Davina McCall will receive the Edinburgh TV Festival’s Outstanding Achievement Award for 2026, the festival announced on Wednesday, 14 May 2026 ET, in recognition of a career that has run from MTV to some of British television’s best-known entertainment formats.

McCall said she could not quite believe she had been awarded such an honour for doing something she loves so much. She added that she had been very lucky to work on many amazing shows with many incredible people over her career, and said she had learnt a great deal along the way.

The award will put McCall, one of television’s most recognisable presenters, back in front of the festival audience this summer for a conversation about a career that spans 30 years. She made her TV debut on MTV, played Cupid on Streetmate and hosted Big Brother for a decade, before going on to front Long Lost Family, Million Pound Drop and The Masked Singer. Long Lost Family is a BAFTA award-winning series.

In recent years, McCall has also become an outspoken advocate for more public discussion of menopause and women’s health, using documentaries including Sex, Myths and the Menopause and Sex, Mind and the Menopause to push that conversation into the mainstream. That shift has broadened what her television career has come to represent: not just entertainment, but a public platform with a clear purpose.

The Edinburgh TV Festival said the award reflected that full body of work, citing her career across MTV, Streetmate, Big Brother, Long Lost Family, Million Pound Drop and The Masked Singer, as well as her documentaries on menopause and women’s health. Previous winners of the prize include Lenny Henry, Claudia Winkleman, Jodie Comer, David Harewood and Hugh Laurie.

McCall said she could not wait to look back at the last 30 years in the session at Edinburgh this summer. The award does more than honour longevity; it marks the rare television figure whose popularity has endured because her work kept changing with the medium and with the moment.