Inside the 2026 Emmys, Where TV’s Brightest Talents Shared the Spotlight with Its Long-Term Challenges

The 2026 Emmys provided much to celebrate at the ceremony and after parties, with several records broken. It also highlighted some unfortunate changes that have happened in the TV space.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” is how I would describe my outlook on the state of TV after attending the 2026 Emmys and the various parties surrounding it.

In terms of the telecast itself, a few of my gripes live in our roundup of what you missed on TV, like the incessant clapping at the In Memoriam reel, despite the reminder to wait till the end of the segment (which, again, was tough when it actually wasn’t clear when the segment ended). But I would describe Mariska Hargitay as an adequate host.

It is certainly outrageous that she is the first woman in 15 years to do the job, and there are a lot more women who are more known for being funny, so I just did not know what to expect, but it was fun to go back to a more traditional variety show where she’s singing numbers and throwing it to pretaped bits.

Overall, my issue lied more in how the show was produced. No one who is still watching the Emmys actually cares that much about the “show” part of the Primetime Emmys. It is probably the coldest crowd one could get on that scale, as there are several people in the audience who produce live variety specials and have critiques we would never have thought of on our own.

I guess the Television Academy deserves a pat on the back for actually solving the “issue” of an overlong awards show, but I can guarantee those last 10 minutes of near-dead air, where Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson were forced to keep vamping after they had spent all their energy on promoting their new Apple TV series “Brothers,” was much more detrimental to the telecast than the 10-15 minutes it would have taken to see “DTF St. Louis” stars David Harbour and Linda Cardellini, two true TV stars, win their first Emmys for Outstanding Supporting Actor and Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. And will all of the timing drama, reflected in last year’s host Nate Bargatze’s failed countdown clock bit as well, even matter if the awards ceremony does not air on network TV anymore?

The record-breaking sweep for “Widow’s Bay” provides such a fascinating picture of how one can again, either look at things glass half full, or glass half empty. Here is this spec script from creator Katie Dippold that took almost two decades to finally be produced, she wins Emmys for her writing and for the series overall, in a moment where there’s been a precipitous drop of women getting to create TV shows, her close collaborator Hiro Murai becomes the first Asian director to win in the comedy category.

You then look at the acting categories, and again, you get a lot of what Emmys viewers love to see. Matthew Rhys made history as the first lead actor to win in all three genre categories. Kate O’Flynn cemented herself as the breakout of the TV season with her Emmy for Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. And beloved character actor Stephen Root, who most notably starred in the Emmy-winning series “Barry,” finally won a long-deserved first Emmy for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.

However, “Widow’s Bay” was the show that won the most acting awards on a night where, for the first time in five times, none of the acting categories were won by an actor of color. Why that’s the case is a long, complicated conversation about how TV is more diverse than ever, but the juiciest roles for actors of color right now are on networks that don’t receive Emmy nominations, and the actors of color like Kevin Carroll on “Widow’s Bay,” or Ali Ahn and Ato Essandoh on “The Diplomat,” or Shabana Azeez and Isa Briones on “The Pitt” — all shows that won in the acting categories — play too tertiary a role to stand out as top contenders.

Speaking again to evidence of unfortunate trends, there was already a huge worry among Emmy attendees that we will not get “Widow’s Bay” Season 2 any time soon, with the rumor that Apple TV’s plan will already be to alternate between it and the network’s previous record breaker “The Studio,” to maintain dominance over the comedy categories for years to come. (Two-time Outstanding Comedy Series winner “Ted Lasso” will also be back in contention next year, but I bet you didn’t think about that until I said it.) Word on the street says “The Studio” Season 2 is so good that it may be powerful enough to revive the Madonna biopic with Julia Garner that it makes jokes about.

Back to the Emmys results, one more thing I found pretty discouraging was that after all the hype of how there could be multiple winners this year, the outcome for Outstanding Variety Series was simply “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” winning the Emmy one more time for its final season. When there are already questions about whether or not “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” is going to end soon, or what happens to NBC late night if producer Lorne Michaels were to ever retire, the other network series being overlooked again just indicates voters are fine with traditional late night series going extinct.

Weirdly, at the Emmys after parties, the possible Paramount-Warner Bros. merger that would affect that category (one side has “The Daily Show,” and the other has “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” both of which manage to be outspoken without yet facing censorship issues) did not come up.

About a 10 minute drive away was the big Walt Disney Emmy Awards celebration at their annual venue Vibiana, which similarly had Outstanding Variety Series nominees Kimmel and his head writer/spouse Molly McNearney holding court. Of the various casts TV mogul Ryan Murphy could have surrounded himself with, from “American Horror Story,” to “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette,” to even “All’s Fair,” it was fascinating to see it was ultimately the stars of “The Shards,” a critical misfire, who joined him. “Furious” lead Emmy Rossum was also present for both the awards ceremony and the party. Her summer hit for Hulu is the real freshman drama most likely to return to the party next year as nominees, and possibly winners.

At the Netflix Emmys celebration taking place in the pool area of the famed Chateau Marmont, the star with the most gravitational pull was Colman Domingo, nominated this year for his Netflix series “The Four Seasons,” surrounded by a tier of celebrity one does not often see at TV parties, like Grammy winners Babyface and Queen Latifah (whose partner Eboni Nichols was the choreographer for the Emmys). CEO Ted Sarandos and chief content officer Bela Bajaria were also present to entertain talent, with the former having a long chat with “Griselda” producer/star Sofia Vergara.

Despite not winning any of the series categories, the party remained a jubilant affair for the Netflix awards teams, who successfully campaigned for some major wins by hook or by crook. Basically, if you were to ask them a month ago if Matthew Rhys and Sally Field were the stars among their multiple Lead Actor and Actress in a Limited Series nominees to win the Emmy, they probably would have said “No.”

Finally, at the HBO Max celebration, which advertises its end time as “late,” some of the stars who stayed past midnight include Colbert, “The Chair Company” star Tim Robinson and his director Andrew Deyoung, Emmy-nominated “The Pitt” star Taylor Dearden, and most importantly “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” star Peter Claffey, who took advantage of the karaoke setup that the studio had in one of rooms at the San Vicente Bungalows, and performed a rousing rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “That’s Life.”

Additional reporting by Christian Zilko.