Television Academy Merges Scripted Variety and Talk Series Categories for 2026 Emmys

As submissions for Outstanding Scripted Variety Series and Outstanding Talk Series continue to dwindle at the Emmys, the Television Academy voted to merge the two categories into a single award, which could pit John Oliver and “Saturday Night Live” against Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel in a single Outstanding Variety Series category.

In recent years, the decrease in late-night variety and talk series have brought down the number of nominees, which under Emmy rules are tied to the number of qualifying programs. The talk series category dropped to 14 eligible shows and four nominees in 2024 and then to 13 qualifying shows and three nominees last year, while the scripted variety category has had only two nominees in four of the last five years.

In 2025, only six scripted-variety shows qualified, with “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” and “Saturday Night Live” predictably taking the nominations.

Emmy rules call for similar categories to be combined if they fall below 20 eligible programs, so the slumping late-night categories have been living on borrowed time for years.

The Emmys, though, are making an additional rule change that could lead to multiple winners in the merged category. Outstanding Variety Series will be classified as an “area award,” in which voters do not cast a single vote for their favorite nominee, but instead consider every nominee separately and vote yes or no to the question, “Does this nominee merit an Emmy?”

Any program that receives a 90% yes vote wins an Emmy — and if no nominee reaches that threshold, the one with the highest percentage of yes votes wins the Emmy.

The change will also see the number of submissions from variety series and talk series tracked separately, with the proportion of nominees directly related to the proportion of submissions. Had the rule change been implemented in 2025, the 13 qualifying talk series and the six eligible scripted variety shows would’ve resulted in a category with three talk series nominees and two scripted variety series, the same number that were nominated in the two categories in 2025.

If a resurgence in the two variety tracks results in more than 20 submissions each, Emmy rules will prompt an automatic split back to two categories.

A version of the Outstanding Variety Series category was in place under varying names for much of the Emmys’ existence, until the category was split in 2015. At that point, it was divided into Outstanding Variety Sketch Series, which was renamed Outstanding Scripted Variety Series in 2023, and Outstanding Variety Talk Series, which was renamed Outstanding Talk Series the same year.

When talk shows and comedy sketch shows competed against each other last, it led to the longest winning streak in Emmy history, with “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” winning 10 years in a row between 2003 and 2012.

Steve Pond also contributed to this report.

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