Can Netflix Get You to Take a Joke?

"The Roast of Kevin Hart," a tentpole event of Netflix's comedy festival, and an Emmys-eligible variety special, was an exemplified the trickiness behind Netflix presenting itself as a destination for all comedy.

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From the standpoint of someone who analyzes Emmy campaigns, I find the 2026 edition of the Netflix Is a Joke comedy festival to be incredibly impressive. But from the standpoint of someone who is a comedy fan, my feelings are more complicated.

Netflix Is a Joke started in 2022, when it was initially more of a promotional tool for Netflix as a whole, rather than just its Emmys slate. At that point, Netflix did not even have the capability to host an event that could be eligible for the Outstanding Variety Special (Live) category at the Emmys.

With the festival happening every two years, its 2024 edition was the first real experiment in having the festival overlap with Netflix’s Emmys FYC efforts. “The Greatest Roast Of All Time: Tom Brady,” which broadcast live from the Kia Forum, was the pinnacle, not only earning said Variety Special (Live) Emmy nomination, but also propelling standout participant Nikki Glaser toward an Outstanding Variety Special (Pre-Recorded) for her HBO Max special. Shortly after, she would be hired to host the Golden Globes.

This go-round, there was more infrastructure to not only present “The Roast of Kevin Hart” as an Emmy contender, but also schedule related Emmys events, like the premiere of the Lawrence Kasdan-directed Martin Short documentary “Marty, Life Is Short,” and the FYC event for “Being Eddie,” Netflix’s biodoc about Eddie Murphy. Similar to how “John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s in LA” tried to break into the Outstanding Talk Series category based off momentum from the 2024 festival, Netflix’s new show “Funny AF” set its season finale at this year’s Netflix Is a Joke festival, boosting the show’s effort to break into the Outstanding Reality Competition Program category at the Emmys.

With no more FYC houses this year — and therefore no more centralized meeting grounds where voters can familiarize themselves with the entirety of a network’s Emmys slate throughout a week or two — Netflix Is a Joke 2026 filled a void. It lived up to the festival’s initial intent of presenting Netflix as the arbiter of all comedy. In a way, the streaming service could even take credit for exposing voters to acts like Ramy Youssef or Atsuko Okatsuka, who are on the Emmys trail from comedy specials that premiered at different networks.

The downside of all that exposure to comedians from all walks of life? When it started to feel like exposure therapy. It is one thing to invite Dave Chappelle to be a headliner. He has ultimately been in hot water the last few years for his act more than his actions. But the inclusion of Louis C.K. cemented more of an unease with Netflix’s assertion that it is home to all comedy. I’d argue that a corporate entity does not get to determine whether someone who’s admitted to sexual misconduct receives amends, their victims do. And a majority of those women who spoke out about his past actions are comics that were noticeably not on the festival lineup.

Despite the pair of comedians not being present at “The Roast of Kevin Hart,” their improprieties were mentioned multiple times, with the event feeling like a battleground between, for lack of better word, liberal and conservative comedy. Anyone familiar with a roast expects the comedians to go for the jugular, but when someone with actual grooming allegations gets called a pedophile, one questions whether the punchline really was meant to be a joke.

And that is not even touching on all the unsettling racial humor that came with having Shane Gillis and Tony Hinchliffe — two comedians who have actually faced backlash for hate speech — on the dais for the roast of a Black entertainer. If anyone did have a Nikki Glaser-like breakout, it was veteran comedian Sheryl Underwood, who eventually got her comeuppance for all the jokes about her skin complexion, and her dead husband. Unfortunately, she does not have a special out right now to campaign for.

For what it’s worth, I still laughed a bunch, even at comedians I’ve never particularly been a fan of, like Gillis (meanwhile, Hinchcliffe’s set coincided with a well-timed bathroom break). The next day, at the FYC event that served as a conclusion to the festival, featuring a panel with comedians Wanda Sykes, Tom Segura, Taylor Tomlinson, Mo Amer, and Jeff Ross, I found myself curious about the latter’s special “Take a Banana for the Ride,” which sounds like a truly cathartic departure from his roastmaster general shtick.

Now, a couple days out from the festival, I give kudos to Netflix for the rate at which it was able to push me and others outside our bubble. That is quite literally the goal of most of these FYC events: to get attendees to give something they might not yet be a fan of a chance. 

But I would say the most fun I had at the festival, even past tentpole events like “Seth Goes Greek” and “Night of Too Many Stars” — charity events hosted by Emmy winners Seth Rogen and Jon Stewart, respectively — was sampling all the comedy shows that could become future Emmy contenders, like “SNL UK” cast member Ayoade Bamgboye’s award-winning set “Swings and Roundabouts,” or former “Saturday Night Live” alum Ego Nwodim testing out a new technology-focused one-woman show, or most of all, the transgressive live experience that was “Stamptown.” Host Zach Zucker did actually say that the raunchy variety show was being taped for a future Netflix special, and I don’t think he was joking.

See IndieWire’s full list of 2026 Emmy predictions, complete with frontrunners, contenders, and long shots on our website. As a reminder, my email is majones@indiewire.com if you’d like to share any feedback.