The 2026 Emmy Award nominees for Outstanding Variety Series are… The Daily Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Last Night with John Oliver, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and Saturday Night Live! In other words, the five offers Hollywood Reporter (And maybe you) expected.
So Television Academy voters decided not to disqualify the dark horse candidate Hot – The Sean Evans-hosted talk show would have been the first YouTube series to be nominated in this category. Maybe next year. It wasn’t just a yawn: The Emmy Awards’ Variety Series category itself has a new look this year.
For the past decade, the category has been variety series, with scripts separated from conversations. Not anymore. The Television Academy consolidation, announced in January, follows a years-long decline in the number of series submitted in the categories of best scripted variety series and best talk variety series. The current setup — one variety show to rule them all — is how the Emmys worked before the rules changed in 2015. More or less.
the He writes of variety shows — scripted variety series or talk series — reported the number of nominees today in the consolidated category. In other words, gestures are proportional to the number of submissions received for each format.
Additionally, Best Variety Series is now considered a “Region Award,” which means it is He could Producing multiple winners. Nominees for district awards are judged individually on their own merits, so instead of being asked to select a category winner, voters will be asked for each nominee, “Does this nominee deserve an Emmy? Yes/No.” Any nominee who reaches the 90 percent “yes” threshold will receive an Emmy Award. if no When a candidate reaches 90 percent, the candidate with the highest “yes” percentage will be the sole winner.
In the future, if both formats reach 20 submissions in the same year, the Television Academy will automatically split the categories into two again.
But for now, what we got were the obvious candidates: Last week tonight always wins, SNL It is in a class of its own – quite literally here – and Daily show It still has a cultural cachet. And this time, both late-night talk show talk show candidates got their spots on the ballot the hard way.
Late Show It famously ended in May after CBS eliminated its traditional late-night talk show format. Colbert blamed politics, while Paramount pointed to the cost. The honorary nomination (at least) was a slam dunk.
Jimmy Kimmel Live! He had his own circus to navigate during the past season. In September, Kimmel was suspended by Disney/ABC for a few days after an inaccurate remark he made regarding the political leanings of Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer.
Both Colbert and Kimmel are on the (perhaps very real) list of President Trump’s enemies in the mainstream media. As a result, both men have gone particularly through the competition this year – will that be enough to eliminate John Oliver next September? Or maybe they just join him?
