Nominating ballots for the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards were posted on the Television Academy’s website on Thursday, marking the beginning of 12 days of nomination voting. Thirty-five separate PDFs detailed all the eligible entries in 110 categories, totaling an even 800 pages listing everyone who’s eligible. (And one person who’s not; more on that later.)
Not all categories are included in the posted ballots, because some use juries or other methods of choosing nominees. But we’ve looked through those 800 pages and learned a few things. So here’s an overview of Emmy nomination voting, which will last through Monday, June 22.
The trend is down, down, down.
As we pointed out yesterday, this is the third consecutive year that the overall number of entries has been less than the previous year. The 2024 crop of shows, coming at the end of a few years of the pandemic and strikes, was almost 40% less than the previous year, while the 2025 drop was much smaller.
But this year, the drop has gotten worse. Only 19 of the 110 categories in which we can make a year-to-year comparison are up. Six have remained the same and the vast majority, 85, are down — 39 of them by double digits. (Last year, by comparison, 44 were up, six were unchanged and 56 were down.)
Overall, the number of submissions in all categories is down by more than 850, about six times larger than that year’s drop.
The limited series categories are major culprits.
Just as they were last year, many of the year’s biggest drops are in the limited and anthology series categories. Outstanding Casting for a Limited or Anthology Series dropped by 19, from 48 to 29. Cinematography dropped by 18, from 63 to 45. Costumes fell by 17, from 37 to 20. Directing went from 101 to 68. And while there are four more lead actors in the limited series category than there were last year, 52 as opposed to 48, the supporting categories were a bloodbath: Supporting actor fell from 124 to 84, supporting actress from 105 to 66.
And Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series took the biggest hit of any program category, dropping nearly 30% from 44 programs in 2025 to 31 in 2026.
As recently as 2023, by the way, 61 limited series qualified for the Emmy ballot.
Categories are shrinking, too.
A drop in entries has the ability to reduce the number of nominees, because the size of each category is determined by how many contenders qualify: 20 to 80 means five nominees, 81 to 160 means six, 161 to 240 means seven, 241 or more (which no category reached this year) means eight.
But fewer entries only change the size of the category if they drop it below a cut-off number, 80 or 160 or 240, and that can be caprice. Last year, for instance, even though the overall number of nominees dropped, more categories increased in size than decreased.
But that’s not the case this year. Barring ties, seven categories are going down in size by one nominee over last year, including fantasy/sci-fi costumes, nonfiction picture editing, pre-recorded variety special and directing of a drama series, limited series, variety series and variety special.
Another category, short-form performer, is slated to drop from five nominees in 2025 (when 27 actors qualified) to only three this year (with only 11 performers eligible).
Only one category, Outstanding Short Form Comedy, Drama or Variety Program, has triggered an increase in nominees, from four last year to five this year.
Note: This only compares the number of nominees as determined by the qualified entrants. Ties can change how many nominees a category has, with two of last year’s categories coming in with one fewer nominee than expected, and five categories coming in with one more nominee.
Vote-splitting doesn’t scare everybody.
Conventional wisdom says even hit programs can lose out on nominations by submitting too many entries in the directing and writing categories, splitting the vote and allowing shows that are more judicious to steal noms. But that clearly doesn’t concern Vince Gilligan, whose “Pluribus” raised eyebrows by submitting five different episodes in directing and seven in writing. (Or maybe he just doesn’t care after his last show, “Better Call Saul,” set a new Emmy record as the show with the most nominations without a win.)
“The Pitt,” which landed two nominations in directing and two in writing last year on its way to winning the top drama series award, was more judicious in the writing category, with only two submissions. But in directing it led all shows with six submissions, including for episodes directed by actors Noah Wyle and Shawn Hatosy.
Other shows with multiple submissions include “The Bear,” with three comedy writing entries; “All’s Fair” and “Best Medicine,” with four comedy directing submissions; “Audacity,” “Daredevil: Born Again” “The Testaments,” with four directing entries; and the limited series “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette,” with five directing submissions.
On the other hand, past comedy winner “Hacks” was one of the high-profile shows to stick with single entries in the directing and writing categories, with its acclaimed final episode standing as its sole submission.
There’s plenty of potential for category-hogging.
Here’s another piece of conventional wisdom, though it’s specific to this year’s Emmys: “The Pitt,” the defending champ in the Outstanding Drama Series category, will earn more acting nominations than the three it received for its first season. It won all three of those – Noah Wyle for lead actor, Katherine LaNasa for supporting actress and Shawn Hatosy for guest actor – but the rest of the show’s large ensemble of young, lesser-known actors was bypassed.
But they’re better known this year, and they’re all on the ballot. “The Pitt” has 24 people on the acting ballots: Wyle in lead actor; Hatosy, Patrick Ball, Gerran Howell, Charles Baker and Lucas Iverson in supporting actor; LaNasa, Shabana Azeez, Isa Briones, Taylor Dearden, Fiona Dourif, Supriya Ganesh and Sepideh Moafi in supporting actress; and four men and seven women in the guest categories. (Most of the guests are reportedly self-submitted, while HBO entered almost all the supporting contenders.)
That means “The Pitt” is well positioned for an era in which Emmy voters tend to nominated multiple cast members from their favorite programs. But a few other shows have topped 20 acting submissions, too. The final season of “Hacks” has 20 entries on the performers ballot, “Euphoria” has 23 and “The Boys,” which received one acting nomination for its first four seasons (for Giancarlo Esposito in the guest category), has entered 28 actors for its fifth and final season.
Other shows that topped a dozen acting submissions include “Only Murders in the Building,” “The Comeback,” “Abbott Elementary,” “Shrinking,” “The Bear,” “Paradise,” “The Morning Show,” “Stranger Things” and “The Gilded Age.”
Self portraits are still on the ballot.
Last year’s comedy winner, “The Studio,” didn’t shoot its second season in time to qualify for this Emmy season, which put a dent in the list of people who qualified for Emmys by playing themselves. Still, 17 people did that, including Rainn Wilson for “Studio C,” Elijah Wood for “I Love LA,” playwright Tony Kushner for “Hacks” and Will Forte, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Kumail Nanjiani and Seth Rogen for “The Boys” and legendary TV director James Burrows for “The Comeback.”
And then there’s the ultimate example of potential familial vote-splitting: The three qualifying actors from “A Very Jonas Christmas Movie” in the Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie category are Joe Jonas “as Himself,” Kevin Jonas “as Himself” and Nick Jonas “as Himself.”
If you’re grading on the curve, “Saturday Night Live” was restrained.
The winningest program in Emmy history, “SNL,” hasn’t been dominating the supporting and guest acting categories in recent years the way it once did. But you wouldn’t know that by the zeal with which it submitted entries – particularly last year, when its Season 50 submissions included every cast member, every host and five celebrity guests, for a total of 43 prospective nominees.
Only one, Bowen Yang, was nominated.
This year, “SNL” backed off a bit. It still submitted every one of its 17 cast members, but only 11 of its 20 hosts are on the ballot, among them Bad Bunny, Colman Domingo, Ryan Gosling, Jack Black, Harry Styles, Connor Storrie and Olivia Rodrigo. Hosts who weren’t submitted included Sabrina Carpenter, Miles Teller, Glen Powell, Josh O’Connor, Matt Damon and Alexander Skarsgard.
“Dancing With the Stars” is at it again.
Is “DWTS” the ultimate case of splitting your vote? Last year, it was responsible for 16 of the 34 entries in the Outstanding Choreography for Variety or Reality Programming category, but it didn’t receive a single nomination. This year, it has an even bigger chunk of the category, with 18 of the 31 qualifying dance routines. It’ll be up against numbers from the Super Bowl halftime show and the Oscars, both of which beat it out for noms in 2025.
The oldest nominee will probably be a narrator.
The first three entries on the Outstanding Narrator ballot belong to 100-year-old broadcaster and natural historian David Attenborough, and it seems logical that he’ll get plenty of votes: After all, he’s the category’s most-nominated person ever, earning nine noms in the 12 years of its existence. (Angela Bassett and Liev Schreiber are a distant second with four each.)
But which of his entries has the upper hand to hold off competitors like Schreiber, George Clooney, Kevin Costner, Peter Coyote, Jodie Foster, Tom Hanks, Werner Herzog and Kate Winslet?
Will it be “A Gorilla Story: Told by David Attenborough” or “Ocean With David Attenborough,” since his name’s in the title of both of those programs? Or how about “Kingdom,” the one entry that lists the narrator as Sir David Attenborough? Does being a Commander of the Order of the British Empire trump having his name in the title? (After all, the only other person to win in this category three times is a former president of the United States, Barack Obama, who is not on the ballot this year. Neither, thankfully, is any other politician.)
You can’t always trust the ballots.
When the ballots went up on the Television Academy website on Thursday morning, they included a curious entry in the Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series category: Jon Hamm, who was listed as a contender for his role in “The Morning Show.”
But last year, the Academy recently instituted a new rule that an actor who was nominated in a supporting category could no longer move into the guest category for that role in subsequent seasons, even if their character appeared in fewer episodes and would otherwise have qualified. Hamm was nominated in supporting for “The Morning Show” in 2024, so according to the rules he shouldn’t be eligible in the guest category this year, though that’s where he was submitted and where he was included on the ballot.
And sure enough, by the end of the day, the Academy admitted that Hamm had been disqualified – though he’s still eligible for his lead role in “Your Friends & Neighbors” and his voice-over performance in “Grimsburg.”
At that point, the original PDF of the performers ballot was no longer available on the Academy website – though curiously, all what was left when you clicked on that link was the guest-actor portion of the ballot, with Hamm still included. By Friday morning, a new performers ballot was in its place, with Hamm removed.
