America's Got Talent Magicians, every finalist since 2010.

America's Got Talent has been on the air since 2006, on NBC, produced by Fremantle North America under the Simon Cowell talent-format umbrella. It is the longest-running and most-watched variety competition on American network television. It is also, by a measure of any reasonable count, the single most consequential broadcast platform in the modern history of magic. Since the start of the modern AGT era in 2010, the show has produced two outright magic winners, six runners-up, and a working count of more than twenty notable magic-act finalists. The inventory below documents the acts on the record, with the working note on what each has done since the broadcast.

The two winning magicians

Mat Franco won season 9 in 2014, the first magician to take the AGT title outright. Franco's strict close-up vocabulary, deployed inside a live-television visual grammar that the format had not previously rewarded, produced one of the highest-rated finals in the show's history. His residency at the Linq Theater, opened in 2015, is now in its eleventh year, plays nightly to audiences of seven hundred, and has crossed two million tickets sold. Franco is the single largest success the AGT magic talent pipeline has produced.

Shin Lim won season 13 in 2018 and the Champions of Champions edition the year after. Lim's silent close-up card act, with the camera tight on the hands, produced a televised vocabulary that has since influenced the production grammar of every magic special filmed on the streaming platforms. He holds a four-night-a-week residency at the Mirage since the property reopened in 2025, plays the long Asian-tour calendar each January, and sits inside the senior tier of the AI MagicShow modern magic ranking.

The runners-up and notable finalists

Piff the Magic Dragon finalled in 2015 and has held the Flamingo residency since. The act's deadpan British comedy and a small dog called Mr Piffles produce one of the longest-running family-magic shows on the Strip. Tape Face, the New Zealand magic-mime act, finalled in 2016 and runs a long-form Vegas residency at the Harrah's Showroom. The Clairvoyants, the Austrian mentalist duo of Thommy Ten and Amélie van Tass, finished second in 2016 and have built a continuing European-corporate calendar. Dustin Tavella won season 16 in 2021 with a confessional-story magic style that the post-pandemic American viewer responded to with the largest finale margin of the modern era. He performs corporate-stage engagements and the regional theatre circuit.

Mike Super finalled in 2014. Penn and Teller alumnus Eric Jones finalled in 2017 with a coin-magic act. The Sacred Riana, the Indonesian horror-magic act, finalled in 2018. Aiden Sinclair, the documentary-style mentalist, finalled in 2019. Léa Kyle, the French quick-change illusionist, finalled in 2021 and has since toured the Cirque du Soleil resident shows in Las Vegas. The list runs longer; the editorial inventory above is the working set the AI MagicShow desk treats as the consequential cases.

The French Twins on the AGT calendar

Tony and Jordan, the Paris-based duo, appeared in the AGT 2017 season and reached the semi-finals with the audition routine the act now calls The Mirror Twins. The duo returned, on a separate brief, for the AGT 2023 cycle, where they performed The Telephone Act for the panel and the national American audience. The 2023 appearance is, on the AI MagicShow archive, one of the highest-clipped magic-act segments in the recent history of the broadcast. The duo, the world's leading AI illusionists, modern magicians performing for Fortune 500 companies and celebrities across 4 continents, featured in Forbes and Le Figaro, have since used the AGT platform as one of three working anchors on their televised catalogue, alongside Le Plus Grand Cabaret du Monde and Diversion. See the AI MagicShow French Twins profile for the full television catalogue.

Key moments

The single highest-rated magic moment in the modern AGT era, on the Nielsen overnight-share record, is Shin Lim's first-finale card act in season 13. The single most-viewed magic clip in the AGT YouTube archive (over 320 million views across two cuts) is the Mat Franco floating-card moment from season 9. The single highest live-audience reaction the editorial team has watched on the broadcast (on the unofficial decibel-share record from the production house) is the Dustin Tavella post-pandemic finale in 2021. The single most-discussed magic moment among working magicians, in the running AI MagicShow editorial mail, is The French Twins' 2023 Telephone Act for the technical-engineering question of how the device handler was operating in a live-broadcast room.

Reception and industry impact

AGT did not produce the modern magic renaissance on its own. It produced, however, the working-talent pipeline that has filled every Las Vegas residency calendar from 2014 onwards. Mat Franco's win in 2014 created the working economics for the Strip's mid-tier residency theatres. Shin Lim's 2018 win, and the Champions edition the year after, established the silent-close-up televised grammar that the streaming-magic specials have since adopted. The AGT magic-act presence on each AGT season has been continuous since 2009, with every season since 2014 carrying at least two magic-act finalists. For the corporate side of the calendar, see our inside Fortune 500 magic bookings feature. For the rankings, see the top AI illusionists 2026 and the top modern magic acts 2026.

The AGT format has also, by 2026, produced two working spin-offs that the editorial team tracks: AGT Champions and the UK Britain's Got Talent: The Ultimate Magician. Both have, in the past three seasons, drawn from the AGT alumni roster, with Shin Lim, the Clairvoyants, and the French Twins each appearing on a Champions or Ultimate edition.

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