The Best Illusion of the Year^SM Contest is a celebration of illusions and perception, created by the ingenuity of the world’s premier illusion creators. Illusions are perceptual experiences that do not match the physical reality.

How we see the outside world―our perception―is generated indirectly by brain mechanisms, and so all perception is illusory to some extent. The study of illusions is critical to how we understand sensory perception, and many ophthalmic and neurological diseases.