Kids' Choice Awards Air on CBS for First Time Tonight

The Kids' Choice Awards change networks tonight without changing address. The 2026 ceremony airs live on Saturday, November 14, from 8 to 9:30 p.m. Eastern, 5 to 6:30 p.m. Pacific, from Television City in Los Angeles, simulcast on Nickelodeon and, for the first time, CBS. Paramount is using its broadcast flagship to widen a show that has lived on cable for its entire run, and the 90-minute format stays tight: 36 fan-voted awards, celebrity appearances and the green slime that remains the franchise's signature special effect.

The host is the year's most literal pop story. Alex Warren, the 26-year-old multiplatinum singer-songwriter whose single "Ordinary" reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, leads the ceremony as a Grammy-nominated artist hosting an awards show built on fan votes. Warren is also a nominee himself: his Jelly Roll collaboration "Bloodline" sits in the Favorite Music Collaboration field, which means the host could hand an award to himself before the night is out.

The nomination math belongs to the expected names, at unusual scale. Taylor Swift leads all individual nominees with six nominations, followed by Ariana Grande and Sabrina Carpenter with five each, in a field that spans film, television, music, gaming, sports and creators. The Favorite Movie race runs eight deep, including Avatar: Fire and Ash, Lilo and Stitch, Superman and Wicked: For Good, and the animated field adds KPop Demon Hunters, Toy Story 5 and Zootopia 2. Voting across all 36 categories closed on Friday, November 13, though the show plans live in-show voting tied to a Tony Hawk and Burger King segment.

The performance lineup is set. Jamie Miller opens the show with the United States television debut of "Babydoll," joined in the opening number by Antonio Cipriano, Victoria Justice and JYT. Ashe performs her breakout hit "Stop the Wedding!," and Grammy-nominated duo SOFI TUKKER perform "TSUNAMI," their collaboration with Ryan Tedder. Chris Pratt will receive the King of Comedy Award during the broadcast, the show's honorary slot for the year.

How families watch is the other first. Paramount+ Premium subscribers can stream the ceremony live through their local CBS station, while every Paramount+ plan, Premium and Essential alike, gets the show on demand starting Sunday, November 15, with global on-demand availability following the premiere. A broadcast debut plus a next-day streaming window is the current Paramount template for event television, and a family show with a built-in young audience is a low-risk place to run it.

The test tonight is demographic translation. The Kids' Choice Awards have always been voted by the audience they're named for, and CBS is betting that audience brings its parents to a broadcast network at 8 p.m. on a Saturday. If the simulcast holds, expect the model to spread to Paramount's other cable institutions. The slime, at least, has never needed a bigger network to work.