With Conan O’Brien Returning as Oscars Emcee, Is Hosting Awards Shows Officially Cool Again?

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. After earning rave reviews and helping to net a five-year high in total Oscars viewership, Conan O’Brien is returning to host the 2026 Oscars, the Academy announced on Monday.

The late-night host, who headlined “the best ceremony in years,” according to Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson, will emcee the 98th Academy Awards, set for March 15, 2026, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. “The only reason I’m hosting the Oscars next year is that I want to hear Adrien Brody finish his speech,” O’Brien said in a statement—referring to the historically long-winded remarks that the Brutalist star made after winning best actor at the 2025 Oscars.

reprise her role as Golden Globes host after receiving acclaim for her January debut. And the Trevor Noah–fronted Grammy Awards, which raised $7 million for Los Angeles fire relief, marked the former Daily Show host’s fifth consecutive time as frontman for music’s biggest night.

Perhaps these long-term investments are one of the reasons that awards-show hosting—once thought to be a thankless job that industry insiders argued ceremonies didn’t actually need—has become a desirable gig again. Though Glaser told Howard Stern that she made less money than a previous male host, she also didn’t seem to mind terribly: “This first year when you’re just trying to prove yourself, I honestly would have done it for free,” she said. Glaser made her intentions to return to the Globes stage clear—and reminded the world that “a lot of people do [turn it down],” adding, “It’s a tough gig.”

O’Brien shared similar remarks ahead of his Oscars 2025 debut, telling The New York Times that when he told his father that he’d gotten the job, “he probably wondered, Couldn’t they find someone else?” But the comedian was also sincere about the importance of the ceremony. “Really good cinema—especially when it’s from different countries, different points of view—has an incredible amount of resonance and importance right now, and this is the night that celebrates that. To be a part of it is meaningful to me,” O’Brien told the Times. “I don’t think of it as a thankless task—even if I just do it once, and no one’s interested in me doing it again, it will have been a meaningful experience for me.”

Kristen Bell had related thoughts ahead of her return as SAG Awards host in February, telling VF, “I don’t look at it as thankless. I like hosting. I like bringing people together. I like making goofy jokes and making people laugh…. Being in a roomful of my peers—there’s something very exciting about it.”

That honest sentiment—the same kind Anne Hathaway was once mocked for displaying as Oscars host in 2011—goes a long way right now, when the national mood is decidedly low. Wrote VF’s Lawson in his review of O’Brien’s Oscars, “His silliness and enthusiasm throughout the show was a refreshing change from the wry, over-it stylings of Jimmy Kimmel’s past two emceeing jobs.”

Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Academy president Janet Yang confirmed that Emmy-winning executive-producing team Raj Kapoor and Katy Mullan will return in 2026 as well, leading the show for the third consecutive year. O’Brien’s own comedic team will also be coming back: He’ll be joined by producers Jeff Ross and Mike Sweeney, who have been with the comedian from Late Night in the 1990s through his recent Max travel series, Conan O’Brien Must Go.

“This year, [O’Brien, Kapoor, Mullan, Ross, and Sweeney] produced a hugely entertaining and visually stunning show that celebrated our nominees and the global film community in the most beautiful and impactful way,” Kramer and Yang said. “Conan was the perfect host—skillfully guiding us through the evening with humor, warmth, and reverence.”

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