Our 2026 Golden Globes winners are here. Hollywood’s biggest celebration of both film and television, certainly set a dynamic tone for this year’s award season. The Los Angeles ceremony welcomed back comedian Nikki Glaser as host after overwhelming praise of her performance last year. Glaser’s opening monologue lightly poked fun at the event and its diamond-studded guestlist, which this year included A-list legends like Leonardo Dicaprio, Julia Roberts, and George Clooney, as well as young hitmakers and breakout stars like Owen Cooper of Adolescence and Heated Rivalry’s Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, among many others.
While there were certainly a few welcomed surprises among the winners, some of the nominees had already long cemented themselves as the darlings of the awards season. Hamnet and One Battle After Another took home the Best Motion Picture awards for their respective genres, both films leaving the awards with several accolades, with Paul Thomas Anderson taking both Best Director and Best Screenplay. The success of both films once again gives us one of many indicators of what we can expect at the upcoming Academy Awards. Director of Hamnet Chloé Zhao gave a moving speech about the vulnerability of artistry, reflecting on the film’s exploration of loss and its message of coping with grief through creativity, encouraging the audience to ‘keep our hearts open’.
Timothée Chalamet won his first Golden Globe in the Best Lead Actor in a Musical/Drama category for his performance in A24’s Marty Supreme, a film which needs no further introduction after its historic marketing campaign, led mainly by Chalamet himself. In a world continuously adapting to become more effortless, the 30 year old actor has been praised for exactly his rare lack of nonchalance and subtlety in his award campaigns. Jessie Buckley’s win for Best Leading Actress for her performance in Hamnet has also sparked more conversation about the prospective Oscar recipients by confirming Buckley’s lead in the Best Actress race. Two winning standout performances which came as a bigger surprise were Teyana Taylor for One Battle After Another as well as Rose Byrne for If I had Legs I’d Kick You — the actresses winning Best Supporting and Best Leading Actress in the Musical/Comedy category.
In the television world, we saw more acclaim for Adolescence, following the limited series’ Emmy’s sweep, with Owen Cooper, Erin Doherty, and Stephen Graham all receiving awards for their performances, and also winning Best Limited Series, proving that the conversation regarding the series and its difficult subject is far from over. The Pitt also took home Best Actor for Noah Wyle and Best TV Drama. Both series and their individual successes, once again serving as examples of great television being used to reflect current issues.
A big change to the ceremony this year was the introduction of the Best Podcast category, which was awarded to Amy Poehler for her podcast Good Hang. While podcasting is certainly an incredibly popular form of entertainment, I’m not sure if awarding long form conversations between celebrities within the same rank of achievement as some of the year’s most profound artistic expressions is exactly adequate. I think in future years I would also like to see the category recognising more varieties of podcast, and podcast hosts, as the list of nominees consisted mostly of already seasoned celebrities.
Sinners won best box office achievement, beating out both K-Pop Demon Hunters and Wicked: For Good , which came as a happy surprise, and rightful recognition of the film’s success. The film was deemed as ‘snubbed’ by many online critics, in other major categories despite being so widely praised and continuously discussed since its release in the Spring. K-Pop Demon Hunters, of course, still dominated in the animated motion picture category, and grabbing a win for Best Song for ‘Golden’, which I suspect, like many of the conversations around the nominees this year, is not done repeating itself just yet.
Illustration by Lucy Wellington @luspaints