The Grammys Have Never Won a Top Program Emmy: Could This Be the Year?

The 2026 Grammy Awards telecast was nominated for a Primetime Emmy for outstanding variety special (live) on July 8. It’s the 10th time the annual Grammy telecast has been nominated in that category (or in equivalent predecessor categories). The show has yet to win a top program award. It has lost to the Oscars twice, to the Tonys twice and to a variety of other shows once each.

This year, the Grammys are competing with three other awards shows – the Oscars, the Tonys and the Golden Globes – as well as The Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show Starring Bad Bunny. That last show may be Grammys’ chief competition this year. Bad Bunny of course was also a major player on the Grammy telecast. He won two on-air awards – album of the year and best música urbana album. And a recurring bit on the show was host Trevor Noah trying to coax him to perform. (His scheduled performance on the Super Bowl just one week later precluded him from performing on the Grammys.)

Jesse Collins, Raj Kapoor, Glenn Weiss and Ricky Kirshner are all double nominees for outstanding variety special (live) this year – Collins as an executive producer of both the Super Bowl halftime show and the Grammys; Kapoor as an executive producer of both the Oscars and the Grammys; Weiss and Kirshner as executive producers of both the Golden Globes and the Tonys.

Noah has been a good luck charm for the Grammy telecast. Four of the six telecasts he hosted were nominated for the top program Emmy. He has announced that he won’t return to host next year’s show. The Grammys have not yet announced who his replacement will be.

Here’s a recap of the 10 Grammy telecasts that were nominated for a top program award at the Primetime Emmys.