HGTV’s Home Town Takeover, the renovation series that turned downtown Sebring into a national television star, has earned its first-ever award recognition: a 2026 Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Instructional/How-To Program. The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced the nomination, marking the first time the series, and hosts Ben and Erin Napier, have been recognized by the Television Academy in any category.
Season three of Home Town Takeover brought Ben and Erin Napier to Sebring in early 2024, where they joined HGTV’s all-star experts and local residents for three months to renovate homes, revive small businesses, and reimagine public spaces including the historic Circle Park. The season wrapped with a community celebration downtown on May 24, 2024, and premiered on HGTV nearly a year later, on March 8, 2025.
“This Emmy nomination is national validation of something our residents have known since the cameras rolled into town,” said Sebring Mayor John Shoop. “We’ve watched foot traffic downtown multiply almost overnight, seen storefronts that used to sit empty fill back up, and people from as far as Germany, Australia and Brazil come find us because of this show. This nomination tells the rest of the country what we already know, that a small town like Sebring is worth the trip.”
The recognition comes as the Sebring area, including nearby Avon Park and Lake Placid, continues to see the show’s impact on tourism. According to the Greater Sebring Chamber of Commerce, foot traffic at its Welcome Center in the Circle Theatre rose 368% in March 2025 compared to the same month the year before, as visitors arrived to walk the same downtown circle they’d seen on television. Demand for the Chamber’s Walking Tour of Historic Sebring brochure has been so strong that its print run has grown from an initial 2,500 copies to more than 10,000. Downtown merchants, meanwhile, have reported sales increases of 200 to 300 percent over pre-show numbers, according to the Sebring Community Redevelopment Agency.