Spain will reach the International Emmys in 2026 with five nominations, but the number tells only part of the story. What is more interesting is to look at what lies behind them: an original Movistar Plus+ series, a Netflix comedy, a daily drama, a 3Cat documentary, and a historical miniseries.
There is no single winning export model.
The International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences has announced 64 nominations spread across 16 categories and 22 countries. The winners will be announced on November 23 in New York. In the Spanish slate appear Javier Cámara for Yakarta, Animal, Temps mort, the second season of Valle Salvaje, and Anatomía de un instante.
The official list from the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences also traces the business footprint behind each nomination. And there you see the true map.
Javier Cámara competes for Best Actor for Yakarta, credited to Buendía Studios Canarias, Mediapro Canarias and Movistar Plus+. Animal — which appears internationally as Old Dog, New Tricks — represents Spain in comedy with Alea and Netflix. Temps mort is credited to 3Cat and El Terrat, of The Mediapro Studio. Valle Salvaje appears under StudioCanal and Anatomía de un instante as a Movistar Plus+ and DLO Producciones production.
Five nominations, five different paths
The temptation would be to summarize the result by saying that Spanish fiction is once again working internationally. It’s true, but too generic.
What these nominations show is that internationalization no longer depends on a single platform turning a Spanish series into a worldwide phenomenon.
Yakarta is a good example. Movistar Plus+ developed the series with 100 Balas, of The Mediapro Studio, and Buendía Estudios Canarias, led by Javier Cámara. Its international distribution is handled by The Mediapro Studio Distribution.
It isn’t Movistar’s only presence among the nominees either. Anatomía de un instante, produced with DLO Producciones and associated with ARTE France, has Movistar Plus+’s own international distribution. The two were part of the platform’s powerful lineup of originals it had been assembling, which included both Yakarta and Anatomía de un instante.
Netflix represents another model. Animal originates from the Spanish production company Alea Media, shot entirely in Galicia, and from its inception carried the global distribution capacity of a multinational. It does not need to build an international circuit afterward: the international window is part of the product itself.
Temps mort introduces a third path. It is a production of 3Cat with El Terrat, centered on the story of former basketball player Charles Thomas. A regional television network thus manages to place a Catalan-language production within an international category of sports documentary.
And Valle Salvaje perhaps represents the most striking case because it comes from daily television. The La 1 fiction returns to compete in the telenovela category after having been nominated last year.
Spanish daily fiction is no longer an exclusively domestic product
Here is a change that deserves particular attention.
For years, daily series have been understood mainly as products for the national daytime schedule: long hours of production, fidelity, tight per-minute costs, and the capacity to feed Monday-to-Friday programming.
Their recurring presence at the International Emmys proves they can also have industrial reach outside Spain.
The clearest precedent is La Promesa, which won the International Emmy for Best Telenovela in 2024. It is an especially significant evolution because the international story of Spanish fiction is usually remembered through prime-time successes and streaming like La casa de papel, the first Spanish series to win the International Emmy for Best Drama.
Now the exportable catalog is considerably broader.
A Galician comedy starring Luis Zahera can compete alongside a daily fiction; a 3Cat documentary can share a national nomination with a historical production about the 23-F; and an actor from a Movistar Plus+ series can measure himself against Ricardo Darín in El Eternauta.
The Academy is not yet awarding any of them — nominations are not victories — but the selection does allow drawing an industry conclusion: Spain is not reaching the 2026 Emmys through a single factory, a single network, or a single platform.
Movistar Plus+, Netflix, RTVE, 3Cat, independent producers, and major international distributors appear, one way or another, within the group.
That is probably more interesting than simply adding five and comparing the figure to that of another year.
Sustainable international success rarely consists of finding another La casa de papel. It consists of creating enough paths so that very different projects can go abroad.
The Spanish nominees of 2026 begin to look exactly like that: not a isolated phenomenon, but an ecosystem of production and distribution with multiple exit doors.
