The 31st National Television Awards are held at The O2 on Tuesday 8 September 2026, broadcast live from the arena.
The National Television Awards were first given at the Wembley Conference Centre in 1995, on a principle that separated them from every other prize in British broadcasting: the public votes and nobody else does. There is no jury, no academy and no industry panel, so the winners are whatever the country was actually watching rather than what the profession thought it should have been. The ceremony spent twelve years at the Royal Albert Hall from 1996 and has been at The O2 since 2010, apart from 2022, when it moved to the arena at Wembley for a year.
That voting rule is why the room looks the way it does. A soap cast can beat a prestige drama, a daytime presenter can beat a knight, and the nominees know the result is out of their hands before they sit down. Nominations are opened to the public before the shortlists are drawn, so even eligibility is settled outside the industry. Indigo Television has produced the ceremony throughout.
The 31st awards are held at The O2 on Tuesday 8 September 2026 and broadcast live from the arena. Joel Dommett hosts, as he has every year since 2021, when he took over from David Walliams. It is one of the few award ceremonies in Britain where the audience on the arena floor and the audience at home have cast the same votes.