For one night, the marble halls of Lincoln Center traded ballet for basketball highlights. The ESPYS, ESPN's annual celebration of the sporting year, returned to New York City for the first time since 1999, setting up shop at the David H. Koch Theater in a venue better known for opera than for slam dunks.
A new host, an old home
The ceremony was hosted by the "Saturday Night Live" star Marcello Hernández, who steered a night of tributes, montages and the occasional needle. The move back east gave the show a different texture from its recent Los Angeles runs, swapping Hollywood's red carpet for a Manhattan cultural landmark, though the business of the evening, honoring the year's best athletes and moments, was unchanged.
The winners
The hardware went to a mix of established stars and rising ones. Jalen Brunson of the New York Knicks won Best Championship Performance, a fitting note on home turf after the franchise's title run, while the Los Angeles Dodgers' two-way phenomenon Shohei Ohtani took Best Single-Game Performance.
The show also leaned into the next generation. Figure skater Alysa Liu was named Best Breakthrough Athlete. In the college categories, Indiana's Fernando Mendoza won Best College Athlete in men's sports and UCLA's Lauren Betts won on the women's side, a nod to the growing prominence of college stars on the sport's biggest awards stage.
What the night was for
Beneath the glamour, the ESPYS have always carried a second purpose. Since their debut in the early 1990s, the awards have been tied to the V Foundation for Cancer Research, and the evening's more emotional segments, its perseverance and humanitarian honors, tend to draw the loudest ovations. The return to New York gave the 2026 edition a sense of homecoming, a reminder that a show now synonymous with Los Angeles glitz began its life on the other coast, and that the athletes it celebrates come from everywhere in between.
