At the 2026 Golden Globes, Big Wins, a Podcast First—and a Quiet Protest on the Red Carpet

A night of major film wins—and subtle reinvention

Nikki Glaser stood onstage at the Beverly Hilton on Jan. 11, trading jokes about Leonardo DiCaprio’s dating life and Hollywood’s production slowdown. In the ballroom in front of her, Jean Smart’s “BE GOOD” pin caught the light as she clutched a trophy, while Amy Poehler prepared to accept the first Golden Globe ever awarded to a podcast.

The 83rd Golden Globe Awards, honoring 2025’s films and U.S. television, crowned Chloé Zhao’s grief-stricken period drama Hamnet and Paul Thomas Anderson’s sprawling action comedy One Battle After Another as the year’s top movies. At the same time, the ceremony quietly expanded the very definition of prestige entertainment—and became an early stage for a mounting protest against U.S. immigration enforcement.

Taken together, the wins, the new category and the pins offered a snapshot of how Hollywood is trying to adapt its awards rituals to a fractured media and political landscape in 2026.

“Hamnet” brings prestige—and grief—to the top prize

Hamnet, Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s bestselling novel about the death of William Shakespeare’s son and the family grief behind Hamlet, won best motion picture, drama. Jessie Buckley took home best female actor in a motion picture, drama, for playing Agnes, Shakespeare’s wife.

The victory reinforced the film’s status as an awards-season heavyweight. Zhao’s drama has eight Academy Award nominations, including best picture, best director and best adapted screenplay.

The Chinese-born, U.S.-based director has linked the project to her own preoccupation with mortality. She recently disclosed that she is training to be a death doula, saying she had been “terrified of death” her entire life and wanted to help change how people face it.

“We’re so removed from death in modern society that we don’t know how to talk about it,” Zhao told People magazine in an interview about Hamnet.

Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” dominates in comedy/musical

If Zhao’s film represented a quiet, domestic vision of prestige, Anderson’s One Battle After Another was its noisy counterpart. The darkly comic action thriller, loosely inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, follows an aging ex-revolutionary drawn back into conflict when he and his daughter are targeted by a corrupt military officer.

The film, led by Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall and Teyana Taylor, was the most-nominated title of the night with nine nods. It walked away with four prizes:

• Best motion picture, musical or comedy
• Best director (Paul Thomas Anderson)
• Best screenplay
• Best supporting actress (Teyana Taylor), who plays Perfidia Beverly Hills

The project cost an estimated $130 million to $175 million to make and has grossed about $208 million worldwide, making it Anderson’s highest-earning release—though not a runaway blockbuster given its budget. Its performance illustrates how studios continue to invest in large-scale, auteur-driven films partly for awards and long-term cultural impact rather than immediate box-office returns.

Taylor’s supporting-actress win marked a milestone for the singer, dancer and actor, whose acclaimed turn in the 2023 drama A Thousand and One had already established her as a serious screen performer. Her Globes recognition places her squarely in this year’s Oscar conversation in the supporting category.

Television winners—and a standout limited series

Television also had its share of breakthroughs. The Pitt won best drama series, while The Studio took best musical or comedy series. The Netflix limited series Adolescence emerged as the most-awarded TV program, picking up best limited or anthology series and multiple acting prizes.

The Globes add a new medium: podcasting

But the night’s most significant structural shift came from a medium not previously honored by the Globes.

For the first time, the Golden Globes organization handed out a trophy for best podcast, a category announced last spring as a response to what organizers called the “seismic growth” in podcast audiences worldwide. With data firm Luminate projecting global podcast listenership approaching 600 million people this year, the group said it wanted to acknowledge “the incredible depth, diversity and creativity” of audio storytelling.

Amy Poehler’s Good Hang with Amy Poehler, a conversational comedy show produced with Paper Kite Productions and The Ringer, won the inaugural podcast prize less than a year after its March 2025 launch. Poehler, already a past Globe winner for Parks and Recreation, is now among the first major entertainers recognized by the show for work in podcasting.

Friction over eligibility—and fees

The road to the new category has not been without friction. To be considered, podcasts had to be on a list of 25 eligible shows compiled by Luminate and then pay a $500 submission fee through the Globes’ entry portal. The list included a mix of newsmagazines, celebrity interview programs, true-crime series and high-profile talk shows such as The Daily, Crime Junkie, Armchair Expert, Dateline NBC, SmartLess and The Joe Rogan Experience.

Joe Rogan—whose Spotify program has consistently ranked among the most-listened-to podcasts in the United States—said on his show in late January that he declined to submit. He told listeners that his team had been asked “for 500 bucks for paperwork” and that he refused, knowing that meant he would not be nominated.

“I’m not paying $500 to some organization so I can maybe get an award,” Rogan said, adding that he did not need “external validation” from a Hollywood awards body.

Commentators including talk-show host Bill Maher suggested the field of nominees tilted toward liberal-leaning or “safe” programs, noting that several popular conservative or contrarian shows were absent. The Globes have not publicly detailed the full voting breakdown for the category.

While the organization has long charged fees for film and television submissions, the podcast award highlights how a medium known for low barriers to entry is confronting the same pay-to-play dynamics that have shaped other parts of the entertainment industry. For celebrity-hosted, corporate-backed series, a submission fee can be a marketing expense; for independent creators, it may be out of reach.

A symbolic protest against immigration enforcement

Politics remained a quieter but insistent presence throughout the night.

A number of attendees, including Mark Ruffalo, Wanda Sykes, Natasha Lyonne, Ariana Grande and Smart, wore small black-and-white pins that read “ICE OUT” and “BE GOOD” on the red carpet and into the ballroom. The pins were created to honor Renée Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three in Minneapolis who was fatally shot in her car by an officer with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement days before the ceremony, and Keith Porter Jr., a 43-year-old Los Angeles man killed by an off-duty ICE agent on New Year’s Eve.

Advocates say the badges are part of a growing campaign against ICE and other federal immigration agencies over allegations of excessive force. The same pins appeared weeks later at the Grammy Awards, where several musicians delivered explicit speeches calling for changes to immigration enforcement policies.

At the Globes, the protest was more symbolic than verbal. Smart accepted her award for best female actor in a musical or comedy series for Hacks while wearing a “BE GOOD” pin, but did not devote her speech to the issue. The telecast did not explicitly explain the pins’ meaning.

Glaser avoids Washington—and reignites an old debate

Glaser, who returned for a second year as host, kept her 10-minute opening monologue focused on Hollywood itself. She joked about studio mergers, the long production slowdown and the recently unsealed Jeffrey Epstein court records.

“There are so many A-listers here tonight—and by A-listers I do mean people who are on a list that has been heavily redacted,” she said, before adding, “And the Golden Globe for best editing goes to the Justice Department.” She then aimed a similar line at the broadcaster’s parent company, calling CBS “America’s newest place to see B.S. news.”

Conspicuously absent were direct jokes about President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump or immigration policy. In an interview afterward with Fox News’ website and on her SiriusXM program, Glaser said that was by design.

“I steered clear of politics because I just don’t think those jokes are funny in this setting,” she said, adding that audiences “get enough of that all day” and that partisan material risks alienating viewers. She said she even cut a planned line that would have played on the word “ice” at the bar because it felt too glib in light of the recent ICE-involved shootings.

Her approach contrasted with the increasingly outspoken tone at some recent awards shows and reignited a long-running debate over whether award ceremonies should serve as political platforms. Comedian Ricky Gervais, who hosted the Globes in 2020, resurfaced clips of his own monologue on social media during Grammy weekend, mocking celebrities for “lecturing” viewers and writing, “They’re still not listening.”

A reinvention still in progress

The Globes, long dogged by questions about their governance and credibility, are still in the midst of their own reinvention. The scandal-plagued Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which once ran the show as a members’ organization, was dissolved in 2023 following criticism over a lack of Black members, opaque finances and ethical lapses. The awards now operate under a for-profit Golden Globes brand produced with Dick Clark Productions.

On CBS and Paramount+ this year, the ceremony drew about 8.66 million live-plus-same-day viewers, according to Nielsen data cited by trade publications, down about 7% from the previous year’s telecast. The Globes said the show reached roughly 18 million people across platforms. The broadcast aired opposite an NFL playoff game on NBC, underscoring the challenge entertainment awards face in competing with live sports and on-demand streaming for attention.

For the filmmakers and performers who took the stage, the Globes remain a powerful amplifier. For the organization behind them, the 83rd edition suggested a possible path forward: expand into new formats like podcasting, lean on familiar Hollywood star power, and allow political messages to surface through symbols and social media even as the scripted jokes stay away from Washington.

Whether that formula will keep the Globes central to the broader public conversation—or mostly an inside industry benchmark—will become clearer as awards season moves on and audiences decide which stories, and which platforms, they follow.