BAFTA holds the Television Awards with P&O Cruises on Sunday 9 May 2027 at the Royal Festival Hall, with the Craft Awards a fortnight earlier.
The first British television awards were given in 1955, in six categories, by the body that became the British Academy of Film and Television Arts when the film academy and the television producers’ guild merged their names in 1976. Seventy years on, the Television Awards remain the only prize in British television voted by the people who make it rather than by critics, broadcasters or the public. A category can be won by a programme almost nobody watched, and regularly is.
The split between craft and performance is the structural decision that shapes the year. Editing, photography, sound, production design and costume are honoured at their own ceremony a fortnight earlier, which keeps the main evening to a manageable length and gives the people behind the camera a night that is theirs rather than a category slot in somebody else’s.
The 2027 Television Awards are at the Royal Festival Hall on Sunday 9 May, with the Television Craft Awards on Sunday 25 April. Nominations for both are announced on Monday 22 March, seven weeks out, which is the window in which the broadcasters arrange their own parties. The Royal Festival Hall has held both BAFTA ceremonies since the Academy moved them to the Southbank Centre, so the television night and the film night now share an address three months apart.