Not really. Since 2015, the Golden Globe winner for Best Television Series – Drama has gone on to win the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series just 3 times in 11 years. A 27% match rate. The January ceremony is a party, not a forecast. A September ballot built on it is built on very little.
Every January, the same ritual. The Globes air, a drama wins, and the group chat declares the Emmy race over before dessert. It is awards season's Groundhog Day: a celebrity emerges in winter, makes a prediction, and six more months of ceremony happen regardless of what it saw.
I wanted to know whether the prediction was any good, so I checked all eleven years of it.
How often do the Globes and Emmys actually agree?
Here is the crossover record, straight from the winner tables.
3/11
#The Golden Globe called the Emmy for Best Drama just 27% of the time since 2015.
Only 3 of the last 11 Golden Globe Best TV Drama winners went on to win the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series the same year.
Three matches. Eleven years. A 27% match rate. For a forecast that gets treated as a verdict, that is not a great look.
Flip a coin eleven times and you would expect it to agree with the Emmy about five or six times. The Globes managed three. I am not saying a coin would do better; I am saying the coin would not be smug about it.
One scope note before anyone gets excited, because it matters. This is exactly one matchup: the Golden Globe for Best Television Series – Drama against the same calendar year's Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series, 2015 through 2025. It says nothing about comedy, nothing about limited series, nothing about the acting races.
Inside that one lane, though, the record is stark.
| Year | Did the Emmy follow the Globe? |
|---|---|
| 2015 | No |
| 2016 | No |
| 2017 | No |
| 2018 | No |
| 2019 | No |
| 2020 | Yes |
| 2021 | Yes |
| 2022 | Yes |
| 2023 | No |
| 2024 | No |
| 2025 | No |
Three yeses, eight noes. I went looking for a forecast and found an echo.
So which years matched, and which missed?
The three matches were the ones that needed no help. A media-empire succession drama connected twice, in 2020 and 2022; a royal biography drama connected once, in 2021. Both were shows steamrolling the entire culture at the time, and when that happens, both ceremonies steamroll along with it.
Which quietly makes the 27% look worse, not better. The years the Globe "called" the Emmy were exactly the years no call was needed: the eventual winner was already the loudest show on television, the pick every ballot at every party had in ink. The Globe added nothing.
And in the years where a forecast would have actually helped (the open races, the ones a pool is genuinely won and lost on), January and September disagreed every single time, 2015 through 2025. Which is the opposite of useful. A forecast that only works when you already know the answer is not a forecast; it is a round of applause.
Now the eight misses, which read like alternate cuts of the same season. In 2015 and 2016, the Globes crowned intimate cable and hacker dramas while the Emmys kept re-crowning their fantasy juggernaut: two ceremonies, four months apart, watching different televisions. In 2018, the Globes honored the dystopian drama the Emmys had celebrated the previous September and already moved past, January arriving with a casserole for a party that ended in the autumn.
In 2024 and 2025, the Globes toasted triumphs the Emmys had certified months earlier, and then September crowned something else entirely. Twice. Same red carpet, completely different script. If you had used the Globe as your Emmy pick in those two years, you would have been wrong both times. Confidently, in January, in front of everyone.
Why do two award shows disagree so much?
Three structural reasons, none of them scandalous.
Different voters
The Emmys are decided by thousands of Television Academy members: people who make television for a living. The Globes are decided by a much smaller body, with roots in international entertainment journalism. Critics on one side, the writers' room on the other: two rooms that have not once ordered the same thing off a menu.
Different calendars
The Globes judge the calendar year; the Emmys judge a June-to-May eligibility window. So a show can premiere in the fall, win a Globe in January, and then wait until the following September for the Emmys to even consider the season it won for. By which point a shinier contender has usually walked in, fashionably late, stealing every scene.
Different appetites
The Globes reward the new and the glamorous, and a splashy first season is Globe catnip. Emmy voters are steadier: more willing to re-crown, slower to anoint. One ceremony swipes right immediately; the other wants a few more seasons before it commits.
Should you ignore the Globes completely?
No. A 27% match rate is not a zero. A Globe win is real information: it tells you a show has heat with one small voting body, inside one eligibility window. That is a data point, just a much smaller one than the group chat thinks it is.
Here is the honest version. The Globes are good at confirming what the room already knew, and poor at calling a race that is genuinely open. Since 2015, that is exactly the shape the crossover record has.
Useful, then. Just never at the moment you need it.
What should a Globe win do to your January ballot?
Move it a little, not a lot. Treat a Globe as a signal, never a projection. The whole playbook, in three lines:
- A Globe win is a momentum note, not a coronation. One small voting body liked a show, in one eligibility window. That earns a nudge, not a rewrite, especially in the categories volatile enough to swing your pool.
- Check the calendar before you check your gut. Confirm the season that won in January is even eligible for the Emmys you are filling out. The awards season calendar maps which window feeds which ceremony.
- Favorites underdeliver in general. The Globes-to-Emmys gap is one instance of a much broader pattern: frontrunners win less often than the discourse assumes, and the favorite win-rate numbers make that painfully concrete.
Anchoring a whole ballot to the Globes is judging a season by its cold open. The honest January move is pencil, not pen, because the envelope in September has no memory of the envelope in January, and no take-backs either way.
There is always one person in a pool who fills out the ballot in ninety seconds on Globes night and announces he has it locked. He is a delight. He is also building September out of January.
Want to track the whole season instead of one night?
One January result is one data point. A season is dozens of them. So play the season: set up an awards pool for your group, start one in about two minutes, and put the 2026 Emmys on the board.
Prefer paper? Print a free ballot for the low-tech loyalists in the room. Winner gets bragging rights and picks the next movie night.
The Globes get no vote in that either.