who receives it. The Model of the Year jury was chaired by Anita Bitton, a casting director, and its panel was weighted towards the hiring side of the industry: casting directors Emma Matell, Jess Hallett, Madeleine Ostlie and Rosie Vogel sat alongside photographer Campbell Addy, stylists Carlos Nazario, Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, Julia Sarr-Jamois and Nell Kalonji, creative director Edward Buchanan, editorial director Kacion Mayers, executive digital director Lynette Nylander, and movement director Pat Boguslawski. Bitton said the panel had taken real pleasure in watching her grow surer of herself and reach a level in 2026 that no one on the jury felt able to argue with, and that the award was earned the slow way, through work and commitment. When the casting directors choose, the award reads less like celebrity and more like a booking consensus made public.
Laura Weir, the Council's chief executive, framed the choice in terms of what Odhiang does to a room and a picture. "Awar has brought a truly special energy to fashion this year, reminding us that the industry is at its best when individuality, authenticity and joy are celebrated," she said. She thanked the nominating panel and said the Council looks forward to everything Odhiang will continue to achieve. The vocabulary is worth noticing, because it describes qualities that cannot be styled into existence on the day: casting has spent a decade learning to book presence rather than interchangeability, and this award is that lesson given a name and a date.
The biography the Council leads with is short and pointed. Odhiang was born in a refugee camp in Ethiopia and raised in Canada. Beyond the camera, the Council notes, she has spent her rising profile arguing for more Black models in the room and naming out loud the obstacles that still sit in their way, and younger women starting out now point to her as proof that the door does move. That is printed in the same release as the cover and campaign counts, and the placement is the argument: the modern Model of the Year is judged on the work and on what the work is used for, and the two now arrive in the same paragraph.
She joins a recent line of recipients that includes Anok Yai, Alex Consani, Paloma Elsesser and Bella Hadid, names that map the industry's shifting centre of gravity across the last several years. The Fashion Awards itself is the Council's flagship fundraiser, the largest evening of its kind in fashion by the Council's own account, and the money it raises underwrites the Council's work championing the British industry. The 2026 ceremony is presented with Pandora as presenting partner, alongside official partners Johnnie Walker and The Peninsula London. Odhiang will receive the award in that room on November 30, in front of the casting directors, editors and houses who spent the year booking her.
What the title does next is the commercial part of the story, and it is rarely said plainly. Model of the Year does not create a career; it reprices one. It converts a season of covers and campaigns into a single citable fact that travels ahead of the model into every casting, negotiation and campaign meeting of the following year. Odhiang's eight covers and six named campaigns were the evidence. November 30 is when the industry signs the certificate.
