EGOT

28 August 2026

EGOT is an acronym for Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony and is a status given to people who have won all four awards. To date, twenty-two people have achieved EGOT status with competitive awards, the most recent being Steven Spielberg, who achieved the status with a Grammy in 2026. A further six people have achieved the status with one of the awards being an honorary one.

Actor Philip Michael Thomas, who rose to fame as one of the stars to the television series Miami Vice (1984–89) is the first person recorded as using the acronym, and he is generally credited with coining the term. Thomas’s use of EGOT is documented in an Associated Press article that appears in the San Francisco Chronicle on 18 August 1984:

His career started in music, then the acting “took over,” [Thomas] said. “For a lot of years I thought one of these days I’m going to do something musical and turn on the juice and they’re going to say, ‘My God, what a talent!’ It hasn’t happened yet, but it will.”

On his 35th birthday last May, he said he launched a plan called “EGOT.” “That stand for Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony,” he said. “Hopefully in the next five years I will win all those awards.

To date, Thomas has not been nominated for any of the four awards.

Sources:

Buck, Jerry (Associated Press). “A Pair of Cops Living on the Edge.” San Francisco Chronicle (California), 18 August 1984, 33/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, January 2018, s.v. EGOT, n.

Photo credit: Montage appeared in People magazine, 2017. Individual image credits are Jemal Countess/Getty; Scott Olson/Getty; Gabriel Olsen/FilmMagic; Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty. Fair use of a low-resolution copy to illustrate the topic under discussion.