Emmys 2026 Ratings Fall Nearly 12% From Last Year With 6.7 Million Viewers

The 2026 Emmys saw viewership fall nearly 12% from last year, per early numbers for the ceremony. The 78th annual ceremony, which broadcast live from Los Angeles’ Peacock Theater on Monday, brought in 6.7 million viewers across NBC and Peacock, according to preliminary Nielsen figures. This story will be updated once final numbers land. That’s down 11.7% from the 7.59 million viewers brought in by the 77th annual awards ceremony last year, which debuted across CBS, Paramount+ and other platforms and marked the most-watched Emmys since 2021, the last time it aired on CBS. The 2026 show, however, was up 10% among total viewers when compared to NBC’s last Emmys telecast in 2022. For reference, last year’s Emmys scored an initial viewership of 7.42 million and was eventually adjusted to 7.59 million viewers. Using the initial viewership comparison, ratings would be down nearly 10%. It’s worth noting that the 2026 ceremony took place on a Monday night, switching from the traditional Sunday to accommodate NBC’s Sunday Night Football, though Monday’s show still competed with the NFL, including the Chiefs-Broncos game that kept Taylor Swift from attending the Emmys. Still, NBC’s linear performance saw a 41% from the last Monday airing of the Emmys on Fox, which hit a record low for the show during the strike-delayed telecast in January 2024 that brought in 4.4 million viewers. The show stands as Monday’s No. 1 entertainment show, and marks the most-watched Monday entertainment telecast of 2026 in both total viewers and the 18-49 demo. It also scored the highest reach for a non-holiday NBC entertainment special simulstream on Peacock, behind only past telecasts of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Across social media, the Emmys generated 133 million video view counts across Facebook, Instagram, X and YouTube, ranking as the top social program of the night and rising 90% from last year’s show. The show also scored 17 million total interactions across Facebook, Instagram, X and YouTube, also scoring the No. 1 most-social program of the night. Viewership for the Emmys has been on an upward trajectory over the last couple years, with the 2025 show up 8% from the 76th Emmys, which brought in 6.87 million viewers on ABC. That ceremony marked a 54% uptick from the 75th annual awards ceremony. There might be a change coming for the Emmys soon as the show’s wheel rotation deal with the broadcast networks expire, with TV Academy in advanced talks to move TV’s biggest night over to Prime Video, according to media reports.