The Primetime Emmy Awards have been through the wringer most of this decade, from the COVID-19 pandemic, to the SAG and WGA strikes, to the Los Angeles wildfires last year. So, ultimately it’s great that the worst thing looming over this 2025-2026 TV season has been apathy.
With the 2026 Emmy nominations officially locked in, there weren’t too many new nominees to make it into the Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Drama Series categories (in fact, it was only five out of the 16 nominees combined). The leader in the Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series category, “Beef,” already won a bunch of awards for its first season (yet still managed to fall victim to a major Emmys snub, with star Cailee Spaeny not being nominated for her supporting performance). Overall, the Television Academy is watching all the same shows again.
But what did the Emmy nominations have to say about changes to the awards race? And to the television landscape overall? We’ve got some thoughts.
HBO Max Maxes Out on Nominations
Those who work behind the scenes at HBO do not love it when clear distinctions are made between HBO and HBO Max. The goal is for the audience to view the two entities as one big happy family that all work together under the same umbrella, hence “HBO” being added back to the title of the streaming service.
But that is a bit of a shame, only because HBO Max has one of the more triumphant awards narratives. For a long time, industry perception was that the streaming service did not have any identity of its own, yet HBO Max now can identify as the home of the most nominated drama, “The Pitt,” and the most nominated comedy, “Hacks.”
HBO Max, it seems, has a broader sensibility. “The Pitt” is simply another medical procedural, like the several CBS or ABC shows sitting at the top of Nielsen ratings, but it is executed at a way higher level, with a lot more leeway to be as realistic as possible, swear words and all. Meanwhile, “Hacks,” which was one of the earlier shows to land on the streaming service, does a lot to appeal to comedy nerds the same way a more niche show like “The Chair Company” does, but the core of it is an intergenerational friendship, which pulls in the viewers that loved Jean Smart on “Designing Women” or “Frasier” just as much as the audience that knows her co-stars Hannah Einbinder or Meg Stalter from Instagram reels.
We are already seeing HBO Max’s winning sensibility circle back to HBO proper, which triumphantly got another Outstanding Drama Series nomination for “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” its third series in the blockbuster “Game of Thrones” franchise, and has the “Harry Potter” TV adaptation incoming as well. But the fact that “The Pitt” and “Hacks” are original concepts should still be on the forefront of executives’ minds. Trying to achieve broad appeal via franchises alone gets boring quickly.
Apple TV Offers Something New
Apple TV was decidedly not the nominations leader this season (though 89 nominations is nothing to sniff at), but those statistics really only matter to the warring studios trying to one up each other. The actual most exciting part of Emmy nominations is seeing what new TV series have become awards contenders, and that is where the monied tech company really shined.
Having been a winter release that earned nominations at the Golden Globes and Actor Awards, for example, “Pluribus” being the most nominated freshman drama this season was to be expected. However, what came as a total surprise was that its number of nominations would be superseded by fellow Apple TV newcomer “Widow’s Bay,” which earned 19 nominations, second only to “Hacks” in the comedy categories.
Furthermore, those aforementioned five new shows that made it into those combined Emmy categories? Four of those shows are from Apple TV, with fellow freshman comedy “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” joining “Widow’s Bay” and perennial nominee “Shrinking” in Outstanding Comedy Series, and “Your Friends and Neighbors” Season 2 earning the biggest surprise nomination in Outstanding Drama Series alongside “Pluribus” and Emmys stalwart “Slow Horses.”
While Netflix still reigns high over its competitors in the Limited or Anthology Series categories, Apple TV has established itself as Emmys paragon HBO’s main competition in the other major categories, and it took the streaming service less than a decade to do so.
Timing Isn’t Quite Everything for Emmys Contenders
Speaking of Apple TV, the talk of the town is how “Widow’s Bay” built such a late stage surge of support. For the past few years, the strategy to premiere a show as close to the end of the Emmys eligibility window as possible has not worked well in the comedy and drama categories, yet “Widow’s Bay” — again — got 19 nominations, despite premiering so late into the season that its final three episodes of Season 1 are technically ineligible. Surprise Outstanding Drama Series nominee “Your Friends and Neighbors” has a similar story, with its Season 2 finale technically airing outside the eligibility window as well.
Inversely, Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series, the one major category that normally recognizes shows that premiered at the eligibility window, to the point where Netflix has a specific late March/early April time window that it has used to launch the category’s last three winners, saw more love for series that premiered a lot earlier in the TV season this time around. In fact, “All Her Fault,” the first Peacock series to be nominated in the category, premiered all the way back in November, as did Netflix’s “The Beast in Me,” and both were nominated over spring premieres “Lord of the Flies” and “Half Man,” which both came from creators who had just swept the limited series categories last year and the year before.
Many blame time of release for why HBO series “Industry” has been snubbed by the Emmys four seasons running, and the network even finally addressed that by moving it to the winter release schedule, and setting up its first Los Angeles FYC event in late April, to make it more top of mind to voters, but things still did not work out for the financial thriller. Fall HBO drama “Task” was also shortchanged, earning four Emmy nominations, but not breaking into Outstanding Drama Series. But it is hard to say those two aforementioned shows were released too early, because fellow HBO series “The Gilded Age,” which aired in June 2025, still got nominated, and it’s just as hard to say “Industry” and “Task” premiered too late when fellow HBO drama “A Knight of Seven Kingdoms” premiered after both shows, and still got nominated.
Emmy nominations all come down to voter awareness, and ultimately the only tried and true way to build that is through a weekly release schedule, which Apple TV and HBO both implement.
Some TV Stars Are Bigger Than the Show
One of the more fascinating results to come out of the 2026 Emmy nominations were how actors like Zendaya, Chase Infiniti, Colman Domingo, and Ayo Edebiri still managed to earn nods for their performances despite their shows going mostly overlooked in the major categories. But what makes Edebiri special over her co-stars Jeremy Allen White, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, or Liza Colón-Zayas, who all have also won an Emmy for their performances on “The Bear,” yet were not even nominated for Season 4 of the FX series this year?
The answer is ubiquity. Edebiri can afford to not campaign more so than her co-stars because, through her connections to the fashion industry as an ambassador for brands like Chanel, she is constantly catching people’s attention, living on their Instagram Explore pages. The same can be said of Zendaya and Domingo, the only two actors to be nominated for the final season of “Euphoria,” who have also become year-round red carpet staples.
This is not to take anything away from their performances, which have all already earned Emmys. But Chase Infiniti, coming off of the “One Battle After Another” Oscar campaign that led to her becoming a Louis Vuitton ambassador, straight into the premiere and Emmys campaign for “The Testaments” is the latest example of someone who has earned so much goodwill on their own, as a star, that voters quicker to recognize them than the shows they are on. Sure, the harsh read would be that they are a walking billboard for the brands they work with, but there is also the argument that those outside obligations, combined with their reputations as performers, make them a walking FYC ad for any given project they are working on.
Reality TV Shows Are More Interconnected Than Ever
Without breaking out a bulletin board, some pushpins, and red string, fans of reality TV probably noticed that all the Emmy contenders within the genre are starting to become interconnected in a way that has been symbiotic. For example, “The Traitors” Season 4, the frontrunner for the Outstanding Reality Program Emmy, had contestants from each of the four shows it is currently nominated against.
Specifically, “Dancing with the Stars” pro Mark Ballas played a key role in the 34th season of the ABC series ending its decade-long nomination drought. He was paired with Whitney Leavitt shortly after the peak of her Hulu series “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” which was nominated for the Outstanding Unstructured Reality Program last year. Though they did not make it to the finals, their popularity led to Leavitt being cast in “Chicago” on Broadway, which broke the box office records set by the star of another previous Outstanding Unstructured Reality Program nominee, “Vanderpump Rules” star Ariana Madix.
See, after the Scandoval drama that led to her Bravo show’s Emmy nomination, Madix was cast on “Dancing with the Stars,” was offered the role of Roxie in “Chicago” on Broadway, and then became the host of “Love Island USA.” Shortly afterward, the show became massively popular — so much so that she just got nominated for the Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality Competition Program Emmy against Ballas’ best friend in “The Traitors” castle, “Top Chef” host Kristen Kish.
And, bringing things full circle, “Summer House” star Ciara Miller, who was a contestant on the Emmy-winning “The Traitors” Season 3, just went through a similar scandal on her Bravo show, leading to it earning its own Outstanding Unstructured Reality Program Emmy nomination this year. What was next for her? A new gig as the host of the after show for “Love Island USA,” and a spot as one of the contestants of the upcoming season of “Dancing with the Stars.”
