Marcello Hern\u00e1ndez is heading to the ESPYS.<\/p>\n
ESPN announced Wednesday<\/a> that the 28-year-old Saturday Night Live star will host the 2026 ESPYS on July 15, with the show airing live on ABC from the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center. It\u2019s the first time the show has been held in New York City since 1999 \u2014 the ESPYS launched at Madison Square Garden in 1993 and called New York home for its first seven years \u2014 before moving to Las Vegas and Los Angeles for the next two-plus decades.<\/p>\n Hern\u00e1ndez joined SNL in 2022 as its first Gen Z cast member and has become one of the show\u2019s breakout stars over four seasons, known for his recurring character Domingo and his impressions of comedian Sebastian Maniscalco, among others. He was promoted to repertory status at the start of SNL\u2018s 50th season in 2024 and released his debut Netflix special Marcello Hern\u00e1ndez: American Boy earlier this year.<\/p>\n \u201cI started doing comedy 10 years ago, in Cleveland, Ohio, and I would take the train 12 hours to New York to sell comedy tickets on the street in Greenwich Village in exchange for stage time,\u201d Hern\u00e1ndez said in a statement. \u201cIt is an honor, and frankly feels crazy to be hosting the ESPYS this year in New York. I\u2019m sure the energy is going to be great.\u201d<\/p>\n Hern\u00e1ndez grew up in Miami playing soccer competitively enough to train with the U15 Dominican Republic national team before continuing at John Carroll University<\/a> in Ohio, and his SNL Weekend Update debut was a baseball bit that Lorne Michaels specifically coaxed out of him<\/a> because of his obvious enthusiasm for the sport<\/p>\n \u201cMarcello is one of the most electric, young comedians today,\u201d ESPN vice president and ESPYS executive producer Craig Lazarus added. \u201cHis genuine enthusiasm for sports and his ties to New York City make him a natural fit to host this year\u2019s ESPYS.\u201d<\/p>\n Hern\u00e1ndez takes over from Shane Gillis, who hosted last year\u2019s show in Los Angeles<\/a> after ESPN made what was at the time a genuinely surprising call to book one of comedy\u2019s most unpredictable voices. Gillis went after Caitlin Clark, Donald Trump, Aaron Rodgers, and Karl-Anthony Towns, among others<\/a>, in his opening monologue \u2014 including a Deshaun Watson massage joke he claimed he didn\u2019t write \u2014 and delivered what was arguably<\/a> the most memorable ESPYS monologue since Norm Macdonald\u2019s<\/a> in 1998.<\/p>\n Hern\u00e1ndez joins a long list of comedians who have hosted the ESPYS over the years, including Gillis, Macdonald, Jimmy Kimmel, Tracy Morgan, and Joel McHale. The show airs July 15 at 8 p.m. ET on ABC and streams on the ESPN app, Disney+, and Hulu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marcello Hern\u00e1ndez is heading to the ESPYS. ESPN announced Wednesday that the 28-year-old Saturday Night Live star will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321387,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[115077,150,152,151,115078,115079],"class_list":["post-325495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arlington","tag-2026-espys","tag-arlington","tag-arlington-headlines","tag-arlington-news","tag-espys","tag-marcello-hernandez"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}