Five previous Emmy winners — The Daily Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and Saturday Night Live — will compete for the Outstanding Variety Series Emmy, following the merger of the Outstanding Talk Series and Outstanding Scripted Variety Series categories. The change matters because a new rule quirk means more than one of these shows could actually win when the Primetime Emmys are held on 14 September, an unusual departure from the single-winner norm.

John Oliver enters as the show to beat, having won 10 consecutive Emmys, including three in the scripted variety category (introduced in 2023) and seven in the talk category. Recent history has been eventful: The Daily Show won two talk-series Emmys in a row, Colbert took last year's prize after his show was axed by CBS ahead of Paramount's takeover, and SNL won six straight scripted-variety Emmys between 2017 and 2022 plus a variety special award for its 50th anniversary. The TV Academy has reclassified the race as an "area award", meaning any nominee reaching a 90% threshold will "merit" an Emmy, raising the prospect of multiple statues; rules were also put in place to guarantee that at least one of SNL and Last Week Tonight made the five-strong shortlist.