Puppy Bowl 2026 Rises to Biggest Audience in 8 Years With 15.3 Million Viewers

The 2026 Puppy Bowl, the call-to-adoption event accompanying the Super Bowl, scored its biggest audience in eight years this Sunday.

Puppy Bowl XXII, which broadcast before the big game at 2:00 p.m. ET/11:00 a.m. PT, tallied up 15.3 million viewers across Animal Planet, Discovery, TBS, truTV, HBO Max and discovery+, according to live-plus-same-day Nielsen figures. That’s up 19.5% from last year, marking the event’s strongest performance since 2018.

The Puppy Bowl ranked as the No. 1 non-sports cable telecast of the day among key adult demos, and saw notable ratings gains among adults 25-54 on both TBS and truTV, with the event seeing a 11% and 104% rise, respectively. In fact, the 2026 event marks the highest‑rated Puppy Bowl broadcast ever on TBS and truTV.

The 2026 event builds upon the prior year’s ratings growth, which similarly became the highest-rated telecast in the event’s history on Discovery, TBS and truTV, as well as Animal Planet’s highest-rated Puppy Bowl in four years.

“This year’s Puppy Bowl delivered its strongest performance in nearly a decade, and its success across linear and streaming highlights our unique ability to unite audiences around content that feels good and does good,” Discovery Channel head of content Joseph Boyle said in a statement. “We’re grateful to bring viewers so much joy and are deeply proud of the purpose at the heart of this event.” 

The Puppy Bowl wasn’t Sunday’s only ratings success, with the 2026 Super Bowl scoring the second most-watched Super Bowl in history with 124.9 million viewers tuning in across NBC, Peacock, Telemundo, NBC Sports Digital and NFL+. The game saw a slight 2% dip from last year’s record viewership of 127.7 million for the Chiefs-Eagles game.

Puppy Bowl XXII is produced for Animal Planet by Bright Spot Content, an All3Media America company.   

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