The 2026 Awards Season in Opening Monologues

Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Getty Images (Frank Micelotta/Disney, Rich Polk/2026GG/Penske Media, Jamie McCarthy)

The 2026 awards season has come to a close and, alongside the usual crop of award-worthy movies and TV shows, it’s brought with it a wealth of dystopian topical events for hosts to reference in their opening monologues. In 2025, the shadows of the Hollywood wildfires loomed large over the various proceedings, which led to several hosts awkwardly attempting to justify holding awards shows in a city still ravaged by a natural disaster. This year, hosts had to contend with an even longer list of somber and troubling news, including ICE’s murder of Renee Good in Minnesota, Donald Trump’s illegal wars in Venezuela and Iran, the declassified-ish Epstein files, and the consolidation of Paramount and Warner Bros.

Well, some did. Others chose to ignore the world outside and make the same overused Ozempic jokes they’ve been making for years. It’s part of why awards-show monologues are so compelling. They can be full of incisive jokes or pun-heavy songs. They can swing from disastrous to legendary. They can cast an uncomfortable haze over an entire ceremony or set the tone for a jubilant evening. And even when they fall into the middle ground between these extremes, they still offer some quotable lines along the way.

This year, returning hosts Nikki Glaser and Conan O’Brien got the chance to cement their legacies as stellar hosts of the Golden Globes and Oscars, respectively, while first-timers like Ego Nwodim (the Film Independent Spirit Awards) had the opportunity to make their mark. With the exception of Kumail Nanjiani’s remarks at the Directors Guild Awards on February 7 (which were untelevised), here’s every monologue from the 2026 awards season.

“This is the first awards show of the season, so we are going to kick things off with the right vibes,” Chelsea Handler said at the top of her Critics Choice Awards monologue. For her fourth consecutive year as host, the comedian proved herself a practiced hand by delivering on this promise. “You guys are all going to be spending the next three months together, so whoever wins tonight, get used to seeing them win. And whoever doesn’t win, Quentin Tarantino will come up here and tell you what you did wrong,” she continued, referencing the director’s December 2025 comments about Paul Dano.

The remainder of Handler’s monologue featured a healthy blend of biting and perfunctory jokes about the year’s most talked-about entertainment, without ever tipping too far to either side to alienate or bore the audience. Of the former, she offered a non sequitur about the plot of Sinners: “Sinners is the story of brothers who start this really fun place for entertainment and then vampires show up, suck the life out of everybody, and burn it all to the ground. Fun fact: The original name of the main vampire was David Zaslav.” Of the latter, she delivered a tepid joke about Marty Supreme improbably making ping-pong look sexy: “Now get to work on Pickleball.”

The most impactful part of the monologue was the ending, when Handler switched into a sincere register to pay tribute to the late Rob and Michele Reiner. “Rob and Michele were tireless in their efforts to so many important causes, all stemming from one basic idea: decency. Let’s use tonight as a reminder of that decency, and as a reminder of everything Rob and Michele represented and fought so hard for. And on that note, let’s get this show started.”

After Jo Koy’s historic bomb at the 2024 Golden Globes, Nikki Glaser set a high bar for herself in 2025, and she did an admirable job of meeting it this year by more or less pulling from the same playbook. She began with a dose of self-deprecation to win over the celebrity audience: “I’m Nikki Glaser, and just like Wicked, I’m back for a sequel. Just like Frankenstein, I’ve been pieced together by an unlicensed European surgeon. And just like the podcasters nominated tonight, I should not be allowed to be this close to Julia Roberts.” Then she channeled that goodwill into a series of rapid-fire jokes that touched on everything from the Epstein files to Heated Rivalry. Many of her jokes relied heavily on wordplay, like one about how the Rock might win a Globe because The Paper wasn’t nominated, but even sweaty double entendres like this landed well because Glaser moved on so quickly that there was no time for groans.

Glaser was at her best when needling awards-show tropes. At one point, after making a hack awards-show joke about DiCaprio dating young women, she followed it up with an apology. “I’m sorry for making that joke. It’s cheap,” she said. “I tried not to. But, like, we don’t know anything else about you, man. Open up! I’m serious. I looked. The most in-depth interview you’ve ever given was in Teen Beat magazine in 1991. Is your favorite food still ‘pasta, pasta, and more pasta’?” It’s the joke of someone who watches awards shows religiously and cares enough about them to want them to be better, and just like in 2025, Glaser proved herself a successful host by maintaining this tone throughout.

Even as he delivered a relatively safe monologue during his final turn as Grammys MC, six-time host Trevor Noah ruffled some feathers on his way out the door. As usual, the comedian got laughs by wandering around the crowd, fawning over the artists he admired, and peppering in a series of competent if tepid jokes. He asked Jelly Roll if his face could unlock Teddy Swims’s phone, tried to get Pharrell to hook him up with a Louis Vuitton discount code, and gestured vaguely toward politics by referencing the horrors of “the news.”

Still, Noah found himself the recipient of backlash from both Donald Trump and Trump’s newest high-profile supporter, Nicki Minaj, thanks to a couple of his remarks. The former threatened to sue Noah on Truth Social for a joke he delivered later in the show in which he referred to Song of the Year as a Grammy every artist covets as much as Trump covets Greenland (“which makes sense because Epstein’s island is gone, he needs a new one to hang out with Bill Clinton”). The latter took objection to the ovation Noah got in his monologue simply by saying “Nicki Minaj is not here …” She hit back on X, bolstering her new MAGA bona fides by going on a homophobic rant. “Trevor Noah refuses to come out the closet when everyone in the industry know his boyfriend. Allegedly.” What a way for Noah to end his run.

After two successful years with SNL alumna Aidy Bryant at the helm, the Film Independent Spirit Awards dipped back into the SNL well this year by tapping former cast member Ego Nwodim as host. Nwodim, who consistently crushed delivering character pieces into camera at the “Weekend Update” desk, should have been a natural fit for this role, but unfortunately she couldn’t quite get the Spirit Awards’s audience onboard with her particular brand of whimsy. Part of this was her choice to start her monologue with a long tracking shot of her walking onto the stage through the crowd; instead of building momentum, it felt like a throat-clearing build-up for the monologue to come. Her extended follow-up bit about how the audience needs to be ready to “scatter” at all times because the show, like the independent movies it honors, was being shot without permits also failed to deliver a big enough payoff to garner audience buy-in.

It’s a shame because the remainder of Nwodim’s set was full of silly writing and solid delivery that offered a welcome change of pace from the usual awards-show jokes about the year’s nominees. At various points, she demonstrated the power of the words “I digress,” referenced Cher’s “Luther Vandross” pronunciation blunder at the Grammys, and put all the year’s nominated movies to the side to profess her love for “the one movie I truly love,” Ben Affleck’s The Town. “Even though it was a major-studio film that came out in 2010, I was disappointed to see it wasn’t nominated this year,” she said. “Talk about a snub.” She then proceeded to abuse her power as host to be the change she wanted to see in the world. On cue, a man walked onstage and handed her an envelope for an award for “Best Movie None of Y’all Made,” which she promptly proceeded to hand out to The Town. Her hosting turn may not have been a universal success, but it was worth it just to see this supremely dumb bit on an awards-show stage.

After Alan Cumming’s unfortunate gaffe later in the show — in which the BAFTAs host attempted to address audible outbursts of the N-word shouted by Tourette’s-syndrome activist John Davidson by saying, “We apologize if you were offended” — the last part of his performance anyone was talking about was his opening monologue. And that’s just as well, because the one Cumming delivered was both brief and forgettable. Cumming, who also helmed the BAFTA TV Awards in 2025, delivered his opening address in the style of a flight-attendant safety announcement, and he used this conceit to make cheeky jokes about turning off all “electronic equipment” except “pacemakers and Ozempic alarms” and hooking up with celebrities: “Please familiarize yourselves with your nearest film star. Remember, the closest one could be behind you — if you play your cards right at the after-party.” The good news for Cummings is that, if people want to see him in his element as a skilled host, they can check out The Traitors.

Jack Whitehall’s monologue at this year’s BRITs, with its glut of extremely British references American viewers may need to Google, wasn’t as “SAVAGE” as its YouTube video’s title claims, but it was efficient and professional. Among his best lines were when the six-time host referred to “Ordinary” singer Alex Warren as “what you get when you order Ed Sheeran on Temu” and joked that the famously crotchety Noel Gallagher has been “pumped all week at the prospect of getting to see the KPop Demon Hunters.” Gallagher, for his part, didn’t seem bothered by the jokes, so by this metric alone, Whitehall’s monologue was a success.

For all his easy charm and crowd-pleasing jokes about Nicki Minaj and Teyana Taylor, the big takeaway from Deon Cole’s opening monologue at the NAACP Image Awards was his allusion to Davidson’s audible N-word tics at the BAFTAs the week prior. Cole brought up the incident during a bit where he jokingly led the audience in prayer, similar to the bit he performed as host last year. “Before we go, Lord, if there are any white men out here in the audience with Tourette’s,” he said to huge cheers from the audience, “I advise you to tell them they better read the room tonight, Lord. It might not go the way they’re thinking. Whatever medicine they’re on, they better double up on it.” The joke prompted backlash from viewers who pointed out that it didn’t correctly acknowledge that people with Tourette’s aren’t able to control their tics.

It’s an unfortunate outcome to an impossible situation. Given the timing and nature of the event, it would feel like a glaring omission if Cole didn’t address the incident, but nuance isn’t typically the friend of expedient awards-show monologue jokes. Liberals searching for a part of Cole’s monologue to feel less conflicted about can look to his full-throated stand against the country’s current immigration policy. “I want to buy a curse word,” he began. “I know we ain’t supposed to curse on the award shows, but I need this to put emphasis on what I’m trying to say. So charge me for this curse word. Here we go: Fuck ICE.” He’s so against the agency, he went on to joke, that he didn’t “even watch the Winter Olympics.”

There’s something to be said about an awards-show host knowing their audience. And who’s more likely to be receptive to an extremely earnest comedy song about the power of stage names than a room full of actors? This is the bet Kristen Bell made this year as returning host of the Actor Awards (previously the Screen Actors Guild Awards), and it paid off. She was helped along by the fact that she didn’t open the show cold — she was preceded by a sketch featuring the characters of Abbott Elementary talking about the year’s biggest films and TV shows, and a series of “I Am An Actor” monologues from celebrities including the Kristen Wiig, Michael J. Fox, and Delroy Lindo — so the crowd was already warmed up when she delivered predictable jokes about having “no notes” for Chase Infiniti’s name. It wasn’t long before the theatrical pomp and circumstance of the song took over anyway, making laugh lines less necessary.

While the West Coast counterpart of this year’s Writers Guild Awards, which was set to be hosted by comedian Atsuko Okatsuka on March 8, was canceled owing to an ongoing strike of the WGAW’s staff union, the East Coast version went on as planned. And that’s a great thing, because third-time host Roy Wood Jr. delivered a banger of an opening monologue. Unlike a lot of this year’s awards-show hosts, Wood consistently circled back to politics in his set, and he was rewarded with big laughs for his willingness to venture into dicey territory. “Our government has shown a willingness to go into places, forcefully take out the existing leaders, and replace them with people willing to do the bidding of this administration,” he said in one joke ostensibly about Trump’s foreign policy. “We saw it in Venezuela. We’re seeing it now in Iran. Before both of those, we saw it at CBS.” Elsewhere, he said that he had left The Daily Show, in part, to avoid Comedy Central’s messy merger with Paramount, CBS’s parent company. “I wanted no part of that corporate instability, so I left and I took my ass to CNN,” he joked. “One Battle After Another describes my journey through late night.”

Wood also got great mileage out of addressing issues close to the heart of the union itself, including the timely questions, sparked by the release of Pete Davidson’s “podcast” on Netflix, regarding the difference between a union talk show and a video podcast. “The difference is very simple,” Wood said. “When you’re watching the program, ask yourself, Is the microphone in the shot?” Then, on cue, a stagehand armed with a podcast microphone walked onstage. “Right now, I’m hosting an awards show,” Wood said. Then, as the stagehand began to rub the mic on Wood’s forehead, Wood said, “But when I do this, I’m hosting a podcast.” Netflix: Sign this man up to exploit some loopholes, pronto!

If Conan O’Brien does indeed turn out to be the “last human host of the Academy Awards,” as he joked at the top of his Oscars monologue this year, the human race can rest easy knowing we went down swinging. The returning host brought his signature brand of whimsy to his opening while checking all the compulsory boxes a successful host should along the way. His jokes about the year’s nominees felt fresh despite arriving at the tail end of a long awards season, he gestured at politics without souring the mood, and he addressed any and all elephants in the room that needed addressing, including Timothée Chalamet’s comments about ballet and opera, the Epstein files, and Ted Sarandos. Of the latter, O’Brien joked that it was the Netflix CEO’s “first time in a theater” and imagined him being irate about the convivial nature of this communal gathering: “They should be home alone where I can monetize it!”

O’Brien’s monologue was sandwiched between an opening sketch, reminiscent of his 2006 Emmys opening, in which he dropped into the universes of the year’s Best Picture nominees and a bit where he poked fun at faux-Hollywood humility by soaking in Oscars glory like a king while being serenaded by Josh Groban. It was supreme commitment to complete stupidity. In other words, it was O’Brien at his hosting best.