Welcome to the first-ever Actor Awards red carpet. The title is new, but the ceremony wasn’t an eleventh-hour addition to the 2026 award season. Actually, the 32-year-old Screen Actors Guild Awards became the Actor Awards in November 2025 to “better reflect its position as the only industry honor given to actors, by actors,” according to SAG-AFTRA. But if you accidentally call the 2026 Actor Awards the SAG Awards, you’re not alone. Even the ceremony’s host, Kristen Bell, admitted “there’s been a lot of slip-ups” at Netflix.
Most of what made the SAG Awards the SAG Awards still applies to the Actor Awards. 2026’s buzziest films, TV shows, actors, and ensembles still formed the current class of nominees, just like they have since 1995. The biggest change—apart from the name—is the addition of an official red carpet dress code, “Reimagining Hollywood Glamour From the ‘20s and ‘30s,” for the first time in SAG history. I certainly didn’t see it coming, even as Marie Claire’s part-award season superfan, part-fashion staff writer. But as an expert on Hollywood’s biggest pro dress-code affairs (like the Met Gala and the Cannes Film Festival), I’m grateful for more themed fashion.
