Once again, it’s time to celebrate the contributions of the new breed of unscripted superstars, via Realscreen‘s annual Factual Under 40 feature.

The Realscreen Factual Under 40 was created in 2023 to recognize rising stars in the unscripted and non-fiction screen content industry, via nominations from peers within the business. The 2026 cohort will be featured in a special Factual Under 40 microsite, in advance of the Realscreen Summit and NATPE Global co-located events taking place in Miami from February 2-6, 2026.

For this edition, we are introducing a new category for nominations — creators with their own social video channels in the unscripted and non-fiction space.

Here’s how it works: nominees are evaluated in light of the information supplied and research from our editorial team, and not solely by the number of votes.

Individuals submitted as nominees must be 40 years of age or under as of January 19, 2026. Nominations must be submitted by November 28, 2025.

Nominations can be entered in six categories:

Production (employees and/or owners of production companies, non-network production executives)
Networks/platforms (production execs within a network or streaming environment, programming and/or development executives, legal, business affairs, etc.)
Agencies (agents working with unscripted/non-fiction production clients in some capacity)
Distribution (execs from the sales/distribution arm of a network/network group, a producer/distributor, or distribution company/sales agent)
Miscellaneous (production music, archive/stock footage, legal, etc.)
NEW — Creators (those who create unscripted and non-fiction content for digital and/or social platforms)

Multiple votes from one submitter for one nominee, or “form” submissions that appear to be campaigns for individuals, will not be accepted. If you would like to submit more than one individual for consideration, please submit them via separate nomination forms.

To submit a nomination, please fill out the official nomination form here.

To see last year’s cohort, visit our 2025 Factual Under 40 microsite here.

Please contact content director and editor-in-chief Barry Walsh (bwalsh@brunico.com), special reports editor Justin Anderson (janderson@brunico.com) or news editor Nicholas Sokic (nsokic@brunico.com) with any questions or inquiries.

Logo: Mark Lacoursiere