The 2026 Golden Globes saw another year-over-year audience decrease with 8.66M live + same-day viewers tuning in for the 83rd edition of the awards ceremony, according to Nielsen data shared with Deadline.
That’s just under an 7% dip from last year, when about 9.27M tuned in for the occasion. Still, it’s better than the 2023 telecast’s all-time low of 6.3M viewers, and yet it is a far cry from the audience the awards show was garnering just six years ago. In 2020, the Globes averaged 18.3M viewers.
As for how it compares to other award shows, it’s higher than the 7.42M viewers averaged by the 2025 Emmys but much lower than the 19.69M who tuned in for the Oscars last year. The 2026 Oscars, which will likely include many of the same films that were in contention at Sunday night’s Globes, air on March 15 (at which time a direct comparison can be made).
A viewership decline was expected, particularly given that this year’s Globes didn’t have the benefit of a direct lead-in from an NFL playoff game. Sunday’s Buffalo Bills divisional win over the Jacksonville Jaguars began at 1 p.m. ET, allowing for a bit of a gap between the end of that game and the start of the Globes and giving audiences plenty of time to change the channel before getting a taste of the award show.
In previous years, as was the case in 2025, CBS has benefitted from a fairly direct NFL lead-in thanks to a later game start time. Football isn’t a complete ratings fail safe (as illustrated by last year’s viewership, which was still down 2% despite an NFL lead-in), but it does provide a fairly reliable boost for whatever it precedes.
In fact, football can be a blessing or a curse, depending on the timing. On Sunday night, the Globes telecast faced some stiff competition thanks to two NFL Divisional Playoff matchups — both Fox’s featuring the San Francisco 49ers versus the Philadelphia Eagles and NBC’s Sunday Night Football presentation of the New England Patriots’ win over the Los Angeles Chargers.
Despite the decline, Paramount says there was plenty of chatter online about the Globes, which the company says generated 43M interactions — up 5% year-over-year to a new high.
As for the official ET: Live on the Golden Globes Red Carpet pre-show, that averaged 3.4M live + same-day viewers, per Nielsen.
One Battle After Another was the big winner of the night. The film took home Best Picture — Comedy or Musical and three other prizes to lead the 2026 Golden Globes, which were handed out Sunday night in Los Angeles. One Battle‘s Paul Thomas Anderson also took Best Director and Best Screenplay, following up his wins in the same categories at last weekend’s Critics Choice Awards. The pic also won the CCA for Best Picture, cementing its frontrunner status for March’s 98th Academy Awards.
Focus Features’ Hamnet won Best Motion Picture — Drama, and Jessie Buckley won Best Actress in a Drama Motion Picture for Hamnet. Meanwhile, Wagner Moura was the rather surprising winner of the Male Actor prize for Neon’s The Secret Agent. Cannes-premiering drama The Secret Agent also scored the Globe for Best Non-English Language Motion Picture.
See the full list of winners here and the lists of wins by film, series, distributor and TV platform here.
