Peabody Awards Sets 2026 Date, Will Stay In Los Angeles for 86th Annual Ceremony

The Peabody Awards will stick with Los Angeles for its 86th annual edition. Peabody has announced that its next ceremony will take place on May 31, 2026, at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Awards will once again be given in categories including entertainment, documentary, news, podcast/radio, arts, children’s and youth, immersive and interactive media, and public service programming.

This will rep the third consecutive year the awards ceremony has taken place in Southern California. After several attempts — delayed by the COVID pandemic, and then by the Hollywood strikes — the Peabodys finally made their move to the west coast in 2024. Peabody is based at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia.

“We look forward to honoring the creators, journalists, and visionaries who continue to make Peabody the foremost honor for impactful storytelling,” said Jeffrey Jones, executive director of Peabody. “In a particularly fractured time, our mission at Peabody remains to celebrate stories that unite audiences and explore the richness of humanity through diverse perspectives.”

Nominees for the 2026 Peabody Awards will be announced in April, while the winners will be revealed in May prior to the ceremony.

The Peabody honorees are determined by a board of jurors is comprised of media industry professionals, journalists, critics and scholars, all of whom are appointed to six-year terms. Programs that are
nominated and win Peabody Awards must receive a unanimous vote by the jurors.

The 2025 Peabody Awards ceremony was hosted by Roy Wood Jr., took place on June 1 at the Beverly Wilshire hotel. Andrea Mitchell received the Peabody Career Achievement Award and “Saturday Night Live” was given the Peabody Institutional Award. More recently, last month the Peabody Awards honored filmmaker, musician and activist Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson with the 2025 Peabody Trailblazer Award.

In 2025, 34 winners — including “Baby Reindeer,” “Ripley,” “We Are Lady Parts” and “Shogun” — were chosen out of 68 nominees, which originally came from a list of 1,000 entries in all categories. Past Peabody Award winners include “Hill Street Blues,” “Murphy Brown,” “The Wire,” “Veep,” The Sopranos,” “Breaking Bad,” “The Office,” “Succession,” “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” “The Bear,” “Roots,” “Dopesick,” “Cosmos” and “Nova.”