Soul Train Awards Return This November — on BET and CBS
The Soul Train Awards are coming back. BET has revived the music awards telecast three years after it was placed on pause, and for the first time the special will air on CBS alongside BET — a simulcast that puts the show in front of a broadcast-television audience the franchise has never had.
The 2026 Soul Train Awards will air Friday, 27 November at 8 p.m. on BET and CBS, and will also run on VH1, MTV2, Logo and BET Her — the same suite of Paramount Skydance cablers that carried the last edition in 2023, when Keke Palmer hosted and SZA took home four trophies including Album and Song of the Year Variety. Jesse Collins Entertainment is producing, with Jesse Collins, Dionne Harmon and Jeannae Rouzan-Clay serving as executive producers alongside BET's Connie Orlando, exec VP of specials, music programming and music strategy.
The telecast will be taped in Chicago — the city where Don Cornelius first launched Soul Train in 1971, initially on independent station WCIU before it moved into national syndication and became a Saturday-afternoon fixture for decades. BET president Louis Carr said in a statement he is proud to bring the awards back to the city where the franchise originated.
Orlando said the 2026 edition will be "reimagined" with a "bold new format." A BET press release described the show as blending "honorees who defined the sound with the artists carrying it forward," with performances, host details and honourees to be announced in the coming weeks Variety.
Spotify has signed on as exclusive music streaming partner, and Toyota is a key sponsor — deals that suggest the revival is arriving with commercial backing rather than as a bare-bones return.
The pause itself dates to 2025, when BET's then-CEO Scott Mills — who departed at the end of last year — told Billboard that the company had suspended both the Soul Train Awards and the BET Hip-Hop Awards. At the time, BET said the shows could return with updated formats or on new platforms CBS8. The CBS simulcast is the most visible piece of that promise — placing a historically cable franchise on a broadcast network's schedule.
BET's awards calendar now runs across the year. The BET Awards 2026 aired live on Sunday, 28 June, with comedian Druski hosting. The Soul Train Awards fills the November slot the franchise last occupied in 2023.
For a show that went dark mid-decade, the return carries more than nostalgia. It pairs a legacy music brand with a broadcast-window audience, and it does so from the city where the Soul Train train first left the station.
