With Emmy nominations around the corner, there are 99 submissions in the Best Comedy Directing category, giving us six finalists when nominations are revealed on Wednesday.
This year, most comedies strategically put up either one or two episodes for directing. That is the case with front-runner Hacks, which has a supersized emotional series finale by Lucia Aniello — a previous victor for the pilot — that takes place in Paris with the two leads, Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder.
After Hacks, there is a lot of room for some new shows to break ground, the most notable being Widow’s Bay for its edgy and original pilot (“Welcome to Widow’s Bay!”) by Emmy winner and four-time directing nominee Hiro Murai. It features many twists and turns for its introductory characters and is shot in a foggy, mysterious atmosphere.
There are also pilots from The Lowdown, The Chair Company, and Spider-Noir that capture the paranoia of the environment and the investigative mindsets of the characters with stylish and intense camera movements.
The Comeback is in the conversation, with an episode by Michael Patrick King (“Valerie Faces Reality”), who was previously nominated for the first season two decades ago back in 2005. This half-hour blends humor and sadness as Valerie (Lisa Kudrow) copes with a death while filming her new sitcom.
Abbott Elementary got its first directing nomination two years ago, when it submitted just one entry for Randall Einhorn. It’s following that same strategy with an ambitious installment (“Ballgame”) that is filmed during a Philadelphia Phillies game with a special appearance by Kyle Schwarber.
Moving forward to the double submissions, The Bear put up both of its DGA-nominated episodes: “Worms” by Janicza Bravo, a standalone centering around Sydney (Ayo Edebiri); and “Bears,” a supersized 70-minute wedding episode.
If a double-entry strategy were to work out for one of these shows, The Bear would be the one to bank on. Others include I Love L.A., Big Mistakes, Only Murders in the Building, and Wednesday. The latter got in for Tim Burton in 2023, and he is back on the ballot for the latest season finale.
The only triple-play contenders are Shrinking and Margo’s Got Money Troubles, both of which might be risky moves given the former show has never broken into this category before and the latter is an unproven newcomer. The best bet for Shrinking appears to be the Randall Keenan Winston-directed season finale (“And That’s Our Time”).
For Margo, Dearbhla Walsh stands out as a previous directing Emmy winner with “Flamingos,” an installment that takes the main characters on a wild trip in Las Vegas, while the Kate Herron-helmed “Buddies” features a wrestling match between Nicole Kidman and Nick Offerman’s characters.
Finally, as usual, there has to be a nominee in this category from a multi-camera series. Now that The Ms. Pat Show is back in eligibility, there’s no reason not to predict perennial nominee Mary Lou Belli for “Give It Arrest,” where the titular character ends up in the hospital. If, by some happenstance, another sitcom were to make it in instead, it would likely be Mark Cendrowski for Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage (“Dirty Hands and a Barbed-Wire Fence”), who is a previous two-time nominee for The Big Bang Theory.
Here is how we see the 2026 Best Comedy Directing category breaking down:
Front-runners
- Hacks (Lucia Aniello, “Hacks”)
- Widow’s Bay (Hiro Murai, “Welcome to Widow’s Bay!”)
- The Comeback (Michael Patrick King, “Valerie Faces Reality”)
- Abbott Elementary (Randall Einhorn, “Ballgame”)
- The Lowdown (Sterlin Harjo, “Pilot”)
- The Ms. Pat Show (Mary Lou Belli, “Give It Arrest”)
Potential Spoilers
- Margo’s Got Money Troubles (Dearbhla Walsh, “Flamingos”)
- The Chair Company (Andrew DeYoung, “Life Goes by Too F–king Fast, It Really Does.”)
- Margo’s Got Money Troubles (Kate Herron, “Buddies”)
- The Bear (Christopher Storer, “Bears”)
- The Bear (Janicza Bravo, “Worms”)
- Shrinking (Randall Keenan Winston, “And That’s Our Time”)
- Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage (Mark Cendrowski, “Dirty Hands and a Barbed-Wire Fence”)
Longshots
- Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat (Jake Szymanski, “Mergers and Acquisitions”)
- Shrinking (Zach Braff, “D-Day”)
- Only Murders in the Building (John Hoffman, “After You”)
- Only Murders in the Building (Jessica Yu, “Cuckoo Chicks”)
- Rooster (Jonathan Krisel, “Release the Brown Fat”)
- I Love L.A. (Lorene Scafaria, “Game Night”)
- Spider-Noir (Harry Bradbeer, “Step Into My Office”)
- Wednesday (Tim Burton, “This Means Woe”)
- Big Mistakes (Dean Holland, “Get Your Nonna a Necklace”)
The 2026 Emmys nominations will be announced July 8.
