MPTF's Evening Before Emmy Party Moves to Pacific Design Center After 19 Years in Century City
After 19 years in Century City, the Motion Picture & Television Fund's annual Evening Before Emmy party is moving to the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood. The 20th edition of the benefit is set for Sunday, 13 September 2026, at 8 p.m. — the night before the 78th Emmy Awards ceremony on Monday, 14 September (Deadline).
The Pacific Design Center is no stranger to Emmy-week festivities. The landmark West Hollywood venue was the longtime pre-pandemic home of HBO's Emmy afterparty, giving the new MPTF location a built-in sense of industry history (Deadline).
This year's chairs bring recognisable names to the head table. Stephen Colbert and Evelyn McGee Colbert, comedian and actress Janelle James, and Lisa Kudrow of Friends are serving as chairs of the 20th Annual Evening Before Benefit (Deadline).
The Evening Before event celebrates the entertainment industry's top talent while raising money and awareness for the MPTF, the fund that provides financial assistance, health services and other support to film and television workers in need (MPTF).
Meanwhile, HBO Max's own Emmy afterparty is keeping its venue: the San Vicente Bungalows, also in West Hollywood. That keeps two of Emmy weekend's highest-profile gatherings within a short drive of each other (Deadline).
A venue change after nearly two decades is the kind of detail that sounds small until you consider the logistics. These events draw hundreds of industry guests, crews, caterers and security teams, all of whom now route to a different address. For an organisation whose entire mission is supporting the people who make television, moving the party that funds that work is no light pencil mark on a calendar.
What gives the shift an extra layer of texture is the room itself. The Pacific Design Center's pre-pandemic role as HBO's afterparty base means that for an older generation of Emmy-night regulars, the space already carries memories — of a different party, on a different night, for a different reason. Now it hosts a benefit whose proceeds go straight back to the workforce those guests depend on.
For the industry figures who attend, and for the MPTF supporters the evening serves, 13 September will be the first night in two decades that the Evening Before party plays out somewhere new.
