The 32nd National Television Awards are held at The O2 on Wednesday 8 September 2027, broadcast live from the arena.
Indigo Television has produced the National Television Awards since the first ceremony at the Wembley Conference Centre in August 1995, when Eamonn Holmes presented and ITV carried it. Trevor McDonald took the job from 1996 and held it for twelve years at the Royal Albert Hall. ITV dropped the broadcast in 2009 over its own finances, and the deal that brought it back shifted the ceremony from October to January and then, in 2010, to The O2, where it has stayed apart from a single year at Wembley in 2022.
What separates it from every other British television prize is that the public decides and nobody else does. There is no academy, no jury and no industry panel, and the shortlists are drawn from nominations the public submits, so even eligibility is settled outside the profession. A soap cast can beat a prestige drama and a daytime presenter can beat a knight, and every nominee in the room knows the result was taken out of their hands months earlier.
The 32nd awards are held at The O2 on Wednesday 8 September 2027 and broadcast live from the arena floor. Voting opens to the country well ahead of the night, so the counting is finished long before anyone walks the carpet. Joel Dommett has hosted every ceremony since 2021, when he took over from David Walliams, who had in turn followed Dermot O’Leary’s ten years in the job.