Nickelodeon made a splash at New York Comic Con on Thursday, announcing that the 2026 Kids Choice Awards will air live on NICK and — for the first time ever — CBS on Saturday November 14th at 8pm. This advertisement was just one side of a massive display surrounding this year’s Nickelodeon NYCC activation, a “Fun-ergy Factory”, with slime, perfect as part of the “Nicktober Hallo-scream” campaign.

The KCA Favorite Animated Movie category is made-up of Sony/Netflix Oscar winner “KPop Demon Hunters”, Illumination’s “Minions & Monsters” and “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie”, Pixar’s “Toy Story 5”, Disney’s “Zootopia 2”, and Paramount’s “Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender”, “PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie” and “The SpongeBob Movie: Search For SquarePants”. The Favorite Cartoon nominees are Disney’s “Big City Greens” and “Phineas and Ferb”, DreamWorks/Netflix “The Bad Guys: The Series”, FOX’s “The Simpsons”, Cartoon Network’s “Teen Titans Go!” and longtime winner, NICK’s own “SpongeBob SquarePants”.

I always like walking around the NYCC 2026 show floor to check-out other animation highlights. Didn’t have to go far: Right next to the Nickelodeon section is an area devoted to new series “Avatar: Seven Havens”, which is now streaming on Paramount+.

One of my favorite moments: seeing Scholastic’s Dog Man and Petey the Cat characters spin around. A “Dog Man” movie sequel would be a lot of fun. Here’s hoping DreamWorks Animation delivers!

“Godzilla Minus Zero”, the sequel to 2023’s “Godzilla Minus One” (which won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects), is in theaters November 6th. This giant Godzilla has quite the impact.

And I enjoyed catching-up with the great Matthew Lillard, star of “Scream”, “The Descendants”, and of course “Scooby-Doo”. He played Shaggy in the 2002 and 2004 live-action movies and has voiced the iconic character in more than 20 features, about a dozen specials and several TV series since 2009.

More panel highlights and interviews with animation makers are on the way, as Animation Scoop’s NYCC 2026 coverage continues!