The 2026 Emmy nominations, by the numbers

The Television Academy announced nominations for the 2026 Emmy Awards Wednesday morning. The entire list, including every named nominee in every category, is here. A somewhat shorter one, broken down by network or streaming platform, is here (the first page of that one is blank after the header; keep scrolling).

There is good analysis of what’s deserving (or not) and what got snubbed in several places around the web; I don’t have any real critical takes on the quality of the nominees that you won’t find elsewhere.

This being a data-oriented newsletter, though, I wanted to dig into the numbers surrounding the Emmy nominations some more. Here are some of the key digits from the nominations.

By my count, 176 shows and movies got at least one nomination, by my count (not including the six nominees for best commercial). Eight shows — roughly 4.5 percent of the total got more than 10 nominations. They are:

• The Pitt (HBO Max): 25 nominations (plus one for the short-form companion show Inside The Pitt)
• Hacks (HBO Max): 24 (plus one for the short-form show Hacks: Bit by Bit). That’s a record for a comedy series, breaking the previous mark of 23 set by The Studio last year and The Bear the year before that.
• Widow’s Bay (Apple TV): 19. A great number for a first-year show, and all the more remarkable because it’s not even for the full season. The Emmy eligibility window closed on May 31, meaning Apple TV couldn’t submit anything from the final three episodes.
• Pluribus (Apple TV): 18, also a big number for a first-year show and including the first lead acting nomination for Rhea Seehorn. She was a supporting actress nominee for the last two seasons of Better Call Saul and got a short-form acting nod in 2022 for Cooper’s Bar.
• Beef (Netflix): 16, three more than the anthology series’ first season got in 2023.
• DTF St. Louis (HBO): 13, including five supporting actor/actress nominations. The catch is that the show’s leads — Jason Bateman, Linda Cardellini and David Harbour — all submitted as supporting actors. Richard Jenkins and Joy Sunday also earned nominations.
• Saturday Night Live (NBC): 11. The show now has 359 nominations over its 51-season lifespan. Every year, it builds on what will likely be an unreachable record. No other show in Primetime Emmys history has reached even 200 nominations. (Daytime and news shows have their own Emmys.)
• Spider-Noir (MGM+/Prime Video): 11. A bit of a surprise here. Spider-Noir’s nominations are all in the Creative Arts categories.

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HBO/HBO Max led every network and streamer with 122 nominations. For the purposes of the Emmys, everything is submitted under the “HBO Max” name, regardless of whether shows also run on the HBO cable channel. I think it’s interesting that The Pitt and Hacks — which don’t have first or simultaneous runs on HBO — got the most nominations for the company. That hasn’t previously happened in the six years of HBO Max’s existence; a show on original recipe HBO always led the internal nomination totals before now.

Including nominations for the Warner Bros. TV studio (and not duplicating those also under the HBO umbrella) and other cable networks, Warner Bros. Discovery had the most total nominations with 150. Disney, Netflix, NBCUniversal and Apple TV were the top five by media conglomerate. Here’s how the nominations break down by platform and by media company.

*Not including two nominations for best commercial for other Apple products.

Apple TV doesn’t report its subscriber numbers separate from other services, though services head Eddy Cue has said it has “significantly” more than the 40 million-45 million industry analysts have estimated. But it’s never registered even as much as 1 percent of total TV viewing in the U.S. in Nielsen’s monthly Gauge rankings.

When it comes to Emmys, though, Apple punches way above its weight. It’s won 62 Emmys since 2020, including 22 last year. One more piece of evidence: Apple’s 87 nominations Wednesday came from only 31 submitted shows (15 of which got nominations). That’s a much higher batting average than other media companies. Take a look:

Maybe Apple runs really good for your consideration campaigns, maybe it treats its talent and creators well, maybe the industry just likes Apple’s whole deal. I don’t know, but the results have been very good so far.

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