The 78th Emmy Awards unfolded across three nights in September, beginning with two Creative Arts ceremonies on September 5 and 6 before the main televised ceremony on September 14. Voice-over and narration provided several of the early headlines, but they were only part of a much larger awards picture that stretched across puppetry, animation, music, sound, visual effects, documentary filmmaking and television’s biggest acting categories.
Away from the voice-over results already in the spotlight, the Creative Arts Emmys produced some of the year’s most interesting stories. The Muppet Show turned its return into a four-Emmy success on a particularly appropriate anniversary. Five individual animation artists were honored for work ranging from character design to storyboarding and art direction. Widow’s Bay began an extraordinary run that would eventually rewrite the record books, while Spider-Noir, DTF St. Louis, The Pitt and Pluribus accumulated awards across the crafts.
By the time the main ceremony arrived on September 14, several of those early winners were positioned for even bigger nights. The result was an Emmy season that rewarded not only the performances audiences see and hear, but many of the artists responsible for building the worlds around them.
The Muppet Show Turns Its Return Into Four Emmy Wins
The Muppet Show entered the Creative Arts Emmys with six nominations and left with four awards, making it one of the most successful productions of the September 5 ceremony. The special won Outstanding Variety Special (Pre-Recorded), Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special, Outstanding Picture Editing for Variety Programming and Outstanding Production Design for a Variety Special.
The timing gave those victories additional significance. September 5 marked the 50th anniversary of the original Muppet Show premiere, a coincidence executive producer Seth Rogen acknowledged while accepting the award for Outstanding Variety Special. Five decades after Jim Henson’s variety series helped establish Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear and the rest of the ensemble as television fixtures, a new production carrying the same name was collecting Emmys across writing, editing and design.
Those categories also illustrate how much work goes into making a Muppet production function beyond the performances themselves. The production design team of Denise Pizzini, Chet Maxwell, Robert Aguirre and Bethany Barton was recognized for recreating a world capable of supporting the familiar theatrical chaos, while editor Kelly Lyon won for shaping the finished special. Writers Albertina Rizzo, Gabe Liedman, Nedaa Sweiss, Kelly Younger and Andrew Williams shared the writing Emmy.
The success extended well beyond a single character or performance. The Muppet Show was competing as a complete variety production, and four wins from six nominations made the return one of the clearer Creative Arts success stories of the year. For a franchise built around characters whose voices and physical performances are inseparable, recognition across so many different production disciplines was a fitting way to mark its 50th anniversary.
Five Animation Artists Receive Individual Emmy Honors
The Emmys also recognized five artists through Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation, a category that works differently from most of the awards presented during the weekend. Rather than selecting one winner from a conventional group of nominees, the category is juried. Entries are evaluated by professionals from the relevant peer group, and the panel can recognize multiple achievements, a single achievement or none at all.
In 2026, the five recipients represented four productions. Uzoma Dunkwu was honored for character design on the Eyes of Wakanda episode “Into the Lion’s Den,” while Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal produced two winners. David Krentz received an Emmy for storyboarding “Kingdom of Sorrow,” and Scott Wills was recognized for art direction on “Vengeance of Death.” Howard Chen won for background design on The Mighty Nein episode “Mote of Possibility,” and Takashi Okazaki received the character design honor for the Star Wars: Visions episode “The Duel: Payback.”
The two awards for Primal continued an especially strong Emmy history for the Adult Swim series. Krentz had previously received an Individual Achievement in Animation Emmy for his storyboard work on “Plague of Madness,” while the series itself has accumulated recognition across several Emmy cycles. Its visual approach makes the individual craft honors particularly notable because so much of Primal’s storytelling is carried through imagery, movement, composition and atmosphere rather than conventional dialogue.
Star Wars: Visions also continued its history of individual animation recognition. Okazaki’s 2026 award followed the Emmy won by art director Almu Redondo for “Screecher’s Reach” in 2023. With Visions also appearing in the Outstanding Animated Program field this year, the anthology once again received recognition both as a production and for the individual artistry behind its distinctive interpretations of the Star Wars universe.
The five juried awards provided a reminder that television animation is not represented at the Emmys solely through a prize for the finished program. Character designers, storyboard artists, background designers and art directors all shape what eventually reaches the screen, and the Individual Achievement category gives those contributions their own place within the awards.
Music, Sound and Visual Crafts Produce Their Own Standouts
The second Creative Arts ceremony was filled with programs accumulating awards through the technical and artistic crafts that can be easy to overlook once attention shifts to the major acting and series categories. Widow’s Bay emerged as the night’s biggest winner with eight Emmys, and the breadth of those victories was striking. Its awards included casting, production design, cinematography, sound editing, sound mixing, music supervision and music composition, alongside Betty Gilpin’s guest acting win.
Spider-Noir had another particularly strong craft showing, collecting five Emmys. The Depression-era Marvel production won for cinematography, special visual effects, main title design, sound editing and stunt coordination for comedy programming. The combination reflected how much of the show’s identity depended on translating its stylized comic-book world into live-action television, with recognition extending from its opening titles and visual effects to the physical work behind its action.
Music and sound appeared throughout the weekend’s winners. Pluribus took the Emmy for Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music while also winning for production design, picture editing and sound mixing. The Pitt added an Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics victory for “Need Someone” to awards for casting, prosthetic makeup and guest performance. The Beast in Me earned Sean Callery and Sara Barone the Emmy for music composition in a limited or anthology series, movie or special.
Sound also helped several productions build their Creative Arts totals. Beef won both sound editing and sound mixing along with a costume award, while Ocean with David Attenborough was recognized for sound editing as well as cinematography. The first night’s biggest winner, the Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show Starring Bad Bunny, collected seven Emmys across live production disciplines including music direction, sound mixing, choreography, lighting, technical direction and camerawork.
Taken together, those results showed how the Creative Arts ceremonies function as much more than a preliminary event before the televised Emmys. For many of the artists responsible for the sound, look, movement and construction of television, September 5 and 6 were the main event.
Creative Arts Weekend Creates Several Major Emmy Stories
The Bad Bunny halftime show finished as the biggest winner on the first night with seven awards, but it was surrounded by several other strong performances. The Traitors collected six, including another hosting Emmy for Alan Cumming, while The Late Show with Stephen Colbert earned five during its final season. Love on the Spectrum added three, and Mariska Hargitay won two Emmys for her documentary My Mom Jayne: A Film by Mariska Hargitay.
Hargitay’s wins were particularly timely. She received Outstanding Directing for a Documentary/Nonfiction Program and shared the award for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special, then returned little more than a week later to host the main Emmy telecast. The documentary honors arrived 20 years after her first Emmy win for Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
The balance changed on September 6 as scripted programming took over. Widow’s Bay led with eight wins, followed by DTF St. Louis with six and Spider-Noir with five. The Pitt and Pluribus each collected four, while Beef, Margo’s Got Money Troubles and Palm Royale finished the night with three apiece.
Several performers also collected Emmys before the main ceremony. Linda Cardellini and David Harbour won supporting acting awards for DTF St. Louis. Shailene Woodley took the guest actress in a drama Emmy for Paradise, while Ernest Harden Jr. won the corresponding guest actor award for The Pitt. Betty Gilpin’s Widow’s Bay performance won in comedy, and the late Rob Reiner received a posthumous guest acting Emmy for The Bear.
The ceremony also introduced the Television Academy’s new Legacy Award, created to recognize a program with a lasting generational impact on television and audiences. Its inaugural recipient was I Love Lucy, arriving as the landmark sitcom approached its 75th anniversary. That placed one of television’s foundational comedies alongside a weekend otherwise dominated by the newest productions of the 2025-26 season.
Widow’s Bay Makes Emmy History at the Main Ceremony
When the 78th Emmys returned for the televised ceremony on September 14, Widow’s Bay transformed an already successful Creative Arts run into a record-setting year. After winning eight awards on September 6, the Apple TV comedy-horror series collected another six during the main telecast for a total of 14 Emmys.
That surpassed the previous single-year record for a comedy series. The show’s September 14 victories included Outstanding Comedy Series, with Matthew Rhys winning lead actor, Kate O’Flynn taking supporting actress and Stephen Root winning supporting actor. Katie Dippold won for writing, while Hiro Murai received the directing Emmy.
Rhys then made history of his own. In addition to his comedy win for Widow’s Bay, he won Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie for The Beast in Me. He became the first performer to win two lead acting Emmys in the same year and, after his earlier drama victory for The Americans, the first actor to win lead Emmys across drama, comedy and limited-series or movie categories.
The Pitt claimed Outstanding Drama Series and continued a remarkable run for Noah Wyle, who again won Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series. The series became the first since Mad Men to win the drama Emmy for each of its first two seasons, while Wyle became the first performer since Bryan Cranston to win the drama lead actor category for a show’s first two seasons.
Pluribus also turned its Creative Arts success into two major September 14 victories. Rhea Seehorn won Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, while creator Vince Gilligan received the writing Emmy. The latter was Gilligan’s first individual Emmy for writing despite his extensive previous awards history as a producer on Breaking Bad.
Elsewhere, DTF St. Louis won Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series, adding the main-category prize to the six awards it had already earned during Creative Arts weekend.
Acting Records, First Wins and a Special Honor for Michael J. Fox
The main ceremony produced several individual milestones beyond the night’s dominant programs. Allison Janney won Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for The Diplomat, while Jean Smart added another lead acting Emmy for Hacks. Their victories gave both performers eight acting Emmys, tying the record held by Cloris Leachman and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
Smart’s victory carried another distinction. It was her fifth Emmy for Hacks, and she became the first performer to win an Emmy for every season of a series. Sally Field also entered the record books with her victory for Remarkably Bright Creatures, becoming the oldest winner of Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. Stephen Root, meanwhile, became the oldest winner of Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series with his Widow’s Bay performance.
One of the night’s major honors went beyond a competitive category. Michael J. Fox received the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award for his work supporting Parkinson’s disease research through the Michael J. Fox Foundation. The honor added a different kind of recognition to an Emmy career that already included five wins and 19 Primetime Emmy nominations, including a 2026 guest acting nomination for Shrinking.
The telecast also made room for television history and remembrance. Reba McEntire performed a tribute to Dolly Parton, while the In Memoriam segment included remembrances of Catherine O’Hara, James Burrows and Rob Reiner. Macaulay Culkin, Annie Murphy, Dan Levy, Noah Kahan and Jamie Lee Curtis were among those participating in the tributes.
By the end of September 14, the three Emmy ceremonies had produced a much wider story than any one performance category could capture. The Muppet Show celebrated its past while succeeding as a new production, animation artists received individual recognition for the visual craft behind their shows, and Creative Arts winners such as Widow’s Bay, The Pitt, Pluribus and DTF St. Louis carried their momentum into television’s biggest categories.
Voice-over may have provided some of the early headlines at the 2026 Emmys, but the complete awards picture belonged to a far larger collection of performers and creators. Across three nights, the Television Academy recognized the voices audiences hear, the actors they see and the writers, animators, designers, editors, composers, sound teams and other artists responsible for turning those performances into finished television.