Steven Spielberg is now an EGOT winner

When Steven Spielberg won a Grammy Award during tonight’s ceremony, he did much more than add yet another statue to his shelf.

The Grammy makes Spielberg the newest addition to a special list of artists: EGOT winners.

It’s not an official designation, but EGOT winners are artists who have won at least one Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony award. With tonight’s award, Spielberg is now one of 22 competitive EGOT winners in entertainment history.

What got Spielberg his EGOT?

Spielberg won a 2026 Grammy Award for Best Music Film for producing “Music by John Williams,” a documentary about Spielberg’s most frequent collaborator, the composer who wrote the scores for “Schindler’s List,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Jurassic Park,” to name only a few films.

The director has 12 Emmys; highlights include awards for producing TV shows such as “Band of Brothers,” “The Pacific” and “Animaniacs.”

Spielberg has three Oscars, two for Best Director (“Schindler’s List” and “Saving Private Ryan”) and one for Best Picture (“Schindler’s List”).

And to wrap up the EGOT, Spielberg has a Tony Award for Best Musical in 2022 for “A Strange Loop.” Spielberg is on an incredibly long list of producer credits for the show, and he’s not listed everywhere, but Variety confirmed with the Tonys that he did receive a statue.

Spielberg’s Arizona roots

An EGOT is a huge deal, but that’s not why we’re talking about Spielberg’s accomplishment.

Spielberg’s family moved to the Valley when he was 10 years old. He learned to make films while living in Arcadia with his parents and sisters. (For a dramatized version of Spielberg’s adolescence, see his film “The Fabelmans.”)

At the age of 17, he released his first film, “Firelight,” with a screening at the Phoenix Little Theatre. As the story goes, the film cost $500 to make, and ticket sales came out to $501, earning the future blockbuster director a cool $1 profit.

EGOT winners

Spielberg is in good company as an EGOT winner. Twenty-one other people are considered “competitive” EGOT winners, meaning that they won their qualifying awards.

Notable EGOT winners include Audrey Hepburn, Mel Brooks, Rita Moreno, John Legend, Elton John, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Viola Davis and Jennifer Hudson.

If you add in honorary awards, another six people join the EGOT club, including Barbra Streisand, Liza Minnelli, Quincy Jones and James Earl Jones.

Is there anything better than an EGOT?

In all of entertainment history, there are only two people who have a PEGOT: an EGOT plus a Pulitzer Prize. They are Marvin Hamlisch, the creator of “A Chorus Line” and composer of “The Way We Were”; and Richard Rodgers, who with partners Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II is responsible for the music for “The Sound of Music,” “The King and I,” “Oklahoma!” and other classic Broadway shows.