The 2026 BAFTA TV Special Award will go to consumer finance expert Martin Lewis.
BAFTA chief executive Jane Millichip revealed the news on the south bank of the River Thames in the British capital just days after the 2026 BAFTA Television Craft Awards in London on Sunday, which featured the Netflix drama Adolescence Big win.
Lewis, a high-profile financial journalist and activist, has long been a fixture on British daytime television. It provides advice to the general public on the best ways to save, spend, and increase their financial resources. The Special Television Award is given to an individual or organization that has made an outstanding contribution to television, in recognition of an outstanding body of work that has had a significant cultural, social or industrial impact.
“Through his consumer website MoneySavingExpert.com and his long-running ITV series,” BAFTA said of the decision to honor the 53-year-old. Martin Lewis Live Finance PresentationHis role as a presenter and expert Good morning, BritainHis position as resident expert in This morningIt has empowered millions of people with financial knowledge and confidence to take control of their lives.
Lewis added: “For many years, people assumed I was a financial adviser. I’m not. And I never was. I am, proudly, a broadcast journalist… which is why this level of recognition at the BAFTA TV Awards feels so meaningful. If someone had told the young man who was training in 1997 for a postgraduate degree in broadcast journalism that this would happen, his jaw would have dropped, he would have smiled in disbelief, and asked: ‘Why on earth?'” And frankly, I still feel a bit like that today.
He continued: “Press campaigns do not only mean revealing stories.” “It can also mean engaging viewers to take action. I’m incredibly grateful for the privilege ITV has given me over the past 14 years, inviting me into people’s living rooms, in the evening, with a platform to share information that I believe can help improve people’s quality of lives.”
Lewis shared during a BAFTA Q&A session in London on Wednesday that he focuses not on what consumers, viewers and readers want but on what they need. He also stressed that television is an “industry in decline”, with declining profitability, warning that the industry must be “very careful” amid cost-cutting pressures about fulfilling its roles, such as “providing a window into society”.
The broadcaster also said that although his work is “naturally political”, he is focused on remaining a “party politician”. Although he admitted that the responsibility of the job meant his anxiety levels were “always high,” he told fellow journalists in the room that he was “pretty angry” at social media companies when discussing deep AI videos that still used his image.
Could UK audiences see Lewis doing other work on TV? “I love game shows and competitions,” he replied. Lewis quickly ruled out a career in politics, but he was visibly emotional when he spoke of the life he had changed by lobbying the government.
More television awards, including this one, will be handed out during the BAFTA Television Awards on Sunday 10 May at London’s Royal Festival Hall. Comedian and Task manager Star Greg Davies will host the event. Adolescence The film leads with 11 nominations, followed by Disney+ nominations A thousand strokes With seven.
