2025 Emmys: As Voting Opens, Here’s How Many Nomination Slots We’ll Have in Top Categories

The nominations voting phase of the 2025 Primetime Emmy Awards began yesterday and with it the nominating ballots revealing how many total submissions were entered this year across all sections, which also tell us how many nominees we’ll be seeing in each category.

For 2025, submissions have dipped slightly to 228 in the top three races (Drama Series, Comedy Series, Limited Series), down just one from last year. For comparison, 2023 had 309 entries, highlighting the impact of the double industry strikes that season. Across the full 15 program categories, there are exactly 600 total series in contention this year, down from 614 last year.

Nearly 24,000 members of the Television Academy, who are divided across 31 peer groups, will now vote on the nominations in their respective groups. Each member votes within their professional field, but all eligible voters may cast ballots in the 15 top program races (similar to how the film academy votes on the Oscars): Comedy Series, Drama Series, Limited or Anthology series, Television Movie, Talk Series, Variety Special (Live), Variety Special (Pre-recorded), Short Form (Comedy/Drama/Variety), Short Form (Nonfiction/Reality), Hosted Nonfiction Series, Structured Reality, Unstructured Reality, Reality Competition, Scripted Variety and Game Show.

According to the rules of the Television Academy, the number of nominees in each category is determined by the volume of submissions. However, the drama and comedy series categories are guaranteed to have eight nominees each. Regardless of the total number of entries, acting categories are equal in number across gender; if there are seven nominees for Supporting Actor in a Drama Series there will be seven in Supporting Actress, and so on.

Those submission numbers give us the number of nominees we’ll see in each category, making some top races very competitive. The lead acting categories for comedy, drama and limited series will all be set at five, while guest actor and actress as well as limited series supporting performers will have six apiece. Supporting actors and actresses in comedy and drama series’ will top out at seven. Here’s the breakdown below.

Number of submissions (number of nominees in that category)

Comedy Lead Actor – 51 (5)
Comedy Lead Actress – 47 (5)
Comedy Supporting Actor – 163 (7)
Comedy Supporting Actress – 141 (7)
Comedy Guest Actor – 97 (6)
Comedy Guest Actress – 74 (6)
Comedy Directing – 99 (6)
Comedy Writing – 94 (6)

Drama Lead Actor – 77 (5)
Drama Lead Actress – 75 (5)
Drama Supporting Actor – 233 (7)
Drama Supporting Actress – 225 (7)
Drama Guest Actor – 87 (6)
Drama Guest Actress – 67 (6)
Drama Directing – 173 (7)
Drama Writing – 132 (6)

Limited Lead Actor – 48 (5)
Limited Lead Actress – 53 (5)
Limited Supporting Actor – 124 (6)
Limited Supporting Actress – 105 (6)
Limited Directing – 101 (6)
Limited Writing – 71 (5)

In Drama Series, only one returning nominee from last year is possible, Slow Horses from Apple TV+, whose third season had a major breakthrough at the Emmys with nine nominations and a win for writing. But several nominees are back in contention after strike season, including Disney+’s Andor, HBO Max’s trio of House of the Dragon, The Last of Us and The White Lotus as well as Paramount+’s Yellowjackets. Back from even longer delays are Apple TV+’s Severance and Netflix’s Squid Game, both nominated in 2022. They’ll all have to fight of freshman seasons of some hotly talked about shows like CBS’ reboot of the classic series Matlock with Kathy Bates, Hulu’s suspense drama Paradise with Sterling K. Brown and the single shift hospital-set The Pitt with Noah Wyle. In all, 126 series will compete for a nomination, compared to 107 in 2024, 171 in 2022 and 133 in 2021.

It’s a different story on the comedy side, with several of last year’s contenders having new seasons including HBO Max’s Hacks (the current champ), ABC’s Abbott Elementary (still the only network representation), Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building (coming off a surprise SAG ensemble win), FX’s previous winner The Bear and the final season of FX’s What We Do in the Shadows. AppleTV+ joins the fray of the inside-Hollywood satire game with The Studio, the most direct competition to Hacks, and Netflix’s popular rom-com Nobody Wants This. The total number of comedy submission this season is 69, compared to 73 in 2024, 95 in 2023, a record 118 in 2022 and 68 in 2021.

The Limited or Anthology Series category came in with only 33 series’ submitted, giving us just five nominees this year. That’s down from 49 in 2024, 51 in 2023, 61 in 2022 and 37 in 2021. Leading the likely nominees is Netflix’s critically acclaimed, shot in one take British drama Adolescence, which has become the streamer’s second most watch series of all time just behind Stranger Things (which will return after three years later this year). The streamer also had Ryan Murphy’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story and the anthology sci-fi series Black Mirror, which has performed well for them in the past. But several top contenders look to keep at least one or more of those shows making the cut, including HBO Max’s The Penguin, the Gotham-set DC Comics drama starring Colin Farrell reprising his role from the most recent The Batman film. FX has a pair of contenders in the biographical comedy-drama Dying for Sex, starring Michelle Williams and Say Nothing, the biographical drama of two sisters set during The Troubles. The TV movie race has 39 films in the running, down from 43, 61, 48 and 41 over the past four years.

The nomination voting period runs from June 12 through June 23. Nominations for the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards will be announced on July 15.