The 2027 Artios Awards nominations are a reminder that the actors viewers remember are only one part of casting’s achievement. The awards recognize the professionals who build ensembles, locate performers across regions, coordinate with local casting teams and help shape the human texture of a production long before a scene reaches an audience.
Among this year’s television nominees are the casting teams for The Pitt, Heated Rivalry and The Diplomat. Netflix has the largest platform total with 14 nominations. HBO Max follows with nine, while Apple TV and Hulu each have seven and Prime Video has six.
The winners are scheduled to be announced on February 18, 2027, through ceremonies in Los Angeles, New York and London. The program covers a notably broad range of casting work: television, theater, commercials, short films, short-form series, international film and international television. That scope matters because it treats casting less as a celebrity roll call and more as a craft that changes shape depending on the medium, the format and where a project is made.
Drama nominees include ‘The Pitt’ and ‘The Diplomat’
In Television Series: Drama, The Pitt season two is nominated for Cathy Sandrich Gelfond and Erica Berger, with Seth Caskey listed as associate casting director. The category also includes The Diplomat season three, represented by Julie Schubert alongside U.K. casting directors Lucinda Syson and Natasha Vincent.
The remaining drama nominees are Paradise season two, Slow Horses season five, The Gilded Age season three and Your Friends and Neighbors season two. It is a field spanning continuing series with distinctly different scales and settings, from period storytelling to internationally situated drama.
What an Artios nomination recognizes: these nominations go to casting professionals, rather than actors or a program as a whole. A casting director’s work can include finding performers for leads and supporting roles, working with creative teams as roles evolve, and partnering with regional specialists when productions are casting across multiple cities or countries. Associate casting directors and local casting directors are credited in numerous entries, reflecting work that is often collaborative rather than centered on one person.
That structure is particularly visible in The Diplomat’s nomination, which credits a U.K. casting team in addition to its primary casting director. The nominations do not reduce that work to a single name, and the same pattern appears throughout the television and theater fields.
‘Heated Rivalry’ lands in the first-season drama race
Heated Rivalry is nominated in Television Pilot and First Season: Drama. Jenny Lewis and Sara Kay are nominated, with Kalene Osborne credited as associate casting director.
Its category includes A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Off Campus, Pluribus, Task and The Testaments. As a category, the first-season field carries a different creative question from categories for established shows. A returning series can build from an existing ensemble and audience expectations; a pilot or debut season must establish a project’s screen identity from the ground up.
Several nominees make the geographical side of that challenge explicit. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms lists Northern Ireland casting director Carla Stronge and Northern Ireland associate casting director Mike Hooley. Off Campus credits Vancouver casting directors Corinne Clark and Jennifer Page, plus Vancouver associate casting director Ciarra Cook. Task includes Philadelphia casting directors Diane Heery and Jason Loftus. The Testaments credits Canadian casting director Robin D. Cook and Canadian associate casting directors Kelly Boaz and Jonathan Oliveira.
Why regional casting credits are significant: they identify professionals whose knowledge and work are tied to a production’s local needs. The nominations show that major series regularly rely on teams beyond a single central office. That recognition is useful for audiences, too: it makes visible one of the practical systems behind productions that operate across countries, states and cities.
Comedy, limited series and reality nominees broaden the TV picture
The Television Series: Comedy nominees are Abbott Elementary season five, Hacks season five, Nobody Wants This season two, Only Murders in the Building season five, Shrinking season three and The Four Seasons season two.
The credits in this category include Wendy O’Brien and Chris Gehrt for Abbott Elementary; Morgan Smith, Linda Lowy and associate casting director Lily Trotter for Hacks; and Tiffany Little Canfield, Destiny Lilly and Bernard Telsey for Only Murders in the Building, with Danielle King as associate casting director. The Four Seasons also credits Italy casting director Armando Pizzuti alongside Sherry Thomas, Sharon Bialy and associate casting director Katie Rampey.
In Television Pilot and First Season: Comedy, nominees are Boots, I Love L.A., Margo’s Got Money Troubles, Murderbot, The Paper and Young Sherlock. Boots includes Louisiana-based casting credits, while Murderbot lists Toronto casting directors Jason Knight and John Buchan. The credits make clear that comedy casting is not simply about locating individual funny performers; it also involves assembling the combinations and contrasts that let a show’s tone work.
The limited-series nominees are All Her Fault, Beef season two, DTF St. Louis, Love Story, Murdaugh: Death in the Family and The Beast in Me. Credits in this field again point to distributed teams, including Australian casting on All Her Fault and Atlanta casting on both DTF St. Louis and Murdaugh: Death in the Family.
Reality programming has separate recognition for competition and structured or unstructured series. Competition nominees include Beast Games, Love Island USA, Pop Culture Jeopardy!, RuPaul’s Drag Race, The Challenge: Vets & New Threats and Top Chef. The structured and unstructured nominees are Ladies of London: The New Reign, My Strange Addiction, Queer Eye, Shark Tank and Vanderpump Villa.
Structured and unstructured: the nomination labels distinguish different kinds of reality production. The list does not define those terms, but it clearly treats casting in competition formats separately from casting for programs built around other real-world premises and returning personalities. Casting producers are also specifically credited across several reality nominations, recognizing the specialized production roles behind participant selection.
Animation and family programming receive their own honors
Animated Program for Television nominees are Bob’s Burgers season 16, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw, E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web season one, Family Guy season 24, King of the Hill season 14 and Rick and Morty season eight.
Julie Ashton is nominated for Bob’s Burgers; Christian Kaplan, Beth Day and Steven Tylor O’Connor are credited on Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw; and Leslie Woo with associate casting director Julina Baber are credited on King of the Hill. Voice casting can be easy to overlook precisely because the audience experiences the final performance through animation, but it is no less fundamental to how a character is heard and understood. For another example of how a recognizable voice can frame a game-related video presentation, see Ron Perlman’s planned narration for a Dragon’s Dogma 2: Dark Arisen preview.
The live-action children and family category includes Electric Bloom, One Piece season two, Vampirina: Teenage Vampire, Wizards Beyond Waverly Place season two, XO, Kitty season three and Zombies 4: Dawn of the Vampires. The nominations again reflect cross-border work: XO, Kitty credits Korea casting director Su Kim, while Zombies 4: Dawn of the Vampires lists Australia casting director Kirsty McGregor.
International work is central, not an afterthought
The International Television Series category includes Acapulco season four, Boho, Film Club, Prisoner, The Big Fuck Up and The House of the Spirits. The nominated casting professionals are Susan Vash and Alexandra Niedt; Sien Josephine Teijssen; Kelly Valentine Hendry and Jessica Mescall; Kelly Valentine Hendry with associate Lilly Hanbury; Sien Josephine Teijssen; and Roberto Matus, respectively.
The broader slate reinforces the same point across categories. International collaboration is not limited to a single award field: it appears in television dramas, first-season series, streaming films, children’s programming and theater. The awards’ remit also includes a separate international film casting area, though nominations for theatrically released feature films are on a later timetable. Submissions open October 26, with nominees set to be announced December 16.
Theater nominations range from Broadway to tours and regional stages
The Artios Awards’ theater categories cover Broadway, London theater, Los Angeles theater, New York theater, regional theater, special theatrical performances and theater tours. Bernard Telsey, Mary Vernieu, Sharon Bialy, Jessica Ronane and Jim Carnahan are among the casting directors with multiple nominations across the full awards slate.
Broadway comedy or drama nominees include Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Becky Shaw, Dog Day Afternoon, Giant, Liberation and Proof. In Broadway musical, the nominees are Cats: The Jellicle Ball, Ragtime, Schmigadoon!, The Lost Boys and The Rocky Horror Show.
London theater nominations include Avenue Q, Every Brilliant Thing, Mary Page Marlowe, Romeo & Juliet, The Lady From the Sea and War Horse. The New York comedy or drama field includes Anna Christie, Ginger Twinsies, Kyoto, Meet the Cartozians, Prince Faggot, Trophy Boys and What Happened Was….
The theater-tours category recognizes casting for Stereophonic, Suffs, The Notebook: The Musical, The Outsiders and The Phantom of the Opera. That is a useful distinction: a touring production has ongoing casting needs that are different from a fixed run in one city, and the nominations explicitly make room for that work.
Commercials and short-form projects round out the slate
The commercial nominees are Adidas’ Backyard Legends | The Greatest Football Story Ever Told; Every Human’s Dog – The Farmer’s Dog; Everyone Has Something to Protect; Irn Bru – This Is Not a Soft Drink; The Marketers; and UKTV’s u & You.
Short-film nominees include Hatchlings, Marina, MR Benjamin’s Birthday, Mushroom Dad, Please Return Your Cart, Standby and ¡que Suene La Banda!. The short-form-series field recognizes Country Heartthrob, Quokka’s Wild Life, Strings Attached, The Family Car: an American Love Story and Very Important People season three.
Additional Artios honors—including the Hoyt Bowers Award for Excellence in Casting, the Lynn Stalmaster Award for Career Achievement, the Marion Dougherty New York Apple Award, the Rosalie Joseph Humanitarian Award, the Capelier-Shaw Award and the Global Impact Award—will be revealed later. Until then, the nomination list offers a wide survey of the people whose work helps populate nearly every kind of scripted, unscripted, theatrical and short-form story.
