Watch 2026 Miami Herald Silver Knight Awards that honor top high school seniors
The 68th annual Miami Herald/el Nuevo Herald Silver Knight Awards will be broadcast live at 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 12, to recognize some of the most academically achieved and community-minded high school seniors in Miami-Dade, Broward and Monroe counties.
This year’s ceremony, at the James L. Knight Center in downtown Miami, includes more than 940 students who were nominated from dozens of public, private and charter schools in South Florida.
The students are judged by professionals in 15 disciplines: art, athletics, business, digital and interactive media, drama, English & literature, general scholarship, journalism, mathematics, music & dance, science, social science, speech, vocational technical and world languages.
The 80 judges — 43 for Miami-Dade and 37 for Broward and Monroe— chose the 30 winners. The judges awarded the coveted prize to 15 seniors from Miami-Dade, and 15 from Broward and Monroe. They also selected 90 Honorable Mentions among the three counties.
How to watch Silver Knights
The event will be broadcast on the Miami Herald’s YouTube page and Facebook page and on MiamiHerald.com. To watch a livestream of the ceremony, click those pages at 7 p.m. Tuesday when the event begins, , or watch below.
What Silver Knights receive
Silver Knight winners receive a $2,000 scholarship from the Herald Charities Foundation, in addition to 25,000 AmericanAdvantage miles, good for one round-trip ticket in the continental U.S., courtesy of American Airlines.
They will also receive a medallion and the Silver Knight statue.
Honorable Mentions receive a $500 scholarship and an engraved plaque.
This year’s Silver Knight recipients will receive an invitation to the Miami Marlins’ home game on June 2nd at loanDepot park, where they will be honored for their accomplishments. The Marlins will be playing the Washington Nationals at 6:45 p.m.
Previous Silver Knight winners
The Silver Knight Awards program was created in 1959 by John S. Knight, a previous publisher of the Miami Herald and editor emeritus of Knight-Ridder Newspapers, the former owner of the Herald and other major newspapers.
Past Silver Knight winners include Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and Washington Post owner, who won a Silver Knight in science when he graduated from Palmetto Senior High in 1982; former NFL star Ted Hendricks, who won in athletics when he graduated from Hialeah High in 1965; and Frances Cook, the first U.S. woman to head a diplomatic post in the Middle East, who won a Silver Knight in social science in 1963, representing South Dade High.
This story was originally published May 12, 2026 at 10:04 AM.
