Jalen Brunson, Simone Biles and A'ja Wilson lead ESPYs winners

Jalen Brunson, A'ja Wilson and Alysa Liu were among the biggest winners at the 2026 ESPYs, a show that turned the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center into a cross-section of the current sports hierarchy. Marcello Hernández hosted the ceremony on Wednesday, July 15, and became the first Latino host of the ESPYs in 25 years.

The winners list also included Fernando Mendoza, Shohei Ohtani, Myles Garrett and the New York Knicks, giving the show a mix of NBA, NFL, MLB and women’s sports winners. ESPN said the annual awards honor the year’s top athletic achievements, and the roster of nominees had already pointed to the same power centers, with Brunson, Garrett, Liu, Matthew Stafford, Rory McIlroy, Lionel Messi, Ohtani, Mikaela Shiffrin, Victor Wembanyama and Wilson all in the frame.

Wilson and Liu gave the night a strong women’s-sports thread, alongside Simone Biles, Suni Lee, Mikaela Shiffrin and Hannah Hidalgo among the attendees and presenters. That concentration mattered as much as the trophies: the ESPYs have become one of the few mainstream sports events where women’s basketball, Olympic gymnastics, figure skating and skiing share the same national stage as the NBA and NFL, with Biles and Lee signaling Olympic-era star power and Wilson representing the WNBA’s most visible tier.

The room also underlined how tightly sports and entertainment now travel together. Ciara, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Will Ferrell, Megan Grant, Tiffany Haddish, Kevin Hart, DJ Khaled, Jayson Tatum and Mike Tyson were among the names in attendance, while De La Soul, Ghostface Killah, Slick Rick and the Savannah Bananas handled the performances. The show aired live on ABC at 8 p.m. ET, 7 p.m. CT, and streamed on the ESPN App, with next-day availability on Disney+, Hulu, the ESPN App and ABC Video on Demand.

First held in 1993, the ESPYs benefit the V Foundation for Cancer Research, the charity created by ESPN and the late Jim Valvano. ESPN says the event and related fundraising have helped raise more than $292 million for the foundation over more than 33 years, giving the night a commercial sheen and a philanthropic purpose that now sit alongside its role as a weekly scoreboard for sports celebrity.