The 2026 Emmy nominees in the categories of best variety series and reality competition were revealed on the Today show on Wednesday morning.
The reality competition nominees are Dancing With the Stars, RuPaul’s Drag Race, Survivor, Top Chef and The Traitors.
The Dancing With the Stars nod marks the first reality competition program nomination for the ABC series since 2016.
The variety series nominees are The Daily Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and Saturday Night Live.
Earlier this year, the Emmys merged the best scripted variety and best talk series Emmys categories into the revived best variety series category. The split ultimately moved perpetual winner Last Week Tonight With John Oliver into the scripted variety category with long-running sketch series Saturday Night Live, the most Emmy Award-winning show in TV history. Instead, the best talk series category was made up of shows with interview segments or panel discussions, with the 2025 trophy in that category going to CBS’ Late Show With Stephen Colbert, which has since been canceled. The final Late Show episode aired on May 21.
Meanwhile, Oliver’s Last Week Tonight won best scripted variety series in 2025, 2024 and 2023.
The variety series change came as the number of submissions in the scripted variety and talk series categories declines. Additionally, the TV Academy is classifying the variety series category as an “area award,” meaning it could produce multiple winners.
Last year’s reality competition winner was The Traitors, topping the category for the second year in a row.
The remainder of the 2026 Emmy nominations will be announced later Wednesday morning.
Past Emmy winners Liza Colón-Zayas (The Bear) and Jeff Hiller (Somebody Somewhere) will reveal the rest of this year’s Emmy nominees at 830 a.m. PT in a ceremony that will stream live from the TV Academy’s Saban Media Center.
Though the Emmys originally planned to announce this year’s nominees in two batches, with the majority unveiled on July 8 and additional nominees revealed a week later, on July 15, the TV Academy announced that it would be announcing all of this year’s nominees on July 8. The move was designed to better accommodate promotional campaign schedules for Emmy Awards hopefuls.
Mariska Hargitay is set to host the 2026 Emmys, which will air live on NBC and Peacock on Monday, Sept. 14 at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT. The Creative Arts Emmys, in which the majority of the Emmys trophies are presented, will take place roughly a week earlier, on Saturday, Sept. 5 and Sunday, Sept. 6.
Hargitay is the first Emmys host not primarily known for their comedic work in nearly two decades. But she is an Emmy winner, picking up a trophy in 2006 for her role as Olivia Benson on Law & Order: SVU, the longest-running primetime drama in U.S. TV history, which begins its 28th season on NBC in the fall.
Hargitay is also a 2026 Emmys hopeful, with her 2025 HBO documentary about mother Jayne Mansfield, My Mom Jayne, eligible for this year’s awards.
The top winners at the 2025 Emmys were Adolescence, The Studio and The Pitt.
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