Logies host Robert Irwin may have likened the Australian TV industry to an environment with apex predators and venomous snakes but the 2026 ceremony suggested there was a lot of fraternity.

There were speeches, including Gold Logie winner Sam Pang’s and Hall of Fame inductee Andrew Denton’s, that beamed with gratitude at the relationships and friendships formed in the circus of making TV.

You are no one without the people around you.

Like many of their compatriots around the world, Australian TV is under challenge from the dominance of tech companies and social media networks who have siphoned off attention and ad dollars, which was astutely and sarcastically pointed out by sharp-tongued presenters Urzila Carlson and Guy Montgomery.

No one is being naïve about how much the industry has changed – and has been pushed to change – but when you look through the overall list of the cohort of 2026 Logies winners, there is another story emerging.

Not all change is bad, and the winners reflect a diversified Australian TV industry that is neither dominated by one network nor one or two shows. There is a breadth and depth here that is not always appreciated.

That’s the value of awards shows, a wider view and expanded spotlight on the work that busy audiences don’t always have the time to appreciate. Sure, the winners themselves can have a triumphant moment, a raucous night at the afterparty and a shiny new toy for their shelves.

But for everyone else, it’s a rejoinder to the common complaint of “There’s nothing on TV to watch”. There are loads.

It was a bit of a something-for-everyone awards, with most networks and streamers taking home victories that will matter to them – everyone that is except for Netflix, which was shut out but had been nominated for a couple of productions.

The Seven Network, which shares a parent company with The Nightly, will be very happy with its win for its news coverage of the Bondi terror attack last year, as well as its scripted drama series RFDS, a show set in regional Australia.

Traditional rivals over at Nine picked up gongs for Travel Guides, its sports coverage and a news presenter trophy for Ally Langdon, who beat her former co-host Karl Stefanovic. Channel 10 picked up wins for its perennial favourite shows, MasterChef and Have You Been Paying Attention, and can also claim Robert Irwin’s Logie for popular presenter.

The ABC won for its Googlagong miniseries, as well as its lead star Lila McGuire in the new talent race, and awards for Play School, The Assembly, Dog Park, Muster Dogs and Australian Story.

SBS only won the one Logie, but its recipient, Claudia Karvan, no slouch in the trophy stakes, remarked that this was the win she valued the most because it was for her work on Homebodies, a ghost story which centred trans characters’ lived experiences.

Stan grabbed one win (Brooke Satchwell for drama Dear Life) while Prime Video nabbed two in the acting categories – one for Simon Baker for Narrow Road to the Deep North and another for veteran actor Steve Bisley for Deadloch.

Surprisingly, it was Bisley’s first-ever Logie, while Baker jokingly admonished the announcer for pointing out he won his first Logie in 1993.

The combined Foxtel and Binge entity went home with Sam Neill’s posthumous win for one of his final roles, in the drama The Twelve.

A little something for (almost) everyone.

If you think about the Gold Logie winner, Sam Pang, his victory reflects the changes we’ve seen – a mixed-race personality with an Asian surname who won for his work on two shows on different channels. He is only the second non-white winner of the Gold (Waleed Aly was the first), and he was also joined on the finalist list by Poh Ling Yeow.

Deborah Mailman became the first Indigenous person inducted into the Hall of Fame, alongside Andrew Denton and A Country Practice.

Also considered the finalists for the two top acting categories, lead actor and actress in a drama. Among the 12 nominees were five First Nations performers (Lila McGuire, Tuuli Narkle, Hunter Page-Lochard, Mark Coles Smith and Rob Collins), plus Aisha Dee, whose father is African-American and Yerin Ha, whose parents hail from South Korea.

First Nations actor and filmmaker Thomas Weatherall was nominated twice in the same category, for supporting roles in Heartbreak High and Narrow Road to the Deep North while across other races, there were nominations for other artists (George Zhao, Madeleine Sami, Michael Theo, Eleanor Matsuura, Clarence Ryan, Eloise Hart and Andrea Lam) who, two or three decades ago, wouldn’t have had a look-in in such great numbers.

With more recognition for actors from non-Anglo backgrounds or are neurodiverse means all Australians can see themselves reflected in our national stories, which in turn further normalises the narratives of people who were not always part of the wider conversation. This is, obviously, a good thing.

In decades past, when everyone was watching the same five or six shows and the Logies were decided by TV Week magazine readers who bought the periodical and voted by mail, there was a sameness to Australian TV. The same shows, the same people, the same networks, winning year after year.

There’s a tendency to hang on to nostalgia – and there was a lot of that to go around last night with callbacks to Australia’s 70 years of TV history, including a public poll of most popular programs – but it’s more exciting to look at what’s happening today.