Shin Lim is the 2018 winner of America’s Got Talent (Picture: NBCUniversal Media)

Magic man Shin Lim was crowned the winner of America’s Got Talent in 2018 – but who is he and what do we know about him?

Shin first impressed judges and audiences with his first audition back in May last year.shin

The 27-year-old was born in Canada. His parents were both born in Singapore and he is Han Chinese.

While his parents had moved to Canada for his dad to complete his post-graduate studies, when Shin was two, they moved back to Singapore.


It was at the age of 11 that Shin moved to America, moving to Acton in Massachusetts.

Shin Lim was lifted by runners-up Zurcaroh (Picture: Trae Patton/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)

Shin was originally interested in music, first taking violin lessons before smashing the violin his grandmother bought him when he got frustrated in a lesson.



He then turned to the piano but that dream was cut short when, at the age of 20 in 2011, he was diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome – a painful disorder of the thumb and hand.

Shin had enjoyed magic as a hobby and soon threw himself into the world of magic card tricks, teaching himself how to perform them by watching YouTube videos and even selling tricks he had perfected to fans online.

Lim says his approach to magic is to give it an artistic twist, rather than just trick people. ‘I’m trying to change the outlook on card magic — to make it more artistic, more visual,’ he previously said.

AGT isn’t the first time he’s been on TV – Shin Lim also performed on Penn And Teller: Fool Us in 2015 and 2017.

As well as winning AGT, Shin Lim has won the following awards in magic:

2010 – World Teen Close-Up Magic – 1st Place

2011 – Adult Card Magic I.B.M. – 1st Place

2011 – North American Adult Card Magic (Joint S.A.M. and I.B.M.) – Champion

2012 – FISM- North American Card Magic (Magic Olympics) – Finalist (In Top 6, represented North America)

2014 – North American Joint S.A.M. and I.B.M. – People’s Choice

2015 – I.B.M North America – 1st Place and People’s Choice

2015 – FISM – World Champion in Close-Up Card Magic

2018 – Merlin Award – Best Close-Up Magician

Lim is engaged to Casey Thomas, who he proposed to on 20 August 2017 during a magic show at the House Of Magic in Macau with over 2000 people in the audience.

During the AGT final, he delivered a theatrical performance around a card trick, seeing an assortment of floating cards and involving host Tyra Banks.

Speaking on the show, Lim said: ‘When you told me at 16 that an awkward, shy kid would one day be performing at the Dolby Theatre performing on America’s Got Talent, I wouldn’t have believed them.

‘To compete on AGT, it means the world to me.’

Lim bags $1 million (£760,000) and a headline slot at the Paris Theater in Las Vegas.

Although, we now know that the AGT prize fund isn’t quite what it says on the tin, with Shin revealing he ended up scooping just shy of the $1m fund.

Shin Lim lives in Massachusetts (Picture: Gabriel Olsen/FilmMagic)

He is the second magician to win AGT, following Mat Franco in the ninth season.



Lim’s closest rivals to the crown were acrobatic dance group Zurcaroh in second place, while electric violinist Brian King Joseph who finished third.

Many people were gunning for British teen Courtney Hadwin who finished sixth, becoming an overnight sensation in the US after performing Otis Redding’s Hard To Handle.

Shin is now hoping to scoop the top prize in the America’s Got Talent: The Champions final, which will air in the US tonight and will be shown on Netflix in the UK on Wednesday 20 February.

He is joined by the likes of Susan Boyle (singer and runner-up in Britain’s Got Talent 2009), Preacher Lawson (comedian and finalist of America’s Got Talent season 12), Paul Potts (opera singer and first-ever BGT winner in 2007) and Cristina Ramos (opera singer and 2016 Spain’s got Talent winner), along seven others.

MORE: Simon Cowell says The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent will be getting two series each this year