Variety Awards Circuit section is the home for all awards news and related content throughout the year, featuring the following: the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tony Awards ceremonies, curated by Variety chief awards editor Clayton Davis. The prediction pages reflect the current standings in the race and do not reflect personal preferences for any individual contender. As other formal (and informal) polls suggest, competitions are fluid and subject to change based on buzz and events. Predictions are updated every Thursday.
Bad Bunny, “Saturday Night Live”
Outstanding Variety Series (Updated: May 22, 2026): Earlier this year, the Television Academy again merged the talk series and scripted variety categories into a single category: outstanding variety series. The move was meant to fix a long-running conundrum, as the pool of eligible late-night talk shows and sketch series continues to shrink. A similar attempt to combine came in Dec. 2020.
Even when the Board of Governors is doing its best to solve a problem, the category has somehow become an even bigger head-scratcher. How is that even possible?
My Variety colleague Michael Schneider, executive TV editor, covered lots of this in his column this week. Nonetheless, we’re here to explain the math, and here is where it gets interesting. Although talk and scripted variety are now grouped together, the Academy still tracks them as separate fields when it comes to nominations, with each field’s slot count tied to its number of submissions.
