Veteran actress Mariska Hargitay will emcee the 2026 Primetime Emmy Awards, according to Tuesday report by Deadline. NBCUniversal revealed the Law & Order veteran as host on the eve of announcing the nominations for the 78th annual ceremony, which will take place this September.
Hargitay is best known for her starring role as Capt. Olivia Benson on the police procedural Law & Order: Special Victims Unit — role which won her an Emmy of her own in 2006 (via Deadline). Since then, Special Victims Unit has become the longest-running primetime live-action series on American television by a significant margin, with Hargitay’s presence remaining one of the show’s only constants throughout its twenty-seven seasons (so far).
In the intervening years, Hargitay has used her status to help finance a number of personal passion projects, such as last year’s autobiographical documentary My Mom Jayne, which she described as “a search for the mother I never knew, an integration of a part of myself I’d never owned, and a reclaiming of my mother’s story and my own truth. (via Variety)” Since 2004, she has also managed the Joyful Heart Foundation, a nonprofit designed to support survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse.
Per Deadline, NBC — the network responsible for airing both the Emmys and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit — considered a number of other actors, but ultimately chose Hargitay as a commemoration of the company’s 100th birthday. She will become the first woman to serve as Emmys host in fifteen years, and the first actor without an extensive comedic profile to host the ceremony since Angela Lansbury (Murder She Wrote, Nanny McPhee) all the way back in 1993.
“Bringing important stories into the light has been the heartbeat of my career. It’s my great honor to host the 78th Emmy Awards — in the 100th birthday year of my beloved NBC — and celebrate this extraordinary community of storytellers,” Hargitay states in an Emmys press release. “Whether it’s an actor or a director, a costumer or a sound designer, we are all so privileged to take part in creating television that unites us. Regardless of how, where or when we watch, we are together in our laughter, our tears, our love of stories — and our delighted anticipation to see what happens next.”
The nominations for the 2026 Primetime Emmy Awards will be announced at 8:30 AM PT tomorrow morning on the Emmys’ official website, while the aforementioned ceremony will stream on NBC the night of Monday, September 14th.