The establishment of the award was announced by Mikhail Ulyanov and Vladimir Urin at a press conference at the Union of Theatre Workers of Russia on the 14th of December, 1994.

As confessed by the artist, he used masks of the Venezian Carnival as an inspiration and added to it an element of the Russian state symbolism, the two-headed eagle.

As recalled by Natalia Nikolaeva, the award's director of public relations in 1998-2005, Boyakov was the main figure behind the future success of the Golden Mask.

Amidst the worst financial crisis of modern Russia a team of only 10 people worked on sheer enthusiasm, organizing the award without any sponsorship or government support.

That is why the management decided to select all-Russian nominees for the award among the winners of regional and thematic festivals and from the repertoire of the Theatre of Nations.

The results of the 1997 Golden Mask sparked a major scandal among critics, theatre professionals, and all parties involved, including the Ministry of Culture: four awards in main nominations went to The Woman in the Dunes by Omsk State Academic Drama Theater.

The hosts Yuliya Rutberg and Sergei Makovetsky were dressed as gravediggers, Oksana Mysina delivered monologues on behalf of the ghost of Alisa Koonen.

In 2016, the festival spanned for three months, from the beginning of February to the end of April, the management team grew to 30 while the number of participants exceeded 5000.

[15] On 29 May 2015, the independent trade union of theatre and cinema actors, chaired by Denis Kiris, sent a letter to Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky, in which it also criticized the Golden Mask.

[18][13] An open letter signed by 93 critics from 12 regions of Russia demanded the dissolution of the Golden Mask Award Board as being created under the strong influence of the Ministry of Culture.

[19] As a result, ‘Tannhäuser’, which received most of the nominations for the Golden Mask, did not go to the festival in Moscow and by the time of the award ceremony had disappeared from the nominees.

[14] Kirill Serebrennikov and his Gogol Center publicly refused to participate in the award because some of the members of its expert council had written denunciations and libels against him and his theatre.

[20] Following numerous discussions, public hearings and meetings of the working group specially created by the Union of Theatre Workers and the Ministry of Culture, the new ‘Regulations on the Golden Mask Award and Festival’ were published on 4 April 2016.

[25] The 2020-2021 season was marked by a record number of nominees: 81 performances, 67 theatres, and 290 individual nominations among more than 1,150 productions reviewed by expert councils.