Why are the Emmys happening again if they just had a ceremony in January?

A new batch of Emmy nominations has dropped, which might seem perplexing, considering it was just yesterday that we were witnessing The Bear‘s Ebon Moss-Bachrach kiss his cast-mate Matty Matheson square on the lips on stage at the Peacock Theater after their show won Best Comedy Series. Well, that’s what it feels like, anyway.

Moss-Bachrach and all the boys and girls of The Bear are back in force on this new list of nominees, even breaking the record for most nods ever for a comedy series in a single year, but no one can quite figure out what season they’re all being nominated for.

What about the Emmys that happened in January?

That’s an excellent question! In January, television’s biggest names flocked to the Emmy Awards red carpet for the show’s 75th edition. That event was initially scheduled for its usual September slot in 2023, purposeful and carefully timed to ring in new television seasons with a celebration of the last, but then a major Hollywood crisis broke out that you may or may not recall.

2023 was defined, in part, by a pair of dueling Hollywood strikes that put nearly every film and television production on standby from May to November. Not only did the writers and actors’ strikes affect release schedules, but they also prevented those in the WGA and SAG-AFTRA from working in any capacity, including participating in a telecast like the Emmys as presenters and hosts (they could still be there as nominees, but who would be handing out the awards and delivering all the bad jokes?).

Make no confusion, however; the 75th Emmy Awards count as the 2023 Emmys and, regardless of the change in broadcast date, the only shows eligible for that ceremony were still those that aired between June 2022 and May 2023. That is why seasons that aired long before the 75th Emmy statuettes were even handed out — such as season 2 of The Bear, which dropped June 2023 — count towards the Emmys happening this September. The January ceremony awarded the FX show’s first season. So, for the dissenters who didn’t like the show’s third season that recently came out, don’t worry, that one hasn’t even been nominated yet.

2023 was not the first time the Emmys were delayed

The ceremony is rarely moved to a different date, but it’s not entirely unheard of.

Take 2001, which saw the ceremony shifted by several months. The 53rd Primetime Emmy Awards were initially slated to air in mid-September, as usual, but saw two delays push the awards back by a good seven weeks. The initial delay was prompted by the 9/11 attacks, which devastated the nation just five days before the ceremony was initially slated to air, and the 53rd Emmys were later delayed yet again by the early-October commencement of the two-decade-long war in Afghanistan.