Upfronts 2026: Disney and Netflix Win, NBCUni Stumbles

The 2026 upfronts are done, and the verdict is in: Disney and Netflix are the ones advertisers should be excited about, while NBCUniversal had a rough week it would probably like to forget.

This year’s compressed three-day run through New York — Monday to Wednesday — gave media and streaming companies their annual shot at wooing ad buyers, and the results were as uneven as ever. Some stages crackled with energy. Others felt like they needed a serious edit. And at least one moment, courtesy of a certain Hall of Fame quarterback, was genuinely worth the price of admission.

Disney and Netflix Set the Standard

Disney stayed in its lane — and its lane happens to be the best one in the business. Back at North Javits Center, the company put on what can only be described as an end-to-end gold-standard show. News was dished, movie stars like Anne Hathaway and Robert Downey Jr. worked the stage, and the after-party was lavish enough to make a cruise ship envious. Crucially, Disney’s executives — from the CEO on down — didn’t vanish behind velvet ropes when the presentations ended. That kind of accessibility matters, and it showed.

Netflix, meanwhile, has been quietly doing the work. Now in its fourth year of pitching ad buyers, the streamer is firmly in what it calls the “walk” phase of its “crawl, walk, run” journey into the advertising business — and the walk looks increasingly confident. The newly opened Sunset Pier 94 Studios provided a genuine venue upgrade, the programming announcements landed, and the talent didn’t just show up — they showed out. Not counting the first year, which was virtual due to Covid, this was Netflix’s best-executed upfront presentation to date. Big NFL news added an extra jolt of energy to the room.

The contrast with some of the week’s other players was hard to miss. Netflix and Disney kept their doors open. Amazon, after a starry presentation at the Beacon Theatre featuring Michael B. Jordan, Chris Pratt, and Oprah Winfrey, clearly dropped most of its top brass at a more exclusive location on the way to the New York Public Library after-party — leaving Diplo and Shaboozey as the official bash’s main draws. That kind of split-tier access has always existed in this business, but it felt particularly pronounced this year.

NBCUniversal Loses the Room

Coming off back-to-back blockbuster upfronts in 2024 and 2025 — built around Wicked, Saturday Night Live‘s 50th anniversary, the Olympics, and the Super Bowl — NBCUniversal had a genuinely difficult act to follow. It did not follow it well.

The presentation ran two hours, and it felt like it. Song-and-dance numbers that should have landed with ordinarily winning talent like Bowen Yang, Matt Rogers, Tina Fey, and Jane Krakowski instead fell flat. Late-night host Seth Meyers did crush his roast set, and ad sales chief Mark Marshall delivered his customarily wry bit — this time built around the conceit of getting tattooed with brand messages — but those bright spots weren’t enough to save a bloated opener to what was already a packed week.

NBCU’s Spanish-language subsidiary Telemundo fared considerably better, throwing an energetic Rainbow Room celebration anchored by its Spanish-language rights to this summer’s World Cup. The event, which included a Peacock collaboration demo and appearances from Marshall and NBCU News Group chairman Cesar Conde, was a reminder of what upfront events can feel like when the hard sell takes a back seat to actually having a good time.

Tom Brady Steals the Fox Upfront

Fox moved to a new venue — New York City Center — and brought out a rare appearance from CEO Lachlan Murdoch. But the moment everyone will be talking about involved two former New England Patriots.

Tom Brady, now the No. 1 Fox Sports NFL analyst, has been steadily improving on air in a way that mirrors his playing career: methodical, disciplined, getting better every season. The upfront revealed something else entirely. Standing next to Erin Andrews and Rob Gronkowski as Gronk plugged an upcoming Fox holiday telecast, Brady didn’t hesitate to call an audible. When Gronkowski delivered his line — “Ho, ho, ho, the NFL is back for Christmas on Fox” — Brady flashed a sardonic smile and pounced. “Feels like he’s back at Arizona,” he cracked, referencing his ex-teammate’s notoriously hot-tub-filled college days at the University of Arizona. The room erupted.

It was the kind of loose, improvisational moment that no upfront script can manufacture — and it was the week’s single best piece of stage talent.

The Rest of the Field

Warner Bros. Discovery promised to get through its pitch in an hour. Sales co-chief Ryan Gould told the audience directly: “Put us on the clock.” They missed the target by more than 10 minutes, largely due to some vamping by Craig Ferguson and other talent. Not a disaster, but not a great look when you’ve made punctuality your selling point.

Paramount, which hasn’t put on a conventional full-tilt upfront since 2022, continued its more restrained approach. That 2022 stumble — linking CBS franchise 60 Minutes with the duration of the presentation, using the show’s stopwatch logo as a framing device — is still remembered as a cautionary tale.

Amazon and TelevisaUnivision managed to achieve something genuinely rare: they interrupted their own marketing pitches with more marketing. Amazon ran an ad-within-an-ad segment featuring Summer House alum Paige DeSorbo alongside one of the company’s own ad execs. TelevisaUnivision handed screen time to marketing executives from companies including Microsoft and Cologuard maker Exact Sciences. The meta-ness of it all was either bold or exhausting, depending on your tolerance level.

YouTube, at least, kept its obligatory chief marketing officer segment — this year featuring Coach’s Joon Silverstein — blessedly brief. Whatever aftertaste remained was immediately washed away by a rousing set from pop star Chappell Roan, which may have been the week’s most purely fun musical moment.

The Bigger Picture

Zoom out from the stage presentations and the after-parties, and the 2026 upfronts took place against a streaming landscape that’s shifting faster than the week’s PowerPoints could capture. Netflix’s ad business is on track to hit $3 billion in revenue this year, with more than 60% of new sign-ups in ad-supported markets choosing that tier. The company is now working with over 4,000 advertisers — up 70% year over year. Disney’s direct-to-consumer business, meanwhile, posted $582 million in operating income last quarter, a remarkable turnaround from the days when its streaming division was losing north of $100 million a day.

Warner Bros. Discovery, for its part, crossed 140 million global streaming subscribers in Q1 and is targeting 150 million by year’s end, with 50% of new retail subscribers opting for the ad-supported tier. The potential Paramount Skydance merger — still pending regulatory approval from the DOJ and European agencies despite an overwhelming shareholder vote in April — looms over everything, a reminder that the upfront sellers of today won’t all look the same by the time the next one rolls around.

One thing that did feel refreshingly different this year: the numbers took a back seat to the show. After years of charts and graphs elbowing out sizzle reels and trailers, the showbiz-oriented spirit of old largely prevailed. In a week that could easily have felt like a series of investor presentations with better lighting, that was a genuine relief.

Brady’s Gronkowski crack is still getting laughs in group chats. That’s the bar. More of that, please.