This is the time of year when people start asking, "When is awards season?" In fact, that calendar runs from November to March every year, with the most high-profile events taking place between January and March. This guide offers you the roadmap to your favourite awards and how to see your top picks - all the talent and performances.
| 🏆Award | 🤩Awards/honours what? | 📆When? | 📍Where? | 💻Where to watch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Golden Globes | The best in film from the global perspective. | 11 January | Los Angeles | Find clips and highlights on the Globes' official website, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter/X |
| Grammys | The best in music from an American perspective. | 1 February | Los Angeles | live.GRAMMY.com Recording Academy’s YouTube channel |
| BAFTAs | The best in film from the British perspective. | 22 February | London | Live on BBC1 Streamed on BBC iPlayer |
| Brit Awards | The best in music from the British perspective. | 28 February | Manchester | ITV1 and ITVX STV and STV Player in Scotland. Livestreamed on YouTube for international audiences. |
| Oscars | The best in filmmaking from an American perspective. | 15 March | Los Angeles | ITV1, ITVX, STV, and STV Player Ceremony coverage starts at midnight; red carpet activity begins at 10:30 PM. |
| BAFTA Games | The best in gaming from the British perspective. | 8 April | London | Streamed live on Twitch and YouTube. British audiences may watch on the official BAFTA website and social media channels |
📺 The Golden Globe Awards 2026
Awards Season may start in November, but it doesn't truly get underway until the night of the Golden Globe Awards. As per usual, the 2026 Golden Globes spectacle is the first major event of this year's awards season1.
Keep that weight in mind as you watch award winners hold their trophies aloft. What kind of workout plan do they follow that lets them do that? 😵 In January this year, we saw plenty of such displays as the most worthy candidates collected their wins.
You might be wondering why the HFPA is behind this award. To answer that, we must cast back into history, towards the end of the Second World War. Most other countries were ravaged, but the US was steadily cranking out fantasies in its glamour factory, also known as Hollywood.
Giving war-torn people fantasies helped them balance out all that they'd witnessed and experienced. Who wouldn't want to see beautiful people wearing stylish clothes and living in grand homes when their own lives were in tatters? The foreign press made it their mission to feed that hunger and add more courses to the meal, as it were. And so, the Golden Globes was born.
The Globes ceremony is the season's first major event, so it helps predict who/what will win on subsequent awards nights.
🎤 The Grammy Awards
Did you watch this year's Grammy Awards? Bad Bunny, Kendrick Lamar, and Billie Eilish walked away as the night's big winners, putting paid to another revolutionary music industry event2 for this decades-old institution.
The Grammy trophy is boxy and hard to get a grip on, but it doesn't weigh as much as the Golden Globes'; only about 2.5 kilos (5 pounds). We've never heard anyone complaining about having to carry one around, so they can't be that unwieldy. 😊
The Grammy Awards are particularly influential on musical trends around the world.
Industry professionals - Recording Academy members - pick Grammy winners. They only vote in the categories they specialise in: engineers vote for best sound, and songwriters vote on the best lyrics, for example. This peer-voting system ensures that the awards remain as musically pure as possible.
🎬 The BAFTA Awards 2026
The BAFTA Awards are purely British3, but this ceremony typically awards prizes to films and television series produced in the US. How can that be, when our friends across the pond have more award shows and give statues in more categories than we do? Maybe looking closer at how the BAFTAs and the Oscars stack up will help answer that question.
BAFTAs
- launched in 1947
- honour artistry across 24 categories
- occasionally awards in a special category
- controversies: #BaftasSoWhite; 'anti-Brit' BAFTAs
Oscars
- launched in 1927
- honours artistry across 24 categories
- awards in a special category yearly
- controversies: #OscarsSoWhite; lobbying and marketing accusations; 'oscar-bait' films; miscategorising films and actors; symbolic Oscars and more.
After all that, we're no closer to knowing why the 2026 BAFTAs event features no fewer than four American titles in just the Best Film category. Probably, we need a more concrete reason.
The BAFTAs take place at the height of awards season. They build excitement and keep the momentum up for the Oscars, which close out the series of awards events.
🎶 The Brit Awards
Music awards ceremonies bookend February, with the Grammys at the start of the month and the Brit Awards at the end. But don't get the idea that one is just a repeat of the other; these events are quite different.
The Brit Awards
- dynamic, relaxed, and fun
- live performers have full creative control
- the award gets a new design every year
- relies on streaming data that reflects new and younger listeners preferences
- short, sweet, and no politics!
- no gendered categories
The Grammys
- more formal atmosphere
- live performers must follow strict guidelines
- the award is boxy and old-fashioned
- relies on music charts and sales data
- long and sometimes political
- considering doing away with gendered categories
Is there anything else you should know about the upcoming Brit Awards4? Indeed, you have so much to know that it's a good thing our full guide to the Brit Awards is but a click away. Quick! Take in these fast facts and then find out all you need to know about the Brits!
⏩Brit Awards Fast Facts
✨ The Academy Awards
The Academy Awards presentation - the Oscars - is Awards Season's last official event5. It is the grandest and most prestigious of all the season's spectacles. Winning at the Oscars delivers a host of benefits, both to global conversations and to film industry professionals.
An Oscar-winning film has the power to shape culture and influence narratives around the world.
Oscar-winning directors and producers find they may exercise greater creative control over their projects. Also, the money taps tend to open wider, and locations are far more keen to permit Oscar-winning film crews. Oscar-winning actors typically draw higher pay cheques, and they gain more perks on and off the job.
⏩Academy Awards Fast Facts
One story describes an Academy librarian, Margaret Herrick, remarking that the statue looks like her uncle, who bore that name. Another details an Academy secretary naming the statuette after a Norwegian soldier she knew. A third theory names columnist Sidney Skolsky as the nickname's inventor.
No matter its provenance, the Academy adopted the Oscar name in 1939. Though this year's ceremony is still officially the 98th Academy Awards, news anchors and gossip magazines will call them the Oscars.
🎰 The BAFTA Games Awards
This BAFTA award category recognises innovation in video game development. It is one of a handful of award ceremonies that elevate game creation to its rightful place among other art forms.
This year's awards for BAFTA Games promise unpredictability and excitement in equal measures. Industry insiders predict that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 will claim the top prize6. Gamers are less convinced; they're leaning more towards Death Stranding 2: On The Beach.
Regardless of how you stand and which titles you prefer, we're all getting far ahead of ourselves with all these predictions. The Academy won't release the final nominees list until 12 March. Until then, we can continue exploring and talking about our longlist favourites, though, right? 😉
📖 Where to Find Out More About Awards Season
- Cunningham, John. “Golden Globe Award | Definition, History, & Facts.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 13 Feb. 2026, www.britannica.com/art/Golden-Globe-Award. Accessed 16 Feb. 2026.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Grammy Award | American Music Award.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 2019, www.britannica.com/art/Grammy-Award. Accessed 16 Feb. 2026.
- Payne, Laura. “BAFTA | Awards, TV, Film, Games, Organization, & Facts.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 21 Oct. 2024, www.britannica.com/art/BAFTA. Accessed 16 Feb. 2026.
- Brit Awards. “About Us.” Brits.co.uk, 2024, www.brits.co.uk/about-us/. Accessed 16 Feb. 2026.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Academy Award | Categories, Rules, History, & Facts.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 2019, www.britannica.com/art/Academy-Award. Accessed 16 Feb. 2026.
- Games Press. “BAFTA Announces 2026 BAFTA Games Awards Longlists.” Games Press, 9 Dec. 2025, www.gamespress.com/BAFTA-announces-2026-BAFTA-Games-Awards-Longlists. Accessed 16 Feb. 2026.
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