On July 8, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences unveiled the majority of nominees for the 2026 Primetime Emmy Awards, the largest celebration of artistry and talent in television. The names were revealed and streamed live by the Television Academy by previous winners Liza Colón-Zayas, who in 2024 became the first Latina woman to win in the category Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her work in “The Bear,” and Jeff Hiller, who won Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 2025 for “Somebody Somewhere.” Two categories — Best Variety Series and Best Reality Competition — were announced earlier that day on “The Today Show.”
Mariska Hargitay will host the sure-to-be star-studded ceremony, which will air live on NBC on Sept. 14 at 8 p.m. EST. Hargitay was nominated eight consecutive times for her starring role in “Law and Order: SVU” before winning Outstanding Actress in a Drama in 2006. The Creative Arts Emmys, which honor technical and behind-the-scenes achievements, will take place on Sept. 5 and 6.
An Emmy is not merely the highest possible achievement for a television actor or creator — the annual award show is a metric to assess what has been dominating the cultural zeitgeist. Just like an Academy Award or Grammy, each nomination and victory — from “Love Island” to the already-missed “Late Night with Stephen Colbert” — symbolizes the sociopolitical climate, priorities and preoccupations of the moment. This year, HBO Max was the most nominated network, followed by Netflix and Apple TV.
For the most part, this year’s nods were relatively predictable. The second season of HBO Max’s medical drama “The Pitt” and final season of their comedy “Hacks” set the curve with 25 and 24 nominations each, while Netflix’s comedy-horror “Widow’s Bay” came in third place with 19 nods. It could be said the Television Academy played it a bit safe, catering to nostalgia with “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” whose episodic format lacked the artistry and singularity of its precursor “Game of Thrones,” and cultural successes such as FX’s “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette.”
Each nominee this year is exceedingly deserving. “The Pitt,” each episode of which follows an hour in an emergency room, continued to shine a light on the state of healthcare across the country with an all-star cast led by Noah Wyle, whose venture into directing for the season’s sixth episode was, at turns, emotional and propulsive. Also in terms of crew, “Pluribus” was rightfully honored for each detail that made the science fiction series so compelling, most notably for the enveloping sound.
Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder concluded their run as the most dynamic duo in television with “Hacks,” a meta-comedy about the comedy industry that leaned into its emotional roots for its final season. Each received nominations for Best Actress in a Comedy Series — lead and supporting, respectively. Breakout “Love Story” star Sarah Pidgeon was nominated for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie for her role as Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, fitting given that her grounded performance was by far the most compelling part of the show. Speaking of limited series, nominee Chase Infiniti deserved every bit of praise for her starring role in Hulu’s “The Testaments,” the dystopian spin-off of “The Handmaid’s Tale” that relied on her expert balance of doleful innocence and steely resolve.
As is always the case, the shows that went uncelebrated are just as revealing as those that were. (Before continuing, it’s important to note that the smash-hit “Heated Rivalry” and its cast was not snubbed — the majority of its production occurred in Canada, rendering the series ineligible for nomination.)
At the top of that list this year is “Industry,” HBO Max’s gritty workplace drama about an investment firm in London. Each aspect of the show’s fourth season sang, thanks not only to the all-star cast but also the exemplary efforts of series creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay in writing and direction. While Marisa Abela in particular deserved praise for her captivating performance as the tragic, corrupt Yasmin Kara-Hanani, everyone in the cast is phenomenal down to the sobering guest performances by Ken Leung and Sagar Radia.
Ever since its record-breaking trifecta of “The Sopranos,” “The Wire” and “Game of Thrones” in the early 2000s, HBO Max has been heralded as the network at the forefront of prestige television. When “Succession” ended in 2023, numerous thinkpieces abounded debating if the end of its monopoly on critically acclaimed programs television was nigh.
“Industry” is the reason I think the answer is no — it is gritty and dark, with remarkably intelligent writing in a time when the subtlety of scripts is declining to accommodate “half-here” viewers watching while on their phones. The show instead embraces its difficulty, seldom defining the finance terminology it bandies about. In the fourth season, Down and Kay became much more explicit about their sociopolitical commentary, writing progressively darker plotlines. Perhaps the very facets of the production that make it so honest and compelling are what led to its fourth unacknowledged year despite critical acclaim. This season was the penultimate, and my only hope is that next year its final sweeps all categories.
The same could be said for “The Boys.” While there are many nominated shows that grapple with the present political moment, none do it quite as explicitly as this original by Amazon Prime. This satire is set in a parallel universe, and follows a vigilante group attempting to resist the dominance of corrupt superheroes and corporations. Eric Kripke, the creator of this satire, has explicitly stated that the parallels between his show and the contemporary United States — most notably, those between President Donald Trump and the authoritarian leader Homelander — are intentional. In fact, Kripke told Entertainment Weekly that some of the plots he feared would be over-the-top ended up accidentally mirroring American politics perfectly, which he believes underscores the dire absurdity of our contemporary climate.
The snubs of both “Industry” and “The Boys,” the two most unflinching shows on television, reinforce that no award show exists in a vacuum — that not only what art is celebrated but art itself is always charged. The pomp, circumstance and celebration of talent belies an acknowledgement of what the public has cared about and consumed — the programs that became a part of people’s nightly routines, the seemingly unavoidable spoilers from smash hits that united audiences and consumed timelines across demographics.
