Widow’s Bay has had the kind of summer Emmy campaigns can’t buy.
Guillermo del Toro went out of his way on X in May to call it possibly the “best streaming series in a long time.” It sits at 98 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. At Comic-Con last month, Damon Lindelof and Greg Daniels took turns praising creator Katie Dippold at the showrunners panel, and a few halls over, Matt Selman and Matt Groening described it as required viewing for the Simpsons writers room. Add 19 nominations in its first year of eligibility, and it’s easy to see why Widow’s Bay has become this year’s dark horse.
But hype isn’t on the ballot. On July 8, the same industry that spent the summer raving about Widow’s Bay handed Hacks 24 nominations for its fifth and final season — the most any comedy has ever earned in a single year, breaking the record of 23 set by The Bear in 2024 and matched by The Studio in 2025. Apple TV’s freshman series is the story of the summer. Hacks is still the comedy to beat.
The question isn’t only whether Hacks can win Best Comedy Series over a shiny new toy on Sept. 14. The question is whether it wins that one and 13 more. Fourteen would top The Studio‘s record 13 collected last September, making Hacks the most-awarded comedy in a single season the Emmys have ever had.
And 24 nominations is not 24 chances. Five are stacked in Best Comedy Guest Actress, which can yield exactly one trophy. Two sit in Best Comedy Supporting Actress. Two more land in picture editing. Hacks is competing in 18 races, and it needs to win 14 of them. Here’s where they are.
Best Comedy Series
Hacks is a comedy about comedy, and that matters more than it sounds. The Bear won this category in 2023 and spent the rest of its run fielding the argument that it wasn’t a comedy at all. Widow’s Bay is a horror series with jokes in it, and some voters may discount it for exactly that reason. Hacks never has to answer the question — it’s a half-hour (giver or take) show about a stand-up and her head writer arguing over whether a bit works.
The Studio won 13 Emmys because Hollywood can’t resist a mirror, and that one was pointed at executives. This one is pointed at the writers, the road managers, the agents taking the 4 a.m. call, the stand-up who has done the same 90 minutes 900 times and still fixes a word. It flatters the work, not the deal — and the people voting here make television for a living.
Primetime Emmy Awards 2026
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Best Comedy Actress
Jean Smart is 4-for-4 as Deborah Vance. A fifth makes her the first performer to win a lead acting Emmy for every season of her series, and her eighth overall, tying the all-time acting record. Of the 14, this feels like the safest bet.
Primetime Emmy Awards 2026
Best Comedy Supporting Actress
Hannah Einbinder is the defending champion, and Megan Stalter finally broke through for Kayla after years of snubs — which is both good news and a complication, since two Hacks names on one ballot is one way to split a vote. The threat is Kate O’Flynn, whose Patricia is the performance that put those antlers on Comic-Con attendees in the first place. But she’s got her own co-star in the mix, Dale Dickey. This one could be a nail-biter.
Primetime Emmy Awards 2026
Best Comedy Supporting Actor
Paul W. Downs has never won this prize and he’s running into Harrison Ford.
Hacks seems likely to concede this one, but Downs isn’t completely out of the race — he’s currently ranked second. And let’s not forget that this category gave us one of 2025’s biggest upsets: Jeff Hiller winning for Somebody Somewhere.
Primetime Emmy Awards 2026
Best Comedy Writing
Lucia Aniello, Downs, and Jen Statsky have won here twice, for the 2021 pilot and 2024’s “Bulletproof.” This time they submitted the finale, an episode simply titled “Hacks,” which ends on Deborah and Ava arm-in-arm on the Strip, workshopping opening jokes, as Barbra Streisand and Judy Garland’s “Get Happy/Happy Days Are Here Again” plays them out. Final seasons get graded on the last five minutes. This one earned the grade.
Primetime Emmy Awards 2026
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Best Comedy Directing
Aniello directed that finale and submitted it here too, having won this category for the pilot in 2021. NPR made a reasonable case that the penultimate episode’s Central Park set was the natural ending point, but the team put the actual ending in front of voters rather than a safer mid-season episode. Voters watched it. Voters liked it.
Primetime Emmy Awards 2026
Best Comedy Guest Actress and Guest Actor
Hacks took five of seven guest actress slots — Kaitlin Olson, Cherry Jones, Leslie Bibb, Laurie Metcalf, and Lauren Weedman — in a category it has already won twice, with Metcalf in 2022 and Julianne Nicholson in 2025. That makes a third win close to unlosable. Close to: five names on one ballot is also five ways to split the vote and hand it to Jamie Lee Curtis (The Bear) or Betty Gilpin (Widow’s Bay).
Creative Arts Emmy Awards 2026
Christopher McDonald is up for guest actor as casino man Marty, his second nomination for the role.
Creative Arts Emmy Awards 2026
The wild cards: everything below the line
Ten craft categories carry the remaining nominations — production design, casting, cinematography, costumes, picture editing, hairstyling, makeup, original music and lyrics, music supervision, and sound mixing — and this is where the record lives or dies.
It’s also where Hacks has historically not shown up. Nine of the show’s 12 career wins came on telecast night. In five years it has won exactly one craft Emmy, Contemporary Costumes in 2022, while going winless in casting, cinematography, production design, sound mixing, hairstyling, and makeup, and 0-for-9 in picture editing. This is where the Academy will decide how big of a send-off they want to give Hacks. And the record depends on whether the branches that have spent five years overlooking this show decide the last season is the one to fix that.
The 78th Emmy Awards air Sept. 14, at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on NBC and Peacock, hosted by Mariska Hargitay, with the Creative Arts ceremonies the weekend prior.
