2026 Golden Globes: The best, worst and most Heated Rivalry moments from the awards show turned gambling ad
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Seth Rogen poses with the Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy award for “The Studio” next to Chase Sui Wonders at the 83rd Annual Golden Globes on Sunday.Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
Kicking off with host Nikki Glaser rapidly (if gently) roasting Hollywood and ending with The Pitt, The Studio, Hamnet and One Battle After Another taking home the top prizes of the evening, the 83rd annual Golden Globes offered its fair share of watercooler talking points – no small feat given it was only three years ago that the awards body seemed dead in the water.
Here are all the 2026 Golden Globe Award winners
But if you could somehow ignore all the many lingering Globes controversies – from the awkwardness of realizing just who owns the organization (that’d be Penske Media, which controls a majority of the Hollywood press, including Variety and The Hollywood Reporter) to the event’s queasy partnership with the crypto-currency-based gambling outfit Polymarket, among many other issues, all of them catalogued by Richard Rushfield over at The Ankler – then the evening provided a half-decent kickoff to Hollywood’s awards season. Sorta. If you squinted really hard.
Before Glaser gets in any more trouble with her CBS employers or I lose my kid’s college fund on a poorly placed Polymarket wager, The Globe and Mail presents the best, worst and weirdest moments from the 2026 Golden Globes.
Glaser focused
Boasting a spotty track record when it comes to hiring hosts – no one wants to talk about 2023’s Jerrod Carmichael or 2024’s Jo Koy, and that’s fine – the Globes re-upped Glaser after her not terribly inspiring (but also not terribly embarrassing) 2025 stint. Delivering a quick-fire monologue that used speed to compensate for wit, Glaser hit all the expected targets (Warner Bros./Netflix, Botox, Kevin Hart’s height). But every seventh joke, she landed a real zinger, including one directed at CBS, which was broadcasting the night’s event, and its news chief, Bari Weiss, who recently axed a 60 Minutes segment that was critical of the White House: “And the award for Most Editing goes to CBS News. CBS News: America’s newest place to see BS news.” It’s a shame, though, that Glaser and her writing team didn’t edit the rest of her otherwise flabby monologue.
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Comedian Nikki Glaser returned to host the awards ceremony.Kevork Djansezian/The Associated Press
Political theatre
Although various corners of the world are currently on metaphorical or literal fire, presenters and winners steered clear of any political talk. It was mostly vague platitudes about “dividing times” (The Pitt producer R. Scott Gemmill) and the value of “sticking with your values” (The Secret Agent star Wagner Moura). Even director Paul Thomas Anderson, whose One Battle After Another is the most explicitly political film of the year, declined to enter the fray. To be fair, everyone might be saving their best material for the Academy Awards, by which point half of Hollywood could very well be conscripted to invade Greenland or some such.
One win after another
In the biggest – and what turned out to be the only real – surprise of the night, One Battle After Another’s Teyana Taylor took home the Globe for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture over the presumed frontrunner Amy Madigan (Weapons). Seeming as shocked as anyone else, Taylor delivered an emotional and well-deserved acceptance speech that culminated with a shoutout to “my brown sisters and brown brothers … we belong in every home we walk into and our dreams deserve space!”
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Teyana Taylor, left, accepts the award for best performance by a supporting actress in a motion picture for One Battle After Another from presenter Jennifer Garner.Kevork Djansezian/The Associated Press
Cold as ice
Heated Rivalry’s Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, who star in what might be Canada’s most popular television series ever, were in the room, although not because they were up for any award. Instead, the two were the target of a Glaser gag – “The success of Heated Rivalry is proof that American audiences are ready for more shows about hockey” – that wouldn’t pass muster at the Canadian Screen Awards (where Heated Rivalry won’t be eligible for a prize until at least 2027, by the way) and then given some similarly dire banter as presenters. Two minutes for low sticking, Globes.
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Heated Rivalry stars Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams, right, present at the Globes on Sunday.Kevork Djansezian/The Associated Press
Art imitating strife
Heated Rivalry might not have been able to claim any Golden Globes hardware, but fellow Canadian Seth Rogen cleaned up nicely for his Hollywood-set satire The Studio, which depicted an entire episode set at a fictitious edition of the Globes. “This is so weird. We just pretended to do this, and now it’s happening,” Rogen said while accepting the award for Best Actor — Television Series Musical or Comedy, before turning to his fellow nominees. “Steve Martin, Martin Short, I remember growing up watching you guys, my whole life, thinking, ‘One day I’m gonna beat them.’”
Sound of falling
It was bad enough that the Globes decided to introduce a Best Podcast category this year, which can only be seen as a crass move to expand its audience into a decidedly non-screen sector (or perhaps to boost Penske Media’s advertising base by urging podcast networks to take out “For Your Consideration” ads in the outlets that it owns). But to devote several minutes of air time to the award while handing out the Best Original Score Globe during a commercial break is an insult to the very idea of auditory nerves. (The winner was Sinners composer Ludwig Goransson, by the way.)
Wanda-vision
While she might never return to the Oscars stage (as host, at least, after her 2022 tenure), Wanda Sykes deserves a call from the Globes after delivering a killer set while presenting the award for Best Performance in Stand-Up Comedy on Television (yes: there are a lot of categories). Roasting each nominee individually – “Bill Maher, you give us so much, but I would love a little less” – Sykes earned more laughs with her paltry air time than Glaser did all night. Best of all, she got to put words into the mouth of former Globes host Ricky Gervais, who was not in town to accept his win: “Ricky would like to thank God and the trans community!”
Chat amongst yourselves, fellas
While Glaser hit her speedbumps onstage, show announcers Marc Malkin (Variety) and Kevin Frazier (Entertainment Tonight) delivered the most annoying kind of backstage banter as the evening’s dual set of announcers. From pushing audiences to check out Polymarket to spouting vapid spurts of uninformed enthusiasm, Malkin and Frazier made an excellent case for the deployment of AI-enabled announcers.
