The United Kingdom is the biggest presence in this year’s International Emmy nominations, collecting 14 nods across the awards’ broad television slate. Brazil follows with nine nominations and Spain has five, while the complete field comprises 64 nominees in 16 categories representing 22 countries.
That headline total is substantial, but it is not merely a story about one territory running up the score. The nominees spread across scripted drama and comedy, performances, documentaries, news, current affairs, children’s programming, sports documentaries, telenovelas and short-form work. The result is a notably international snapshot of television production: a field where major global streamers appear beside public-service broadcasters, regional networks and production companies from around the world.
Winners will be named at the 54th International Emmy Awards Gala in New York on Monday, November 23.
The UK’s 14 nominations reach far beyond drama
In the high-profile scripted categories, the UK’s nominated shows include Disney+ drama A Thousand Blows and Netflix comedy Man vs Baby. The country is also represented by Prisoner 951 in TV movie/miniseries, Live Aid at 40: When Rock ‘N’ Roll Took on the World in arts programming, and Unforgivable, which brought Bobby Schofield a best actor nomination.
Sheridan Smith is in the best actress lineup for I Fought the Law. The UK’s other nominations span current affairs, documentary, children’s animation, factual and entertainment programming, live-action children’s television, news, non-scripted entertainment and sports documentary. That breadth is important: a country can lead a nomination table through one or two heavily favored dramas, but the UK’s count here comes from a wide range of television forms.
Its documentary contender is Louis Theroux: The Settlers. In children’s categories, The Scarecrows’ Wedding, Horrible Science and Dexter Procter the Ten Year Old Doctor received nominations. Educating Yorkshire — Season 2 is nominated in non-scripted entertainment, while Tom Daley: 1.6 Seconds competes in sports documentary. The UK also has nominees in the news and current-affairs races: The World: 24 Hours in the Kill Zone and Exposure: Breaking Ranks: Inside Israel’s War.
In other words, the UK does not enter the gala with a single flagship title carrying the entire campaign. It arrives with representation across the schedule, from children’s programs to investigations and prestige factual work.
Drama and comedy races bring four countries each
The drama series category sets the UK’s A Thousand Blows against France’s Carême, Argentina’s Menem and India’s Real Kashmir Football Club. It is a concise example of the awards’ global remit: four nominees, four territories and productions associated with Disney+, Apple TV, Amazon MGM Studios and Sony LIV.
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The comedy contest is similarly varied. Man vs Baby faces Argentina’s División Palermo — Season 2, Spain’s Old Dog, New Tricks and India’s Vir Das: Fool Volume. Netflix is connected to all but the UK entry’s production label in this group, underlining the streamer’s visibility across international commissions and acquisitions. Platform presence, though, should not be mistaken for a platform sweep: the larger nominee list includes titles associated with Disney+, Apple TV, Amazon MGM Studios, Warner Bros. Discovery, Globo, NHK, ITV, BBC, Al Jazeera and many others.
That distinction matters when reading an awards slate like this. A nomination identifies the nominated program and the territory tied to its entry; it is not a claim that one distributor defines the creative identity of every project it carries. International television is often made through layered relationships among producers, commissioning services, broadcasters and streaming platforms.
For viewers, the practical takeaway is straightforward. A familiar app name can be a useful starting point for finding a nominated show, but availability may differ by market, and the nominations list itself is not a viewing guide. It is best understood as a record of the programs selected for competition, rather than a promise of where every title can be watched.
Brazil and Spain show the value of range
Brazil’s nine nominations make it the second-most represented territory. Its slate includes TV movie/miniseries nominee Oxygen Masks Will Not Drop Down Automatically, arts contender Uncredited — The Story of Passinho, current-affairs nominee Profissão Repórter: Feminice, and news nominee Fantástico: Return to Yanomami Land.
Brazil also appears in kids’ animation with Jorel’s Brother — Season 5, in kids’ factual and entertainment with Senior_SZN, in short-form series with Jornada da Vida: Rio Mekong, in sports documentary with Baila, Vini, and in telenovela with Garota do Momento. It is an especially broad showing, balancing youth programming, journalism, serialized drama and documentary work.
Spain’s five nominations include The Anatomy of a Moment in TV movie/miniseries, Javier Cámara’s best actor nod for Jakarta, Old Dog, New Tricks in comedy, Time-Out in sports documentary and Wild Valley — Season 2 in telenovela. Spanish nominees therefore reach both individual performance recognition and multiple types of serial storytelling.
The telenovela category is particularly notable for its regional mix. Brazil’s Garota do Momento and Spain’s Wild Valley — Season 2 compete alongside Türkiye’s Leyla and Far Away. The presence of two Turkish nominees reflects how that category can recognize an ongoing dramatic format on its own terms, rather than requiring it to fit the episode counts or labeling conventions of a miniseries or conventional drama series.
What the categories actually distinguish
Some of the International Emmy categories sound adjacent, but they recognize different kinds of television. Drama series and comedy focus on scripted series organized around those genres. TV movie/miniseries covers projects designed as a self-contained film or limited run. Short-form series recognizes episodic storytelling built in a shorter format. This year’s short-form nominees are Belgium’s The Class of 2000, Brazil’s Jornada da Vida: Rio Mekong, Canada’s PeopleWatching — Season 3 and Japan’s Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26.
Elsewhere, current affairs and news are separate competitions. The former includes programs such as Qatar’s Hasina: 36 Days in July, France’s My Father’s Hair, the UK’s Exposure: Breaking Ranks: Inside Israel’s War and Brazil’s Profissão Repórter: Feminice. The news nominees are Brazil’s Fantástico: Return to Yanomami Land, Portugal’s Remember Me, Qatar’s Missing in Gaza and the UK’s The World: 24 Hours in the Kill Zone.
Those labels should not be treated as a ranking of seriousness or quality. They are organizational categories meant to compare like with like. The same applies to the three children’s fields: animation, factual and entertainment, and live-action. Japan’s My Melody & Kuromi, for example, is in animation; Norway’s Adventurous Noah is in kids’ factual and entertainment; and the Philippines’ Love at First Spike appears in kids’ live-action.
Performance nominations span four territories in each race
The acting fields are globally distributed rather than dominated by a single market. Best actor nominees are Javier Cámara for Spain’s Jakarta, Ricardo Darín for Argentina’s The Eternaut, Ian Roberts for South Africa’s A Kind of Madness, and Bobby Schofield for the UK’s Unforgivable.
The best actress category includes Mona Mina Leon for Belgium’s Holy Sh!t, Bárbara Mori for Mexico’s Lucca’s World, Park Ji-hyun for South Korea’s You and Everything Else, and Sheridan Smith for the UK’s I Fought the Law. These are performance awards, distinct from the program categories, so a nominated actor or actress can bring attention to a title even when that title is not listed in drama series or TV movie/miniseries.
The nominations also offer a reminder that “international” here does not mean only the largest English-language export markets. The 22 represented countries include Belgium, Chile, China, Germany, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, the Philippines, Portugal, Qatar, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea and Türkiye, in addition to the territories with the highest totals.
Why ‘Heated Rivalry’ is absent
One conspicuous omission is Heated Rivalry. The Bell Media/Crave series was submitted, but it did not receive a nomination.
Its absence is worth separating from a different eligibility question involving the Television Academy’s Primetime Emmy Awards. Heated Rivalry is a Canadian commission with no US production partners, which meant it was not eligible for Primetime Emmy consideration. That lack of Primetime Emmy eligibility did not block it from International Emmy consideration. It was eligible for the International Emmys, submitted into the competition, and ultimately was not among the nominees.
This is a useful awards-season clarification. Eligibility means a program meets a competition’s rules and can be entered. A nomination means it progressed through the judging process and was selected. The two are not interchangeable. A show can be ineligible for one awards body, eligible for another, and still miss a nomination in the latter.
For audiences accustomed to treating “the Emmys” as one undivided institution, the difference can be confusing. In practice, separate Emmy competitions have distinct remits and rules. That means a program’s route through one system cannot be used to predict its status in another. Heated Rivalry is a clear case: it was outside the Primetime Emmy competition but inside the International Emmy field, where it fell short of a nod.
A wide field, with platforms in the picture but not in control
Streaming services are visible throughout the nominations. Netflix is attached to entries including División Palermo — Season 2, Man vs Baby, Old Dog, New Tricks, Vir Das: Fool Volume, The Eternaut, Lucca’s World, You and Everything Else, My Melody & Kuromi and Baila, Vini. Disney+ is represented by A Thousand Blows and Mexico’s non-scripted nominee The Worst Trip Around the World.
But the slate also demonstrates how television recognition remains distributed across broadcasters and producers. A useful companion to that point is the wider streaming-business context: Disney+ and Hulu prices have risen again, a reminder that a platform’s prominence in awards lineups and its consumer-facing strategy are separate subjects.
The International Emmys will now turn from nominations to winners in November. Until then, the clearest story is scale and variety: the UK has the numerical lead, Brazil and Spain are prominent challengers, and the 64-nominee group reaches across 22 countries and an unusually expansive set of television categories.
