SAG-AFTRA in the context of International Federation of Actors

The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) was an American labor union which represented over 100,000 film and television principal and background performers worldwide. On March 30, 2012, the union leadership announced that the SAG membership voted to merge with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) to create SAG-AFTRA.

The Actor Awards presented by SAG-AFTRA, also known as the Actor Awards, and formerly known as the Screen Actors Guild Awards or SAG Awards between 1995 and 2025, are accolades given by the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA). The award was founded in 1995 to recognize outstanding performances in movie and prime-time television. SAG Awards have been one of the major awards events in the Hollywood film industry since then, along with the Golden Globe Awards and the Oscars. SAG awards focus both on individual performances and on the work of the entire ensemble of a drama series and comedy series, and the cast of a motion picture.

Nominations for the awards come from two committees, one for film and one for television, each numbering 2,100 members of the union, randomly selected anew each year, with the full membership (165,000 as of 2012) available to vote for the winners. It is considered an indicator of success at the Academy Awards in acting categories. The awards were telecast on TNT from 1998 to 2022, and were simulcast on TBS from 2007 to 2022. In 2023, Netflix live streamed the awards on Netflix's YouTube channel. Netflix began to air the awards live beginning in 2024 as part of a new multi-year partnership.

The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) was a performers' union that represented a wide variety of talent, including actors in radio and television, radio and television announcers and newspersons, singers and recording artists (both royalty artists and background singers), promo and voice-over announcers and other performers in commercials, stunt persons and specialty acts—as the organization itself publicly stated, "AFTRA's membership includes an array of talent". On March 30, 2012, the members of AFTRA and of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) voted to merge and form SAG-AFTRA.