The Radio Hall of Fame announced nine posthumous Legends inductees on Aug. 3, 2026, adding to the eight living inductees revealed in May to complete its 2026 class.

The Legends honour goes to Wink Martindale, Vivian Carter, Gary Krantz, D.E. "Duke" Wright, Lin Brehmer, Dale Dorman, B. Mitchell Reed, Pierre Robert and Polito Vega, according to Billboard. The May round, announced by the Museum of Broadcast Communications on May 20, named Boomer Esiason, Dennis Green, Shotgun Tom Kelly, Helen Little, Bob Pittman, Rickey Smiley, Charlie Van Dyke and Fred Winston as the year's eight regular inductees.

Six of those eight — Esiason, Kelly, Little, Smiley, Van Dyke and Winston — were chosen from a list of 24 nominees by a voting panel of more than 950 industry professionals. Green and Pittman were voted in directly by the Radio Hall of Fame's 2026 nominating committee. The confidential ballot was conducted by Votem.com and overseen by Miller Kaplan's Andrew Rosen. Green and Kraig Kitchin serve as co-chairs of the Hall; Kitchin was himself inducted in 2024.

The nine Legends span decades and formats. Wink Martindale joined KHJ-AM in Los Angeles in 1959, later moving to KRLA-AM and KFWB-AM before settling at KMPC-AM in 1971, where he stayed, off and on, until 1987. He was also one of the few DJs to land a top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 — the chart that tracks the most popular songs in the US each week — when his spoken word record "Deck of Cards" reached No. 7 in November 1959.

Vivian Carter was a pioneering broadcaster, record executive and co-founder of Vee-Jay Records. In 1953, she and her husband Jimmy Bracken borrowed $500 to start the label, naming it after the initials of their first names. Vee-Jay would go on to become one of the most significant independent labels of its era.

The remaining Legends — Krantz, Wright, Brehmer, Dorman, Reed, Robert and Vega — each made their mark across radio markets and formats, from rock to Latin broadcasting. Inside Radio corroborated the Legends list on Aug. 3, confirming the same nine names.

The full 2026 class will be honoured at an induction ceremony scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 8 at the Fairmont Chicago. The event brings together both the living inductees and the families and legacies of those receiving posthumous recognition.

What stands out is the breadth of the class. A former NFL quarterback turned sports-talk host, a label founder who started with $500, a DJ who cracked the Hot 100 with a spoken word monologue, and a Latin radio icon all enter the same hall on the same night. The industry professionals who cast the ballots and the nominating committee that made its own picks spanned formats and generations, and so do the people they chose.