Outstanding Comedy Series
Abbott Elementary
The Bear
Hacks
Margo’s Got Money Troubles
Nobody Wants This
Only Murders in the Building
Shrinking
Widow’s Bay
Will win: Hacks
Could win: Widow’s Bay
Outstanding Drama Series
The Diplomat
The Gilded Age
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
Paradise
The Pitt
Pluribus
Slow Horses
Your Friends & Neighbors
Will win: The Pitt
Should win: The Pitt
Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series
All Her Fault
The Beast in Me
Beef
DTF St. Louis
Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette
Will win: Beef
Should win: DTF St. Louis
Outstanding Variety Series
The Daily Show
Jimmy Kimmel Live!
Last Week Tonight With John Oliver
The Late Show With Stephen Colbert
Saturday Night Live
Will win: The Late Show With Stephen Colbert
Should win: Last Week Tonight With John Oliver
After experimenting with separate categories for Talk Series and Scripted Variety Series for a few years, the Variety Series recombined for the 2025–26 Emmys season. What this means is that Last Week Tonight’s ten-year streak of victories once again becomes an impediment to Kimmel, Colbert, and The Daily Show. Saturday Night Live, which hasn’t won since being placed in direct competition to Last Week Tonight in 2023, remains at that same disadvantage.
I figured that voters chose to honor the show’s swan song — and stick it to conservative-pilled CBS for canceling the show — last year, especially because there didn’t seem to be nearly as loud of a drumbeat for a Colbert middle-finger-to-the-system vote this time around. That was before Colbert’s show won five Emmys last weekend, more than any show that wasn’t Widow’s Bay or Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Halftime Show.
Outstanding Reality Competition Program
Dancing With the Stars
RuPaul’s Drag Race
Survivor
Top Chef
The Traitors
Will win: The Traitors
Should win: Survivor
The big news on nomination day was that Dancing With the Stars pulled off a near-impossible return to Outstanding Reality Competition after falling out of this category’s notoriously repeat-heavy lineup after 2016. (In doing so, The Amazing Race missed a nomination for the first time in the history of the category.) Clearly the ABC reality stalwart is riding a resurgent wave, but is it enough to topple two-time defending champion The Traitors?
I’d be more willing to run with an impending-upset narrative if The Traitors were coming off of a bum season, but that was not the case. Traitors season four was a triumph, with Rob Rausch’s deceptive charge to victory the show’s strongest winning narrative since season one.
The only other show to keep an eye on is Survivor, which staged an all-out press blitz for its landmark 50th season this past spring. Survivor was arguably the most-talked-about reality show of the year (with the possible exception of Love Island), and much of that talk was about the show’s indelible place in TV history. It has never won the Outstanding Reality Competition Emmy — do voters want to correct that historical oversight?
Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series
Yahya Abdul-Mateen, Wonder Man
Steve Carell, Rooster
Matthew Rhys, Widow’s Bay
Jason Segel, Shrinking
Martin Short, Only Murders in the Building
Will win: Matthew Rhys
Should win: Martin Short
With last year’s winner Seth Rogen ineligible and the 2023 and 2024 winner Jeremy Allen White snubbed, this category would be wide open if it weren’t for one late-breaking development. Widow’s Bay showed up in April with Emmy darling Matthew Rhys as its lead performer, and this race got a front-runner right quick. The eight-time Emmy nominee who won for The Americans in 2018 is nominated three times this year alone: as a producer on Widow’s Bay and as a lead actor on both Widow’s Bay and The Beast in Me. Not to spoil things a few categories down, but I think he’s going three for three.
Early in the season, the top contender appeared to be Jason Segel — who spent the third year of Shrinking juggling his character’s anxieties about his daughter leaving for college, his reticence to start dating again after his wife’s death, and abandonment issues surrounding various father figures. Rich emotional terrain, to be sure, though Shrinking’s appeal as an ensemble show about group support and found family meant his character was never the focal point for long. And then there’s Martin Short, an industry darling nominated four straight years for Only Murders in the Building without winning. This year will likely stretch that streak to five.
Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series
Quinta Brunson, Abbott Elementary
Ayo Edebiri, The Bear
Elle Fanning, Margo’s Got Money Troubles
Lisa Kudrow, The Comeback
Jean Smart, Hacks
Will win: Jean Smart
Should win: Lisa Kudrow
It won’t be the final award presented on Emmys night, but Jean Smart versus Lisa Kudrow for the Lead Actress in a Comedy title is absolutely the main event. The danger with predicting anything having to do with The Comeback is overestimating the show’s reach and appeal. While it’s true that Kudrow has been nominated for all three of the show’s seasons, the fact that The Comeback has never been nominated for Outstanding Comedy Series, even in the current eight-nominee format, is definitely saying something, even as I try hard not to hear it.
The enthusiasm for Kudrow is very loud, but it may be concentrated in too small a corner of Hollywood. Jean Smart is an easy box to check: a highly respected star of a well-liked show giving a great performance. It may just be as simple as that.
Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series
Sterling K. Brown, Paradise
Gary Oldman, Slow Horses
Mark Ruffalo, Task
Rufus Sewell, The Diplomat
Noah Wyle, The Pitt
Will win: Noah Wyle
Should win: Noah Wyle
Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series
Carrie Coon, The Gilded Age
Chase Infiniti, The Testaments
Keri Russell, The Diplomat
Rhea Seehorn, Pluribus
Zendaya, Euphoria
Rhea Seehorn’s performance as Kim Wexler on Better Call Saul was so loudly praised and so consistently overlooked by the Emmys that when she was finally nominated in 2022 and 2023, critics didn’t seem to know what to do with themselves. (She lost both times, to Ozark’s Julia Garner and The White Lotus’s Jennifer Coolidge, respectively.) Now she’s back in another Vince Gilligan show, only this time as the lead. Pluribus is an odd show to try to get a handle on, popularity-wise. Its viewership numbers hit all-time marks for Apple TV, so people were definitely watching it. But the conversation about the show never quite reached the levels of fan investment that tend to indicate “culture-dominating hit show.” The competition might be closer than it looks. Zendaya, for one thing, has never lost an Emmy for Euphoria. She’s also in the middle of a historic run of box-office success between Spider-Man, The Odyssey, The Drama ($132 million worldwide!), and the upcoming Dune: Part Three. People like Zendaya a lot, even if they don’t like Euphoria as much. White Lotus, or Fargo.) At some point, her lack of an Emmy just starts to seem impolite.
Will win: Zendaya over Rhea Seehorn
Should win: Rhea Seehorn
Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie
Riz Ahmed, Bait
Jason Bateman, Black Rabbit
Charlie Hunnam, Monster: The Ed Gein Story
Oscar Isaac, Beef
Matthew Rhys, The Beast in Me
Will win: Riz Ahmed
Should win: Oscar Isaac
The ironic thing is that if either David Harbour or Jason Bateman were in this category for DTF St. Louis instead of fraudulently camping out in Supporting Actor, that show’s popularity with Emmy voters would have made one or both of them a real threat to win. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, and I don’t think Black Rabbit was enough of a hit for Bateman to reap the ricochet support needed to win.
This category looks like it’ll come down to Oscar Isaac or Matthew Rhys. You figure with nominations in all four acting categories, Beef is bound to win something. And while Isaac wasn’t giving the show’s best performance (that would be Charles Melton, nominated in Supporting Actor), he’s a well-respected actor who was previously nominated in 2022 for Scenes From a Marriage and ought to have been nominated for his HBO limited series Show Me a Hero, but that’s another discussion. And yet! Beware of the nominee who can sneak in with little fanfare for their movie or series – it shows real interest in them. So I say Ahmed.
Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie
Claire Danes, The Beast in Me
Sally Field, Remarkably Bright Creatures
Carey Mulligan, Beef
Sarah Pidgeon, Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette
Sarah Snook, All Her Fault
Will win: Sally Field
Should win: Carey Mulligan
I’d have been a lot more confident picking ingénue du jour Sarah Pidgeon to waltz to a win here if Love Story hadn’t flopped at nominations, coming in with fewer overall nods than fellow limited series All Her Fault, Black Rabbit, and Monster: The Ed Gein Story. That gives a glimmer of hope to Danes, Mulligan, and Snook, all of whose shows proved to be more popular overall with the Emmys votership. And then there’s Sally Field, the wild card representing a TV movie. While this category hasn’t gone to an actress from a proper TV movie since Julianne Moore in 2012, Field’s star power plus the possibility that the votes might be evenly scattered among the other four actresses make her a dark-horse possibility.
It’s easy to imagine a lot of these women holding up a trophy. Danes is a major Emmys favorite with three wins and 13 nominations dating all the way back to My So-Called Life in 1995. Snook is coming off her 2023 Emmys win for Succession as well as a 2025 Tony Award for The Picture of Dorian Gray. And Field is a two-time Oscar winner who’s also won a trio of Emmys over the course of her career. Oddly, it’s Carey Mulligan who has the most robust movie-star career of the five of them and has yet to win any major award. But don’t count out Field, who has a habit of ending up onstage at these events.
Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series
Colman Domingo, The Four Seasons
Paul W. Downs, Hacks
Harrison Ford, Shrinking
Nick Offerman, Margo’s Got Money Troubles
Stephen Root, Widow’s Bay
Michael Urie, Shrinking
Tyler James Williams, Abbott Elementary
Will win:ou Can Confidently(?) Predict: Harrison Ford
Should win: Stephen Root
Nobody here has won this category before, though Domingo, Ford, and Urie are back as nominees from last year and Downs and Williams have returned to the category after a year in the snubs pile. After last year’s award went to Jeff Hiller in a surprise upset, this category feels totally up in the air. The Shrinking fellas have been campaigning hard for two years, yet they remain each other’s biggest impediment to a win. It wouldn’t shock me to see either Ford or Urie pick up the win, since the most recent Shrinking season has each of them working with plenty of rich material — Ford’s Paul dealing with encroaching Alzheimer’s disease and his decision to quit his psychiatry practice; Urie’s Brian becoming a dad in his inimitable hyperneurotic way.
The other two major contenders, I think, are Downs and Root. As the only Hacks representative in this category, Downs could always reap the rewards of one final wave of goodwill for the departing series. But Stephen Root is a beloved character actor whose Emmys profile has been steadily rising (he got his first nomination in this same category for Barry in 2019). He’s worked with seemingly everyone in the industry. If there’s a Widow’s Bay wave, Root could easily find himself riding it.
Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series
Dale Dickey, Widow’s Bay
Hannah Einbinder, Hacks
Kate O’Flynn, Widow’s Bay
Janelle James, Abbott Elementary
Michelle Pfeiffer, Margo’s Got Money Troubles
Megan Stalter, Hacks
Jessica Williams, Shrinking
Will win: Hannah Einbinder over Kate O’Flynn
Should win: Hedge Your Bets With: Michelle Pfeiffer
Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series
Patrick Ball, The Pitt
Billy Crudup, The Morning Show
Shawn Hatosy, The Pitt
Gerran Howell, The Pitt
Jack Lowden, Slow Horses
Tom Pelphrey, Task
Carlos Manuel Vesga, Pluribus
Will win: Tom Pelphrey over Patrick Ball
Hedge Your Bets With: Billy Crudup
For the eighth straight year, one show has at least three nominees in the Supporting Actor in a Drama category. In five of the previous seven years, the show with three nominees picked up the victory for one of them, so that’s good news for the boys from Pittsburgh. Crudup, a two-time winner in this category for his performance as TV executive Cory Ellison, shouldn’t be entirely ruled out, but seeing as he’s The Morning Show’s only nominee this year, I wouldn’t bet on him.
Pelphrey and Vesga are both new to this category (though Pelphrey was a Guest Actor nominee for Ozark back in 2022, so there’s always the chance Emmy voters will turn out to be massive fans of him). Vesga in particular brings such a jolt of unique energy — clear-eyed and utterly defiant —to the back half of Pluribus’s season that you could imagine voters turning out in big numbers for him.
But if we’re talking about which Pitt actor to predict, each of the three offers a distinct case: Ball’s Dr. Langdon was on a redemption arc (awards voters love that) and faced some well-deserved resentment along the way; his scenes with an unforgiving Dr. Robby are among his best. Howell’s Dr. Whitaker showed a good bit of evolution from the hayseed rookie of season one. Hatosy’s Dr. Abbot is unquestionably the cool doc, pulling shifts on the SWAT team, making eyes at Dr. Mohan, and being the only person who can get through to Robby during his season-long meltdown. If you subscribe to the theory that voters often choose the actor playing the character they like best, Hatosy — who won Guest Actor in a Drama for the role last year — has the inside track.
Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series
Taylor Dearden, The Pitt
Fiona Dourif, The Pitt
Allison Janney, The Diplomat
Katherine LaNasa, The Pitt
Sepideh Moafi, The Pitt
Julianne Nicholson, Paradise
Karolina Wydra, Pluribus
Will win: Katherine LaNasa
Should win: Taylor Dearden
LaNasa won last year with zero competition from her fellow cast members, and she’s not any less likely to win this year with three other Pitt actresses in the mix. No disrespect to Fiona Dourif, but her Dr. McKay had far less story-line material in season two. Meanwhile, Moafi has the thankless task of being the foil for Dr. Robby at every turn, questioning Pitt procedures and trying to modernize. I’d offer her hazard pay, but probably not an award. Taylor Dearden is probably the most likely of the other Pitt women to win — her Dr. Mel King had a decently compelling through-line with her sister, and she had a great moment with a patient in basically every episode.
Still, LaNasa’s Nurse Dana laps the field when it comes to Emmy-worthy material. She’s fighting (sometimes literally) on behalf of the nurses, she’s delivering tough love every hour on the hour to Dr. Robby, and she’s running the Pitt to be as much of a tight ship as possible. Her episode submission was the one where she administers a rape kit to a sexual-assault victim, and if episode submissions still matter at all, she’ll win.
Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series
Abbott Elementary, Randall Einhorn for “Ballgame”
The Bear, Christopher Storer for “Bears”
The Chair Company, Andrew DeYoung for “Life Goes by Too F**king Fast, It Really Does”
Hacks, Lucia Aniello for “Hacks”
The Ms. Pat Show, Mary Lou Belli for “Give It Arrest”
Widow’s Bay, Hiro Murai for “Welcome to Widow’s Bay!”
Will win: Hacks
Should win: Widow’s Bay
The last three winners of this category have been The Studio’s “The Oner,” and “Review” and “Fishes” from The Bear, so I suppose the advantage goes to whichever nominee is the most nerve-frayingly stressful. Which I suppose gives an edge to The Chair Company? A couple decades ago, that wouldn’t have been such a crazy notion. The directing awards used to consistently go to shows that weren’t among the top contenders for Outstanding Comedy Series (past winners have included My Name Is Earl, Sports Night, Pushing Daisies, and Malcolm in the Middle twice), but it’s been years since this award has gone to any show outside of the two or three top contenders for Comedy Series.
Aniello won this award for directing the Hacks pilot in 2021, so a win for the series finale would be a fitting bookend. It would also make history, as no show has ever won the directing Emmy for its pilot and finale episodes, much less for the same individual director. Widow’s Bay poses a strong competitive threat, especially considering Hiro Murai has been nominated for directing five times for four different shows (Widow’s Bay, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Station Eleven, and Atlanta), but let’s lean toward history.
Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series
The Gilded Age, Salli Richardson-Whitfield for “My Mind Is Made Up”
Paradise, Hanelle Culpepper for “Exodus”
The Pitt, Noah Wyle for “12:00 P.M.”
Pluribus, Vince Gilligan for “We Is Us”
Slow Horses, Saul Metzstein for “Scars”
Task, Salli Richardson-Whitfield for “Out Beyond Ideas of Wrongdoing and Rightdoing, There Is a River”
Will win: Pluribus
Should win: The Pitt
Slow Horses took a surprise victory here last year over two nominated episodes of The Pitt. This year, The Pitt is only nominated once. A Noah Wyle victory would place him in the company of Jason Bateman (Ozark) as the only actor-director to win Directing for a Drama in recent memory. (It’s more common in comedy, where recent winners include Seth Rogen, Dan Levy, and Donald Glover.)
I’m hedging toward a Pluribus victory here, though. It’s a much more visually audacious episode. It’s a pilot, which the voters in this category love (Squid Game, The Handmaid’s Tale, House of Cards, Boardwalk Empire, and Lost are among the 21st-century pilot episodes to win this award). And it would be the first Emmy win for Vince Gilligan for writing or directing any of his shows. This should happen.
Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series
Abbott Elementary, Quinta Brunson for “Team Building”
The Chair Company, Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin for “Life Goes by Too F**king Fast, It Really Does”
The Comeback, Michael Patrick King and Lisa Kudrow for “Valerie Does It All”
Hacks, Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky for “Hacks”
Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat, Anthony King for “Mergers and Acquisitions”
Widow’s Bay, Katie Dippold for “Welcome to Widow’s Bay!”
Will win: Widow’s Bay
Should win: The Comeback
This is somehow the first time The Comeback has been nominated in this category, which really makes you wonder what superlative feats of television writing were happening in 2005 and 2015 that there wasn’t room for Valerie Cherish. (The answer: an Entourage episode where Ari Gold tries to start his own agency, and an episode of Louie involving role-playing sex.)
That’s probably a warning not to overinvest in The Comeback’s prospects here. Nor would I put my chips on Jury Duty’s second, far less successful season or bet on the TV Academy appreciating Tim Robinson’s whole deal in significant enough numbers to give him the win.
Once again, it’s Hacks versus Widow’s Bay. Four of the last five winners in this category have been series premieres, which bodes well for Widow’s Bay. And if you think Widow’s Bay is going to win a Comedy Series, as I do, then it’s probably going to win at least one of the writing and directing awards.
Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series
The Diplomat, Peter Ackerman and Debora Cahn for “Amagansett”
The Pitt, Kirsten Pierre-Geyfman and R. Scott Gemmill for “1:00 P.M.”
The Pitt, Valerie Chu for “12:00 P.M.”
Pluribus, Vince Gilligan for “We Is Us”
Slow Horses, Will Smith for “Scars”
Task, Brad Ingelsby for “A Still Small Voice”
Will win: Pluribus
Should win: The Pitt (either episode)
The temptation is to assume that the two Pitt episodes are battling against each other, but I am working on a completely unprovable theory that The Pitt’s episode titles being just time stamps works against the show in the writing and directing categories because when you’re looking at your ballot, you have nothing jogging your memory as to what happened in that episode. (Yes, fine, 24 did win in 2002 for the episode “12:00 a.m.–1:00 a.m.,” but that was the pilot episode, so easy to remember.) Pilot episodes are oddly not as popular in the dramatic writing category, with only four shows (the other three being Mad Men, Homeland, and The Handmaid’s Tale) winning since 2000. This makes me reticent to predict Pluribus, even though that pilot episode was an incredible feat of establishing the world of the show and then immediately resetting it.
I’m not saying anybody should do this. And I’m not sure I’d do this myself. But if you want to really impress your friends (the ones who care about the Emmy Awards, at least), toss out a prediction that The Diplomat wins this category and see what happens. “Amagansett” is a nimble episode of quick-shifting strategy and sly humor at President Allison Janney and First Gentleman Bradley Whitford’s House.
